Obetz City Council has approved a sweeping revision to the city's e-bike rules, requiring every rider under 18 to wear a helmet and banning minors from carrying passengers while operating one of the increasingly popular electric bicycles. The new rules took effect immediately.
According to WSYX, the ordinance now requires that anyone under 18 wear a helmet whether they are riding or simply along for the ride as a passenger on a Class 1, Class 2, or Class 3 e-bike. Adults operating those e-bikes are also responsible for making sure any passenger under 18 is wearing one. The station reports that anyone under 18 is barred outright from carrying a passenger while operating an e-bike themselves.
City council said it wants to keep community members safe while riding, per the same report, and Obetz officials hope riders keep enjoying their e-bikes while staying safe and avoiding unnecessary injuries. Parents and guardians are now responsible for making sure minors in their care follow the rules, and they can be ticketed if a child in their care operates or rides an e-bike without the required helmet.
Repeat Offenders Under 18 Could Land in Juvenile Court
Violations of the new e-bike rules are treated as standard traffic offenses, meaning violators may receive traffic tickets just as they would for other roadway infractions, the outlet notes. Repeat violators under 18, however, could be referred to juvenile court rather than simply facing another citation.
The crackdown did not come out of nowhere. Six months before the vote, Obetz Police Chief Mike Confer and Mayor Angela Kirk raised safety concerns at a city council meeting about e-bike riders weaving through traffic and ignoring traffic laws, according to CitizenPortal.ai, which prompted council members to request formal enforcement guidance and begin drafting the updated rules. Obetz, a Franklin County city just south of Columbus near the Rickenbacker industrial corridor, is governed by a mayor and a six-member city council elected at-large.
How Obetz's Rules Compare to State Law
Ohio's baseline law, Revised Code § 4511.522, splits e-bikes into a three-tier system capped at 750 watts and only requires helmets for Class 3 riders or passengers under 16, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation. Obetz's new mandate goes further, covering every rider and passenger under 18 across all three e-bike classes, not just the fastest ones.
Obetz isn't alone in tightening the rules for young riders. Nearby Bexley requires helmets for Class 1 e-bike riders, mandates parental permission and safety training for 14- and 15-year-olds on Class 2 e-bikes, and restricts Class 3 e-bikes to riders 16 and older, according to the City of Bexley. Upper Arlington took a different approach in May, introducing a Mobility Device Registration and Safety Program that requires e-bikes, e-scooters, and other non-BMV motorized devices to be registered with local police and display an official sticker, per the City of Upper Arlington. Police in Hamilton, Ohio also launched a public crackdown that same month on youth e-bike riders hitting speeds up to 30 mph on sidewalks, warning that high-powered e-bikes exceeding 750 watts are legally classified as mopeds or motor vehicles, as Hoodline previously reported.
The Injury Data Behind the Push
The local rule changes track a steep rise in national e-bike injury numbers. Emergency-department-treated e-bike injuries across the United States surged from roughly 26,800 in 2022 to 59,200 in 2024, with total micromobility fatalities reaching 135 in 2024, according to a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report. A study presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons' 2026 annual meeting found youth e-bike orthopedic injuries jumped more than 300% between 2019 and 2023 at a major pediatric trauma center, with severe extremity trauma frequently requiring surgery.
Helmet use appears to make a measurable difference. A JAMA Surgery analysis of federal injury data found that only 44% of injured e-bike riders treated in U.S. emergency rooms were wearing a helmet, and that non-helmeted riders faced 1.9 times higher odds of sustaining a head injury. Head injuries account for nearly a third of all e-bike emergency room visits, according to the analysis.
For now, the open question in Obetz is how the new rules play out on the street: whether police lean on warnings or citations for young repeat offenders, and whether ticketing parents actually changes how kids ride. Council members have made clear the goal isn't to sideline e-bikes altogether, but to keep them from turning into an emergency room statistic.
