Summit County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sgt. Skyler Talbot said deputies are receiving more and more reports of kids speeding or driving their e-bikes recklessly.
“We've kind of come up against, ‘OK, well this is a difficult thing for deputies to enforce,’” he said. “We're certainly not going to chase kids through parking lots. That's just going to increase the danger.”
So Talbot said they’re educating parents and their children about the law, and that’s not because they don’t want to see kids getting outdoors or having fun.
“What we don't want to see is kids getting hurt and our fear—and I think a fear that is shared by a lot of the community—is that one day, we're going to have a kid very badly injured or tragically killed on an e-bike,” Talbot said.
That’s a concern shared by local governments after three Wasatch High School students on an e-bike collided with a car and were hospitalized. Midway is weighing restrictions, and Oakley is considering classifying certain e-bikes as motor vehicles.
Park City and Summit County passed 15 mph speed limits on some trails.
Utah law recognizes just three narrowly-defined classes of e-bike.
Class 1 e-bikes are pedal-assisted but without a throttle, and they reach 20 mph. Class 2 are pedal-assisted with a throttle and reach 20 mph too.
Class 3 e-bikes are pedal-assisted, have no throttle and reach 28 mph. Helmets are required for anyone under the age of 21 riding a class 3 e-bike.
Anyone under 16 can’t operate a class 3, and anyone under 14 needs to be with a parent.
Anyone under the age of eight can’t operate any class of e-bike in public.
State law is mostly silent on e-bikes that don’t conform to those three classes.
A new law that took effect in May cites out-of-class e-bikes sold in Utah must have a sticker that says they aren’t e-bikes. It stops short of formally defining them as motor vehicles.
