There's a growing concern over e-bike safety in New Jersey after a string of serious accidents this summer, including the death of a 14-year-old from Egg Harbor Township last month.

Lawmakers are now considering new legislation to address the issue, while police are reminding riders, especially teens, that e-bikes must follow the same rules of the road as bicycles, and that helmets can save lives.

CEO correspondent Joanna Gaggis has more.

We have children basically on motorcycles, and granted they may not be moving at 50, 60 miles per hour, but the damage that can occur at moving 25 to 30 miles per hour can be just as significant and life-altering.

If you've been outside at all this summer, you've probably seen e-bikes zipping around the streets or sidewalks.

More and more, they're being driven by kids, some as young as 11 or 12 years old.

We had a juvenile riding a bike on one of our streets and crashed into a motor vehicle.

He was going at a high rate of speed.

That e-bike crash in Westfield last Friday resulted in the child being taken to a trauma center.

But in mid-July, a 14-year-old in Summers Point died in an e-bike crash.

And this one's hard to watch, but Montvale police released video of an e-bike colliding with a car a few weeks ago to help raise awareness about these types of incidents that have become all too common across the state.

We've seen an increase already this summer as compared to last year.

We're on track to double or triple the number of injuries that we've taken care of as a result of e-bike and e-scooter use.

They're essentially motorcycles.

And then they're riding on the roads, and then they're quick zipping onto the sidewalks or cutting cars off or knocking down pedestrians.

Westfield passed an ordinance banning e-bikes from town parks to protect kids and others inside the park.

Towns across New Jersey have passed similar bans, but maybe an unintended consequence, it is pushing the bikes out into the street.

What we're seeing now is that kids are riding these bikes on main roads, on busy roads, and they don't realize that they're treated as a motor vehicle.

And unfortunately, because many of these kids don't have licenses yet, they're not able to drive a motor vehicle, but they're riding these motorized bikes that are classified as motor vehicles.

It's kind of this double-edged sword.

Westfield Rescue Squad President Callie Campbell says they've seen cases where the kids alter their e-bikes to hit speeds closer to 40 miles an hour.

After learning about the teen's death in his district, Republican Senator Vince Palastina proposed legislation to require all e-bike riders take a safety course before operating a Class 1 or Class 2 e-bike, especially because most of them have never even learned the rules of the road.

All the basics, you know, starting, stopping, understanding how to view hazards, similar to what you go through with driver's training, you know, where are the hazards, how do you comply with stop signs, how does your interaction with vehicular traffic go in crosswalks, I mean, all of that has to be part of what goes into this.

And of course, all the safety measures that you should be, have on your body, including a helmet.

Do you think that there should be a consideration for an age requirement to be on an e-bike?

I think that's definitely something that we need to look at.

Certainly younger people should not be on these vehicles.

They go way too fast and they're just not able to fully embrace how important it is to operate them in a safe manner.

We're really putting too much pressure on children to make these safe decisions when mentally they're just not developed enough yet to be making those decisions.

Dr. Kelly Willman has seen way too many life-altering severe brain injuries because young people were riding without helmets.

But she has a word of caution for parents who think they can just hand their kid a helmet and send them out the door.

That's really just protecting the head and the brain.

We still see cervical spine injuries, broken necks that can result in significant paralysis or even quadriparesis where all four extremities are involved.

A lot of these patients also suffer from blunt injury to their chest and to their abdomen.

So we can see injuries to the spleen, injuries to the liver.

These can result in life-threatening bleeding intra-abdominally.

Campbell would like to see the law require every e-bike to be registered with the state, no different than a motorcycle.

This would allow police to track who's breaking the rules and require more accountability for parents before they send their kids out onto the road.

In Westfield, I'm Joanna Gagis, NJ Spotlight News.

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