‘I almost killed a kid’ — Residents weigh in on proposed ebike/scooter law

A recent encounter is etched in the mind of Thomas Memmer following a close call with the rider of a scooter.

“It was at 4 p.m. and I was coming down Avenue K toward Adams from Fifth, right? I was going Fifth, Sixth, Seventh down the street and I get to Seventh Street and all of a sudden, I hear this big old loud ‘Bang!’ my right front tire goes up in the air and I slam on the brakes and I stopped and I’m like, ‘What the heck was that?’ I get out, walk around and look behind my truck and there’s a kid laying in the street on a scooter.”

That’s how Memmer described what happened when he was trying to get to a city council meeting in early June. He had planned to speak during public comment about proposals for a leash law. Instead, he stood at the podium and, in a voice just slightly above a whisper and still filled with emotion from the collision, he begged the council to take action before “some kid gets killed.”

“And I start freaking out,” Memmer recalled in a phone interview last week. “So, I grab the kid and then I noticed that he was riding with another kid that wasn’t involved in the accident. So, I tell the kid to call 911 and tell them you’re at Seventh and Avenue K, you need paramedics and you need police, please hurry. I carried the kid out of the street and onto the sidewalk in the shade.”

Bumps and bruises

The incident did not end as badly as it could have, but no one knew that at the time. “I didn’t know how bad the kid was hurt. He was obviously in pain. He was screaming, you know?”

The collision happened, according to Memmer, who was not cited or charged, because the scooter rider wasn’t paying attention.

“As I tried to piece together what had happened, I originally thought that the kid was coming on Seventh Street away from the high school toward Avenue K and I thought he ran the stop sign and ran into my right front fender. Come to find out what the kid was doing, apparently he was going down Avenue K on the sidewalk in the same direction I was going and when he got to Seventh Street, he decided to do a U-turn off the sidewalk into the street.”

It’s that kind of behavior that moved Councilwoman Cokie Booth to have the council discuss this issue back in May. Introducing the discussion, she told the rest of the council how she drives up and down Nevada Way several times a day (Booth is a real estate broker and property manager with an office on Boulder City Parkway, west of Nevada Way) and sees people, mostly juveniles moving very fast and with no apparent regard for their own or anyone else’s safety on e-bikes and scooters.

In May, the council seemed poised to do what no other jurisdiction in the state had yet done at that time and regulate safety issues including mandating helmets. But the conversation turned to education instead and no action was taken at that time.

Since then, other cities and counties, including Las Vegas and Clark County, have put in place tough regulations with pretty substantial fines attached. And, next week, the council will debate and vote on a proposed change to city code that would regulate where bikes and scooters (both electric and manual) can be ridden and at what speeds. The ordinance would also mandate helmets for minors.

Not everyone is sold on the idea

Sarah Fischer, who identified herself as a PE teacher at a Boulder City elementary school, is one who has doubts. “I feel like we should work with safe routes to schools and we should be making sure that our students know the laws and the safety things that are happening. I feel like we’re lacking in that right now,” she told the council during public comment last week.

“I also know that there are a lot of benefits to biking and scootering and we just need to make sure we’re doing them correctly,” Fischer said. “I’m trying to understand why they’re changing some of the laws to hinder use of getting out and moving around. So, I think it’s not a matter of trying to ban things. I think it’s a matter of educating people and making it safe in doing so.”

Fischer was followed at the podium by Benny Shapiro, who said he has lived in Boulder City since 1981.

“Three, four weeks ago, I hit a kid on an e-bike,” he told the council. “There’s video because of a previous accident I had. I put cameras in my car. So, I have the whole thing on a video and when you watch the video, it’s mind-blowing on how fast this kid was.”

‘I almost killed a kid’

Shapiro went on to say that the rider rode with his feet hanging down, wearing a motorcycle helmet and that the e-bike had a motorcycle-style headlight, so, in his rear-view mirror, Shapiro assumed it was a motorcycle coming up behind him.

He reported that he came to a stop on Nevada Way and started to turn right onto a side street.

“He tried a little maneuver to pass me on the right when I was making a right-hand turn, and I completely destroyed his bike. I’m still shaken when I think about it because I almost killed a kid.”

Shapiro said he understands how kids think about e-bikes and scooters, some of which can reach speeds of up to 28 mph.

“I will say this right now, if I was a kid, I’d have the fastest one. I’d be doing all these things these kids are doing. I get it. I understand the technology and how lithium batteries made bikes instantly faster than cars. I get it all. And I’m kind of jealous of the kids today. But it’s such a big problem. Everyone knows it.”

And close calls continue to happen. Memmer, who drove a truck for a living and recently retired after moving to a job as a business agent for the Teamsters Union, had one the same day he spoke with the Review.

“It’s funny because today I was coming up Avenue G during school hours and I was doing the speed limit. When I drive now I’m even more cautious. When I drive in town, I drive 20 in the 25 and I just drive slow. So I drive like 10 in this school zone. And out of nowhere, two girls on a scooter — same scooter — blew through the stop sign there at Sixth Street to get over to the high school sidewalk.”

Memmer says he thinks that the safety of kids should be the No. 1 priority for elected officials and adds that he does believe that city council members feel the same way.

“They’re moving forward with regulations and that’s a good thing.”