ANSONIA – The city’s police department is starting to target riders of electric bikes who aren’t following the rules of the road.
“It is a constant problem,” said Ansonia Police Chief Wayne Williams.
Williams spoke about the issue at a police commission meeting Sept. 2, in response to a question from a member of the public regarding the bikes.
Electric bikes, or “e-bikes,” are bicycles which use a motor to assist riders and to go faster. Unlike motorcycles, they usually top out between about 20 and 30 miles per hour, and they’re typically much cheaper.
Many cyclists like e-bikes because they make everyday chores like grocery shopping faster. However, they can also cause road compliance and safety issues, especially among kids. According to Truveta, a health analytics firm, emergency room visits for kids injured in e-bike and e-scooter incidents have increased by 671 percent in the last three years.
Williams said police in town have often found themselves stopping kids who don’t know safety rules.
“We dealt with a lot of kids about wearing helmets and glasses. We talked to some parents,” Williams said.
At some of the bike stops, police hand out pamphlets explaining e-bike regulations, Williams said. He said the department is also in talks with school officials about how to educate students on the rules and risks of e-bike riding.
Connecticut has different sets of regulations for e-bikes depending on their motor power and top speeds. Scroll to the bottom of this story for a flowchart of those regulations, originally published by Glastonbury police.
Williams said police have stepped up e-bike enforcement in the last two weeks, including aerial surveillance.
“We put up a drone unit just targeting the bikes. What we found is there were some people that were clearly in violation. I will tell you roughly half of the people that we tried to stop took off on the officers,” Williams said.
He said police were later able to track down and charge some of the people who fled. State law generally forbids police from engaging in chases, except for when pursuing suspects of violent crimes and when pursuit is necessary due to life-threatening situations.
Williams said that having kids on the bikes is a problem, even though it’s currently legal for certain classes of e-bikes.
“Any parent that asks me, the first thing I tell them is I’ll buy it from their kid. I wish they never invented these, because they just became more of a problem,” Williams said.
The police commission’s next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 7. See below for Connecticut’s rules on e-bikes:
