National e-bike injury cases surged over 1,000% from 2020 to 2024
On the morning of Sept. 13, the first visitor arrived at Angel Stadium at midnight. By daybreak, a line snaked out of the parking lot as if fans were waiting for a World Series game. The event that drew them was an unusual one: an e-bike buyback, hosted by Spitzer and modeled on a traditional gun buyback, where residents could surrender their machines in exchange for gift cards.
In just over two hours, residents surrendered more than 1,000 e-bikes and e-motorcycles. The DA’s office handed out gift cards worth up to $1,000, funded by seized criminal assets. When the money ran out, dozens remained in line; some abandoned their bikes anyway, while others tried to strike their own deals in the parking lot.
“We are destroying these bikes,” Spitzer announced to cheers. “They’re going to be crushed!” The Republican district attorney has emerged as one of the nation’s toughest prosecutors on e-bike violations, and the buyback served as the public face of a broader enforcement push.
“I’m not going to change boys who like to be daredevils and they like to take risks,” Spitzer said in an air-conditioned trailer at the buyback. “What I can change is getting parents’ attention of the serious consequences they could face.”
Beyond the buyback, Spitzer in May formed a special e-bike and e-motorcycle prosecution unit. The office has filed child endangerment charges against at least three parents and is investigating 47 more. Defense attorneys have pushed back against the prosecutions.
Michael Krems, attorney for a father facing child-endangerment charges, called the prosecution “absurd.” “My client is being made a scapegoat for a much broader problem involving how these vehicles are classified, marketed, sold and regulated,” Krems said.
Spitzer formed the unit following the death of Ed Ashman, an 81-year-old Vietnam veteran and substitute teacher. Ashman was walking from classes at El Toro High School when he was struck, allegedly by a 14-year-old boy popping wheelies on an electric motorcycle.
Spitzer’s office charged the teen’s mother, Tommi Jo Mejer, with felony child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter for allegedly unlawfully letting her son ride a machine classified as an electric motorcycle. Mejer “is anguished over the terrible accident,” her attorney, Paul Meyer, said in a statement, adding, “We are continuing to evaluate the facts and law in this case.”
National injury data underscores what Spitzer’s office describes as an epidemic. Patients treated for e-bike injuries jumped more than 1,000% between 2020 and 2024, according to a San Jose State University analysis of hospital data. In Southern California, e-bike trauma cases have soared at Rady Children’s Hospital Orange County.
California classifies e-bikes into three categories with varying levels of pedal assistance, topping out at 28 miles per hour. Beyond those classifications lie electric motorcycles, or “e-motos,” which travel faster and require a driver’s license.
At the buyback, Anaheim resident Fred Sigala said he bought his son Aiden, now 13, what he thought was an e-bike last year — but it turned out to be an e-moto capable of hitting 45 mph and illegal for a boy his age. He instructed Aiden, who wore a helmet, to stay at a setting under 20 mph. Aiden said he obeyed but was surprised by the power. “It went really fast and accelerated really quickly,” the boy recalled, as he and his father rolled the bike through the line to surrender it.
Some families have applauded the tougher approach. Allister and Jessica Carlos said they did not allow their son Ethan, then 15, to ride or own an e-bike, but he was visiting a friend in January 2025 when he rode one.
Jessica recalled receiving a frantic call from the friend’s mother, saying the boys had been in a collision that night on an e-bike she had let them ride. Ethan was riding on the back of the e-bike when a car struck them. He did not survive.
“The anger for us is obviously because we didn’t allow this,” Allister said, wiping tears. “They chose to put our son in danger.”
In Orange County, the craze landed especially hard, fueled by the outdoorsy ethos and adolescent social dynamics. “It was just if you didn’t have an e-bike, you basically didn’t have any friends,” recalls Samantha Curtis, whose 13-year-old daughter, Rowan, asked for one in 2021 when the family lived in San Clemente, a hilly city ideal for pedal assistance.
One day, Rowan was hanging out with friends in a parking lot when she tried out a boy’s e-bike. The brakes failed to stop the bike before it jumped a curb, pitching Rowan into a tree. She was left with a broken collarbone and punctured lung. “Had she not had the helmet on, it would have been a different story,” Curtis said.
Other parents see less upside in restrictions. Adam Paraspolo said he has let his 13-year-old son ride an e-bike around their neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles after instructing him on the rules of the road. “It’s teaching him how to drive somewhat,” Paraspolo said. “He knows the street names now.”
Local policies are beginning to catch up with the enforcement push. San Diego has banned children under 12 from riding e-bikes, a move local surgeons already credit with a drop in emergency-room visits. Orange County’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District has banned e-bikes and other electric vehicles from K-8 campuses.
Some locals portray the school ban as governmental overreach that worsens car traffic. Yet many students still ride their e-bikes to school, simply leaving them parked in piles across the street, according to Mary Keenan, a middle-school crossing guard. “They drive like they own the streets,” she said.