(Estherville)– There was additional discussion at Monday’s Estherville City Council meeting over E-bikes and scooters and a possible ordinance regulating them. City officials say most of the complaints they’re getting pertain to scooters. And when it comes to a possible ordinance, Police Chief Brent Shatto says he wants to see what other cities are doing…
“Quite frankly what my plan is is everybody else in the United States is complaining about electric scooters as well as here, I’m hoping somebody else writes a great ordinance that we can copy. We’re kind of sitting here looking at some other ordinances that some other towns have passed and then we’ll try to adopt one.”
Shatto says such ordinances can quickly get complicated, and depending on how they’re written, difficult to enforce…
“You want them on the sidewalk? You want them in the street? You want them on the bike trail? Do you want them in the city parks? We have to break it down on where we’re going to allow them and where we’re not going to allow them. So it’s going to be convoluted a little bit, trying to sort through it all.”
Shatto says it boils down to this:…
“The parents are allowing these things to be ridden up and down the roads. They should be telling their kids, and educating their kids, on traffic laws. And there in lies the problem with scooters. If you have a seven year-old riding a scooter down the road and he runs a stop sign, I can write him a ticket but what good does that do? Is the court going to prosecute a seven year-old? Is juvenile court going to deal with a seven year-old? Probably not.”
As we reported previously, Dickinson county authorities are looking into a county-wide ordinance regulating E-bikes and scooters, especially on the trail system, where a number of close calls have been reported. Some say just regular bicycles are also being operated in a careless manner with riders not obeying stop signs.
Advocates for the ordinances say effective enforcement will likely require dedicated officers on the trails with the necessary equipment, including radar.
