Date:
September 15, 2026 19
To: Board of Supervisors
Title
Taking Deceptive Retailers to Court for Marketing Motorcycles to Kids as “E-Bikes” (Districts: All)
End
Overview
When a San Diego parent buys their child an electric bike (e-bike), they should be able to trust that they are getting a safe, legal bicycle, and not an unlicensed motorcycle in disguise. But shady retailers are deceptively marketing and selling high-powered, electric motorcycles as "e-bikes," pocketing the profits, while families are left with the devastating consequences. Some of these machines can reach 40, 50, even 60 miles per hour – speeds far beyond what California allows for a legal E-Bike. Our kids are ending up in trauma centers or worse while the companies that put these machines on our streets have been allowed to profit without consequences.
The damage is staggering. Nationally, e-bike injuries treated in emergency rooms increased more than thirtyfold in just five years, from fewer than 1,000 injuries in 2017 to more than 23,000 in 2022.[1] Locally, Rady Children's Hospital, has seen pediatric ‘e-bike’ trauma cases surge from three in 2021 to 262 in 2025, putting e-bikes on pace to become the number one cause of pediatric trauma at the hospital this year.[2] Doctors are treating children for skull fractures, spinal injuries, and brain bleeds, the kind of injuries you see in car crashes, not bike crashes. And kids are dying. In May 2026, a 13-year-old was killed in Garden Grove riding a machine that police said was never legal on a public street.[3]
But many of these machines are not actually e-bikes at all. Research commissioned by the California Legislature found that nearly 88% of so-called e-bikes parked at public schools were actually illegal e-motorcycles.[4] Many can reach 60 miles per hour, three times the legal limit.[5] San Diego police report a sharp rise in crashes involving dangerous vehicles ridden by kids as young as 11.[5] Increasingly, our emerge...
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