I don’t want to get run over by an e-bike

Maybe you weren’t paying as much attention as you should have been on the walk to class, talking with friends or looking at your phone. Maybe you were just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No matter what you were doing, your fate remains the same. A person riding a vehicle that can hardly be considered a bicycle speeds past and nearly knocks the living daylights out of you. On certain occasions, there is no near miss: One of my friends was thrown off of their skateboard when an e-bike collided with them at high speed on Goheen Walk. The student operating the e-bike was on a FaceTime call during the collision. In any scenario, there is an understanding that the e-bike situation on this campus is out of control.

But the tides might soon change. At its next meeting, Princeton’s Environmental Safety and Risk Management (ESRM) committee will consider a change to the University’s current e-bike policy. Due to the risk they pose to pedestrians and riders on campus, the ESRM committee must ban e-bikes once and for all when we get back from winter break.

Princeton’s ban of e-scooters in 2024 came as part of a broader policy regulating personal electric vehicles (PEVs). This policy also regulated e-bikes on campus — but, considering the prevalence of prohibited e-bike activity, you probably wouldn’t know it.

For example, the PEV policy bans the use of e-bikes that don’t require pedaling to actuate the motor. The policy also stipulates that e-bikes should not be operated at over 10 miles per hour, that they cannot be driven on paths and sidewalks that are also used by pedestrians, and that they aren’t allowed inside of buildings. Tandem riding isn’t allowed, and there are a slew of parking rules regulating where the bikes can and cannot be left.

During my last week on campus this semester, though, I saw every single one of these rules broken. Not just once, either. Anybody trying to get to their 10:40 a.m. class at any point during the semester would tell you the same. Few, if any, e-bikers pedal. E-bikes weave through pedestrians, are parked in the middle of pedestrian pathways, and are definitely driven faster than 10 miles per hour. The University’s enforcement of the current e-bike policy has been lackluster, and it has been campus pedestrians who have faced the peril.

Around the country, studies have shown again and again the risks that e-bikes pose to the health and safety of users and pedestrians alike: A 2024 study found “an increased number of injuries and hospitalizations” with electric bikes and scooters compared to their conventional counterparts between 2017–2022. Oftentimes, those injuries ended up being more severe, and, in some cases, led to deaths, something practically unheard of with conventional bike crashes not involving cars.

In theory, the ESRM committee’s current rules are sufficient. Students would still be able to use e-bikes on roadways like Elm Drive, Prospect Avenue, Stadium Drive, or Washington Road to traverse long distances on campus, and pedestrians wouldn’t have to worry about getting run over on Goheen Walk because e-bikers would dismount.

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In reality, these rules have been broken continually since their implementation, leading to near misses, crashes, and injuries, like the ESRM committee pointed out in their presentation to the Council on the Princeton University Community (CPUC) in early December. I understand that a policy like this is difficult to implement, and the sheer number of e-bikes on Princeton’s campus, anecdotally, has increased rapidly since the ban on e-scooters. But I’m still left scratching my head at how the University ever planned to enforce a policy like this in the first place.

Indeed, the reason that there are so few e-scooters on this campus is because the ban worked — the policy was clearly defined, and it has been subsequently enforced by the University. But one of that policy’s knock-on effects has been an increase in e-bikes, and it is time for the University to address the problem wholeheartedly — not with an unenforceable piecemeal policy.

To that end, the only policy that will get the e-bike problem on campus under control is one that is unambiguous in both its intent and implementation. For Princeton’s campus, the only thing that checks both of those boxes is a total ban on e-bikes.

I am not unsympathetic towards people who use e-bikes to get to and from campus. The ESRM committee should leave a carve-out in the policy for faculty and staff, but they should strictly enforce that, once on campus, riding e-bikes is not allowed, and people should also walk their bikes when they arrive at a pedestrian pathway.

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It’s also important that students are able to get across campus in a timely fashion. I’m thinking of athletes in particular, who might have to traverse to and from Jadwin Gym or other locations on the south part of campus on a regular basis. Going up the Washington Road hill on a conventional bike is a miserable experience, but the evidence on the harmful effects of e-bikes to campus is overwhelming. The ESRM committee’s presentation pointed towards e-bike injuries (which they believe are vastly underreported on campus), e-bike parking, which usurped accessible parking spots across campus, and, on one occasion, a dorm fire because of a malfunctioning e-bike battery. Moreover, the passing time between classes is longer, which should — in theory — allow for more movement across an expanding campus.

That’s not to say that banning e-bikes is the perfect solution to this problem. But even with whatever harm it may cause, the ban can at least give pedestrians peace of mind that they won’t ever be run over by an e-bike moving faster than the Washington Road speed limit.

So, before you forget about Princeton for a month, I urge you to fill out the ESRM committee’s feedback form and implore it to ban e-bikes, once and for all, because a campus without e-bikes is better than a campus with too many.

Charlie Yale is an assistant Opinion editor from Omaha, Neb. He hopes to never face the wrath of an e-bike collision. He can be reached at cyale[at]princeton.edu.