Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) – The East Aurora Village Board approved a law that will give the police more teeth in enforcing e-bike laws, in particular, underage e-bike usage.
East Aurora Police Chief Patrick Welch says the law reiterates a lot of current established New York state law and the vehicle and traffic law on e-bikes and e-scooters, but some parts of the law that the village passed further go a little bit further. “If an operator is under 16 years of age and they’re operating the e-scooter or e-bike, police now have a mechanism in place where we can seize that bike, and it costs the parents money to get the bike out of what would be like an impound, and a third violation of that would be permanent seizures,” says Welch. He says repeated warnings to teens was an issue this summer. “We were telling a lot of folks, ‘Hey, look, you’re too young. You can’t ride these bikes.’ There’s a law against it, but we didn’t have any way to actually carry it through,” explains Welch.
Welch says he feels for young kids to want to be on these bikes. “I think back to when I was a child, I would have loved it if there was something available like that to ride around on. So you understand why they are on it,” says Welch. But at the same time, he says they don’t understand, at that age, the rules of the road or the dangers they’re creating for themselves…