‘All of the e-bike answers are bad ones’: KIRO hosts question the premise of e-bikes as child ER visits surge nationwide

E-bike injuries among children have exploded in recent years, with ER visits surging 671% for kids and adolescents between January 2023 and May 2026, and e-bikes became the number one reason for pediatric trauma visits at one of the country’s largest children’s hospitals in 2025.

KIRO fill-in host Greg Tomlin, speaking on “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio, said the data matches what he’s seeing with his own eyes.

“Multiple times on a weekly basis, I have a run-in with some kid doing a wheelie,” Greg said. “It’s oftentimes with no helmet. This would be one part of government where I would be an advocate for more regulation, especially when it comes to young people on these things.”

Greg said the numbers he’d seen, more than 150,000 ER visits in the past decade and deaths that “seem to be exponentially increasing year-over-year,” were enough to overcome his usual resistance to government intervention. He floated stricter age limits, then paused.

“Hunt them down and lock them up,” Greg said. “I don’t know, but at the risk of sounding like those people that clamor for ‘do something,’ that’s how sometimes I feel when it comes to this topic.”

Jake said he’s noticed fewer kids riding e-bikes in his neighborhood, but not for the reason Greg might hope.

“I really feel like the reason I’m seeing fewer kids on e-bikes is that they don’t want the judgment of other parents who think that e-bikes are not safe,” Jake said. “Not because they are protecting the kids, but because they don’t want the social ramifications of their decisions.”

He added that any parent allowing a nine-year-old to ride at 35 mph on a sidewalk designed for walkers deserves the scrutiny.

“I’m judging the parents really harshly on who would let them do that,” Jake said.

‘What problem were we solving?’

Greg stepped back from the data to ask a broader question, one he credited to media theorist Neil Postman.

“What problem were we solving with the advent and innovation of e-bikes?” Greg asked. “Was there a problem that was so widespread that we said this is a necessity to hit the market? I just feel like it’s created more problems than solved them.”

Jake had a theory: “I think we recognized that kids were too fit.”

“Clearly in America we had a too-fit problem,” Greg responded.

Jake said the real loss is something harder to quantify. When he was a kid, riding 12 miles from home meant earning every mile, and saving enough energy to get back.

“Just like screens in schools, when I was a kid, if you were going to ride your bike and you were going to end up 12 miles from your house, it’s because you worked your butt off to get there,” Jake said. “Kids now, they can just go as far as they want to go.”

Greg tied it back to Postman’s framework. Three questions the late media critic said should be asked about any new technology: What is the problem this technology is solving? Whose problem is it? And what new problems do we create by solving it?

“All good questions,” Jake said. “And all of the e-bike answers are bad ones.”

Washington tightened its own e-bike definitions in June 2026, closing loopholes for bikes designed to be easily reconfigured beyond legal specs. Riders under 16 are still prohibited from operating Class 3 e-bikes in the state.

Multiple other states have imposed stricter age limits this year, including Utah, which now requires helmets for all e-bike riders under 21 and a safety course for riders ages 8 to 15.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3