Florida Kills E-Bike Safety Task Force Just Days After Lake Wales Woman Dies on Scenic Highway
Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed Florida’s only e-bike safety bill last week, killing both a modest speed restriction and a proposed safety task force. The veto came just days after a Lake Wales woman was struck and killed riding her electric bicycle home from work, and less than a year after an Auburndale teenager died in a similar crash. The bill may not have directly prevented either of those deaths. But its task force might have started the conversation that could.
Senate Bill 382, which passed both chambers of the Florida Legislature unanimously, would have required e-bike riders to slow to 10 miles per hour within 50 feet of a pedestrian on shared pathways, to give an audible signal before passing, and to establish a task force to research broader e-bike safety standards.
DeSantis called the measure “a little bit of an overreach,” saying during a news conference that enforcing such a speed limit would be difficult and could lead to increased surveillance of people by law enforcement. With the veto, Florida now has no formal e-bike safety framework and no task force charged with developing one.
The gap is not theoretical. On the night of June 23, 2026, a 56-year-old Lake Wales woman was struck from behind and killed while riding her electric bicycle home from work on Scenic Highway, State Road 17, near Babson Park. A 2022 Jeep TrackHawk driven by a 30-year-old Lake Wales man hit her bicycle, which was traveling westbound about two to three feet from the edge of the road.
The victim was wearing an orange reflective vest and her bike had both front and rear lights, but investigators were unable to determine whether those lights were functioning at the time of impact due to crash damage. The Jeep’s driver told deputies he did not see any lights before hitting the bike. The sheriff’s office said no criminal or civil charges are anticipated, though the investigation remains open.
The woman had been riding approximately 15 miles from work to her home when she was hit. Scenic Highway was closed in both directions for around three hours.
The stretch of road where she died is a two-lane rural corridor with no dedicated bicycle infrastructure. She was not on a recreational ride. She was commuting. Her name has not been released as of press time.
That crash followed a similar tragedy the summer before. Maddox Moore, 14, was riding his e-bike in New Smyrna Beach on July 1, 2025, when he was struck and killed by a vehicle. Moore was a student at Auburndale High School.
His mother, Summer Barnes, said witnesses reported Maddox was in the bike lane and that he was not speeding, though he was not wearing a helmet. He underwent two brain surgeries and spent two weeks in the pediatric ICU before he passed away.
Barnes, who had also lost her oldest daughter in a four-wheeler crash five years earlier, has since spoken publicly to warn other families. “I don’t want his loss to be for nothing,” she told FOX 13. “I hope somebody somewhere out there will see this and think twice before buying an e-bike.”
To be clear about what SB 382 was and was not: the bill’s speed limit provision targeted e-bikes moving too fast near pedestrians on shared trails and sidewalks, not the kind of road crashes that killed the Lake Wales woman or Maddox Moore. Those deaths involve a different and largely unaddressed problem, riders on roads with no bicycle infrastructure, no lighting requirements beyond what riders choose, and no clear legal framework for how drivers and e-bike riders share the same lane.
What the bill could have addressed, through its task force, was exactly that kind of broader policy gap. Rep. Yvette Benarroch, the Republican from Marco Island who sponsored the House version of the bill, said the legislation was “inspired by tragedy, but not just one tragedy,” citing four incidents across Florida in which young people lost their lives on e-bikes. The task force was designed to study the full scope of e-bike dangers and recommend solutions. That work will not happen now.
Dr. Normaliz Rodriguez, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Tampa General Hospital and USF Health, said injuries among young e-bike riders tend to be severe, including significant head trauma, brain bleeds, and major bone fractures requiring surgery, and that the injuries are most often caused by riders being struck by cars, not by falls.
E-bike injuries in the United States doubled every year from 2017 to 2022, according to a June 2024 report published in JAMA Network Open. In the five years between 2019 and 2023, e-bikes accounted for more than 63 percent of all bicycle purchases, and the U.S. market was valued at more than $2.2 billion in 2024. The bikes are not going away. The roads have not changed.
DeSantis said his concern was practical, that cyclists cannot reasonably gauge whether they are going 10 miles per hour or 8. He also raised concerns about law enforcement resources. Those are fair points about that specific provision. What he did not address is what Florida should do instead, for commuters on rural highways, for teenagers on bike lanes, for anyone riding an e-bike on roads that were built for cars.
Florida has no answer to that question right now. And in communities across this county, the people who depend on those bikes to get where they are going are still out there every night.
Sources: Florida Phoenix, “E-bike speed limits are an ‘overreach,’ DeSantis says with veto,” Jay Waagmeester, June 26, 2026. floridaphoenix.com; Polk County Sheriff’s Office (@PolkCoSheriff), fatal crash statement, June 23-24, 2026. x.com/PolkCoSheriff; WFLA News Channel 8, “56-year-old e-bike rider hit, killed by SUV in Polk County,” June 24, 2026. wfla.com; FOX 13 Tampa Bay, “Polk mother shares tragedy of losing son in e-bike crash amid summer spike in pediatric e-bike injuries,” Carla Bayron, July 17, 2025. fox13news.com; WFLA News Channel 8, “Polk County teen killed in e-bike crash; mother and doctors urge safety precautions,” July 17, 2025. wfla.com; AMA Network Open, e-bike injury study, June 2024. jamanetwork.com; Lake Wales News, “Lake Wales Woman Killed Riding E-Bike at Night,” June 24, 2026. lakewalesnews.net
