Mounties in Burnaby are urging people who ride e-bikes and e-scooters to do so safely and legally after they handed out 57 tickets over the course of a few hours earlier this week. The violation tickets issued Wednesday during a targeted blitz at sites around the city included 37 for not wearing a helmet and 14 for riding on the sidewalk. Infractions specific to e-scooters included riding under the age of 16 and towing another person. Fines under the Motor Vehicle Act for the violations are $109, except for not wearing a helmet, which carries a $29 penalty. Burnaby RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Mike Kalanj said injuries involving electric scooters and bicycles are on the rise, and education is no longer working, so police have begun enforcing the rules. “People aren’t getting the message, and not just Burnaby, the whole Lower Mainland, actually the country and most of the continent,” he told CTV News Thursday. “To keep people safe and hopefully save some lives, we’re going to write as really as many tickets as we can until the message is heard.” Police say one 15-year-old boy received three tickets at once because he was riding an e-scooter underage, without a helmet, and on the sidewalk. In another case, a dad was issued a ticket for allowing his 10-year-old to ride an e-scooter in a park. In addition, another father received a ticket for attaching a seat for his son on the front of his e-scooter, which Kalanj called a case of “good people making bad decisions,” even though both were wearing helmets and the dad was wearing a bright orange vest. “We’ve had some close calls and we’ve had some bad situations,” he said. “Our message is we need this conversation to continue, but we also need everyone to talk about it…because you can’t retroactively go back and say ‘I wish I had told you something before your child got hurt or you got in that crash.’”
