A woman struck in a collision involving an e-bike in Mayport on October 17 suffered multiple broken bones and facial fractures and now faces additional surgeries and dental work, according to her attorney, who is calling on Florida lawmakers to pass stronger statewide safety rules for electric bicycles.
Attorney Curry Pajic told News4JAX that his client was hit while riding an e-bike in Mayport, though the outlet also described the woman as walking across the Wonderwood Bridge when the collision happened — an account that does not fully align with Pajic describing her as a rider. Pajic said the e-bike involved was traveling between 35 and 45 mph at the time of the crash.
“She faces additional surgeries and dental work,” Pajic said, describing the toll the crash has taken on his client. He argued that the incident illustrates a broader problem on Florida roads and sidewalks as e-bikes become faster and more common. “If there’s a state law, everybody would know about it and it would make our streets safer,” Pajic said, pressing state lawmakers to strengthen e-bike safety rules rather than leave the patchwork of local ordinances in place.
Jacksonville's Response So Far
Jacksonville has already taken some local action. The city council passed legislation in September lowering the e-bike sidewalk and shared-use-path speed limit to 15 mph, a move aimed at reining in faster riders on routes shared with pedestrians. Pajic said motorized bicycles can be dangerous and even deadly, and that more action is needed beyond the city's own rules.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said it expects riders to operate safely and obey applicable laws, and that it takes seriously reckless and unsafe e-bike use that threatens motorists, pedestrians and other road users, per the same News4JAX report.
Emergency Rooms Seeing More E-Bike Patients
Doctors are also sounding the alarm. Dr. Shilpa Amin, chair of emergency medicine at HCA Memorial, said the hospital's trauma center sees two to four e-bike injury cases every week, underscoring how frequently these collisions are now landing patients in the emergency room.
The pattern extends well beyond Jacksonville. Wolfson Children's Hospital reported a 222% increase in e-bike and e-scooter injuries from 2023 to 2024, with the number of children treated continuing to climb into 2025 and 2026, according to a separate News4JAX report on the city council's e-bike rules debate. Florida Trend reported that Wolfson's trauma center saw a 3,700% rise in pediatric admissions for e-bike and e-scooter injuries since 2022, reaching 115 cases in 2025, and that the hospital's medical director, Dr. John Draus, logged 19 new cases in a single January, as detailed in the outlet's injury audit.
A Statewide and National Problem
South Florida hospitals are tracking similar spikes. The Miami Herald reported that Memorial Healthcare System in South Broward saw a 178% increase in micromobility-device injuries from 2024 to 2025, a trend that has continued into 2026, while Nicklaus Children's Hospital recorded six severe e-bike- and e-scooter-related injuries in 2021 compared with 37 in 2025 — an increase of more than 500%, according to the Miami Herald. The same report noted that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says e-bike crash data is difficult to track nationally because underreporting may be common and crashes are often logged as ordinary bicycle crashes.
The danger isn't confined to Florida. A UC San Diego researchers' study found that e-bike riders were involved in at least 4,035 collisions in California from 2018 through 2024, and that people hurt in e-bike collisions suffered more injuries than those involved in traditional bicycle crashes, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. In Huntington Beach, a 62-year-old Westminster woman died after her e-bike struck a raised concrete curb, marking the city's second fatal e-bike incident in several months after a man who collided with a vehicle on July 21 died five days later from his injuries, the paper reported.
What Florida Law Actually Says
Under current Florida law, an electric bicycle and its operator carry the same rights, privileges and duties as a traditional bicycle and its rider, according to Florida Statute 316.20655. That same statute exempts e-bike operators from laws requiring a driver's license, vehicle registration, title certificates or motor-vehicle insurance, though it does allow local governments to adopt ordinances setting minimum-age and photo-identification requirements for riders.
Separately, Florida Statute 316.2065 requires bicyclists riding on sidewalks to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians and to give an audible signal before passing them — a rule that speaks directly to the kind of shared-path conflict at the center of Pajic's call for tougher statewide standards.
