The Mayor has backed a growing push for a crackdown on e-bikes.
It comes in the wake of the death of a 17-year-old boy, killed after colliding with a car while riding an e-bike in Tallebudgera on Monday.
The growing popularity of e-bikes has also sparked a jump in safety concerns amid a 650 per cent increase in crashes between January 2022 and November 2024.
Tom Tate is urging the state government to look at strengthening legislation to improve safety, including speed limits and banning e-bikes from high traffic areas.
“There’s technology there that you can limit certain areas and jam the speed of the e-bikes. They’ve got to look into that or make the rules that e-bikes can’t be in certain areas where there’s high traffic, foot traffic. That we just say, well, no e-bikes in that area.”
“So I think a lot of work will be done, but what we’ll do is that during the summer, we’ll a paper to put together to recommend to the state government of what we want, and hopefully they’ll support it.”
A recent inquiry heard that better helmets and banning under-16s from using e-bikes should be looked at.
But the Mayor believes that’s just skirting around the edges.
“To be frank, speed kills. It’s really focusing on the reduction in speed in high foot traffic areas is the number one issue.
“All the other bits, yeah, okay, we do all that, but got to get the speed down because they’re so advanced, they go so fast, and without curtailing that, the damage will be there, whether by the rider being hurt or the foot traffic.”
