A rider was seriously hurt on Baptist Road on the evening of Aug. 24, struck by a car east of Jackson Creek Parkway while on what the Monument Police Department called an E-Moto. Two weeks earlier the department had published a guide explaining what an E-Moto is and why it is not an electric bicycle. The machine has a definition in state statute, a set of rules that changes at every property line in the Tri-Lakes, and no mention at all in the Town of Monument’s municipal code.
Electric bikes and scooters arrived in the Tri-Lakes faster than the rules governing them. Colorado sets a floor that is considerably lower than most parents assume. On top of that floor sit a county trail rule, two homeowners’ association rules that contradict each other, three school handbooks, and — in Monument and Palmer Lake — nothing at all.
What follows is a guide to what is actually legal, and where.
Four Machines, Four Sets of Rules
Colorado divides electric bicycles into three classes. All three require fully operable pedals and a motor of no more than 750 watts. A machine that fails either test is not an electric bicycle at all, whatever the seller calls it.
Read that table twice, because the part most parents miss is what is absent from it. Colorado imposes no minimum age to ride a Class 1 or Class 2 electric bicycle, and no helmet requirement of any kind for either, at any age. The same is true of electric scooters. A ten-year-old riding a 20-mph throttle-driven bicycle down Second Street, bare-headed, is breaking no state law.
The helmet mandate applies only to Class 3, and only to riders under 18.
The Line That Decides Everything Is 750 Watts
Colorado caps an electric bicycle’s motor at 750 watts. Federal law defines a low-speed electric bicycle as one with a motor of less than 750 watts. Cross that line and the machine becomes something else — most often a low-power scooter, which Colorado defines as reaching all the way to 4,476 watts, or a motorcycle.
That ambiguity is not academic. Manufacturers advertise both numbers, and rarely the same one. One widely sold model leads its product page with a peak figure of 1,092 watts and lists its 500-watt continuous rating further down. Another publishes a peak rating and no continuous rating at all. A third publishes continuous ratings across its entire line and no peak figure anywhere. One company adds a disclaimer that its “actual power-to-ground wattage is under 750W to ensure ebike regulatory compliance.”
Colorado State Patrol Chief Col. Mathew C. Packard put the problem to buyers directly in a July release. “Sometimes what a retailer is calling an ‘e-bike’ is not a bike at all,” he said. “Any two-wheeled vehicle that has a motor exceeding 750 watts, speeds exceeding 28 mph, or no functional pedals, may be reclassified as a moped or motorcycle.”
The Independent put the question to the patrol in writing. Peak governs. “If an E-Bike or E-moto’s wattage is capable of being ‘turned up or down,’ the highest wattage it is capable of producing would be used during an investigation,” wrote Trooper Hunter Mathews of the patrol’s public affairs office. “This also counts for E-Bikes that are tampered with to remove a governor to go faster. Whatever the peak is, that is what we would use.” A trooper establishes the figure by looking the model up online or reading a sticker on the machine. By that standard a bicycle sold on a 1,092-watt peak is not a bicycle, whatever its nominal rating says.
Crossing that line changes everything after it. “If the device is altered or tampered with to increase the wattage above 750 watts, the E-Bike would then be considered an E-Moto,” Mathews wrote. “All laws pertaining to E-Motos would then take effect, including age restrictions, a driver’s license with a motorcycle endorsement,” plus insurance and registration. He added a caveat of his own: municipalities may set their own rules, and a rider should check the ones that apply where they ride.
Where You Can Ride Depends on Whose Land You Are On
This is the part with no map. A rider crossing the Tri-Lakes on a single afternoon passes through at least five sets of rules, and nothing on the ground marks the boundaries between them.
| Where you are | Class 1 | Class 2 | Class 3 | E-moto |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monument streets No local ordinance — state rules apply |
Yes | Yes | Yes, 16+ | Licensed only |
| Palmer Lake streets No local ordinance — state rules apply |
Yes | Yes | Yes, 16+ | Licensed only |
| New Santa Fe Regional Trail El Paso County — 20 mph cap |
Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Woodmoor common areas Rule adopted May 27, 2026 |
No | No | No | No |
| Gleneagle open space Association’s stated position |
Yes | Yes | Unstated | No |
| D38 school campuses 5 mph; walk it at the middle school |
Handbooks govern conduct, not class | |||
| Colorado Springs parks For comparison — city policy, July 2025 |
Yes | No | No | No |
Sidewalks Are Legal Until a Sign Says Otherwise
Sidewalks are where most children actually ride, and the rule surprises people in both directions. Colorado does not ban it. State law prohibits riding on a sidewalk only “where the use of bicycles, electrical assisted bicycles, or electric scooters is prohibited by official traffic control devices or local ordinances.” Absent a sign or a local rule, a bicycle, an electric bicycle and an electric scooter may all be ridden on a sidewalk — and the rider takes on a pedestrian’s duties while doing so.
What the law asks of a sidewalk rider
Give an audible signal before overtaking and passing. A bell or a voice, before you pass, not as you pass.
Ride in a manner that is safe for pedestrians when crossing a roadway in a crosswalk.
Dismount where a sign tells you to. Some crosswalks require it.
You carry a pedestrian’s rights and duties. On the sidewalk the law treats you as a person on foot, not as a vehicle.
Two caveats matter. A higher-powered machine does not get the same treatment: the Colorado State Patrol advises that electric motorcycles are “restricted to roads, OHV Trails and forest roads that permit motorized use.” And the statute is less clear about Class 3 than it looks. It bars Class 3 electric bicycles from a “bike or pedestrian path” unless the local authority permits them, but the sidewalk provision uses different words — “sidewalk or pathway” — and nothing in the text settles whether a sidewalk counts as a pedestrian path for that purpose. The confusion runs in both directions: under the Monument Police Department’s August post, one resident advised another that bicycles “are allowed, and preferred to be on the road” and “actually should not be on sidewalks.” That is a reasonable safety instinct, and a widely held one. It is not what Colorado law says.
Monument and Palmer Lake Have Adopted the State’s Rules Unchanged
The Town of Monument‘s traffic law is the 2020 edition of the Model Traffic Code for Colorado Municipalities, adopted by ordinance on Oct. 4, 2021. The section of the town code listing local amendments to that model reads, in its entirety: “None.”
The town has one ordinance that touches these machines. In March 2024 it made it unlawful to operate an off-highway vehicle “in any public park or recreational area,” enforceable by summons into municipal court. That reaches parks. It does not reach streets, sidewalks, or trails outside a park. In March 2026 the town adopted a fire code section on charging and storing powered micromobility devices, which addresses battery fires rather than riding.
The Town of Palmer Lake‘s position is similar and older. Its ordinance governing motorcycles and off-road vehicles dates to 1979 and defines a vehicle to include “motor scooter, motor bikes, and mini-bikes.” It was written for gasoline mini-bikes and names nothing electric.
Adopting the state’s rules and adding nothing has a consequence neither town has spelled out. Asked what applies in a municipality that does exactly that, the State Patrol was unambiguous. “If a municipality adopts the requirements of the state law alone without implementing any other restrictions, then an E-Motorcycle would be prohibited from driving on sidewalks or paved recreation paths,” Mathews wrote. “E-Motos are held to the same standard as a traditional motorcycle.” The prohibition arrives from the state definition rather than from anything Monument or Palmer Lake has written down.
Palmer Lake is the one Tri-Lakes government showing movement. Police Chief Glenn Smith told the Board of Trustees on July 23 that his department is reviewing state statutes on electric bicycles, and encouraged helmet use for riders under 16 as e-bike traffic increases.
Two Associations, Comparable Language, Opposite Answers
In Woodmoor, the association acted. Its director of public safety asked in May 2025 that the next rules update include electric vehicle regulations for common areas, and the board adopted revised rules on May 27 of this year. Denise Cagliaro, the association’s HOA manager, supplied the current text.
What Woodmoor adopted, May 27, 2026
The rule stops at the curb. “Because the roads are owned and maintained by El Paso County,” Cagliaro said, “WIA does not have a say on their usage.” The version still posted on the association’s website is the older text. It bars “all motorized vehicles” from the common areas and lists automobiles, motorcycles, ATVs and snowmobiles. It names no electric device at all.
A few miles away, the Gleneagle Civic Association governs its open space under rules adopted in 2017. They define a vehicle as “any motorized device moving on wheel, runners, tracks, or any other propulsion system,” bar vehicles from the open space, and list bicycling among the intended uses. The association has told residents that electric bikes are permissible and electric and gas motorbikes are not — a distinction the 2017 text does not draw.
The friction there has been real. The Gleneagle association told residents in April that four juveniles on electric motorcycles confronted a board member and his wife on the Ray Berg Open Space on March 29, riding “concentric circles” around them and “directly at them, then breaking off the charge at the last moment.” The board member was knocked to the ground and reported the incident to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. The association said it followed more than a year of trespassing and about $1,000 in damage from tire burnouts.
The Rules Live in the Handbooks
Lewis-Palmer School District 38 has no board policy addressing electric bicycles. Three of its schools have written rules anyway, in their student handbooks.
Lewis-Palmer High School and Palmer Ridge High School use identical language barring students from riding “vehicles, including but not limited to e-bikes, bikes, scooters, and skateboards, in a reckless manner,” and from riding them on athletic fields, tracks, courts, stairs or inside buildings. Both set a campus speed limit of 5 mph. Lewis-Palmer Middle School requires that bicycles, skateboards and scooters “be walked while on school grounds and are to be locked to the stands provided,” and warns that violations “may result in revocation of wheeled devices on campus for the remainder of the school year.”
Those handbooks govern conduct on campus — speed and recklessness. None distinguishes an electric bicycle from an electric motorcycle, sets a class limit, sets an age, or requires a helmet. Monument Academy‘s 64-page student handbook mentions bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters, skateboards and helmets nowhere at all.
Asked whether more students were riding to campus and whether the district was weighing anything firmer than handbook guidance, Amy Matisek, its director of communications, said she had checked with the district’s director of security. “We have not seen an uptick in students riding e-bikes to school,” she wrote on Aug. 31. The handbooks, she confirmed, are where the district’s guidance stands, and the district could adjust that guidance on any safety topic in the future.
What the Injury Data Shows
Children’s Hospital Colorado released figures in late August, and the Colorado State Patrol has been publishing warnings since July. The hospital’s counts are its own patients, not a statewide estimate.
Asked by The Independent whether its southern Colorado campus had separate figures, the hospital supplied them. Between 2024 and 2025 the trauma registry at Children’s Colorado, Colorado Springs recorded a 200 percent increase in traumatic injuries related to e-bikes and a 133 percent increase for e-scooters. 38 percent of its e-bike trauma patients were injured in an event involving a motor vehicle. Both increases are steeper than the Anschutz figures that have been widely reported.
The rise has not levelled off. The hospital is “on track this year to see as significant of a leap,” Audrey Hartfield, an injury prevention specialist there, said in an interview. She also cautioned that the registry counts only the more serious cases: a child treated in the emergency department for something less severe “might not make it into that registry,” she said, which means the real number of injuries “is potentially higher” than the registry shows.
Dr. Maria Mandt, medical director of emergency medical services and critical care transport at the hospital, told the Gazette she sees at least one child injured in an e-bike or e-scooter crash on every shift she works. “When kids fall, they tend to lead with their heads,” she said in a separate hospital publication. “If we now place them on a bike that is going faster than what they are used to riding, they can easily lose control and catapult off the bike.”
The hospital also raises a point that appears in no Colorado statute. “Standard bike helmets are capable of protecting a child’s head at maximum speeds of 12 to 15 mph,” it advises. “E-bikes now travel at speeds of 20 mph or greater, which means that a special helmet is required.” The state’s only helmet mandate is satisfied by an ordinary bicycle helmet.
Hartfield, whose team sits in the hospital’s community health program, put that advice in concrete terms. Helmet technology “is really still catching up with the devices themselves,” she said, and so are the laws. Children’s Colorado recommends that riders on these machines wear a helmet certified to the Dutch NTA 8776 standard, which extends further down the back of the head, or a DOT-certified motorcycle helmet. “A helmet is definitely better than no helmet,” she said. “A lot of the kids that are coming into Children’s Hospital Colorado locations with traumatic injuries, a lot of them weren’t wearing helmets at all.” Her rule for families is shorter: no helmet, no ride.
What the law requires is narrower than it looks. A rider must be 16 to use a Class 3 machine and must wear a helmet only until turning 18. “So it’s really only for those two years that we do have something in place mandating helmets in Colorado right now,” Hartfield said. Most of the machines children actually ride are not Class 3 at all, which leaves the decision with parents. “These are not traditional bikes,” she said, “and they need to be treated more like vehicles.”
One finding cuts the other way and belongs in the record. A peer-reviewed study by surgeons at Children’s Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, published in July, examined 385 pediatric patients at a single children’s hospital between 2021 and 2024. It found a 267.6 percent rise in injuries from electric bicycles and scooters over that period — and also that “injuries related to e-bikes and nonmotorized bicycles were not significantly different.” In that cohort the more severe pattern belonged to electric scooters.
No wider count exists to set beside the hospital’s, though the state has begun to build one. The State Patrol told The Independent it has changed the way troopers write up these wrecks. “We have recently implemented a way for Troopers to document crashes involving E-Bikes and E-Motos specifically,” Mathews wrote, “however, data is unavailable at this time.”
Five Questions Before You Buy
The Monument Police Department published a guide in mid-August laying out how to tell a lawful e-bike from an e-moto. Its test is the clearest short version available, and it is accurate against the statute.
Three questions asked by residents under that post went unanswered, and they are the hard ones: what a 2,000-watt pedal-assist bicycle is; whether a machine that looks like an electric motorcycle but travels 17 mph on 650 watts is legal; and where a map of lawful riding areas can be found. There is no such map.
Children’s Colorado’s advice to parents begins before the purchase. Hartfield said caregivers should know the class and the speed it is built to reach, buy from a reputable retailer, check that the machine carries its class label, and match the device to the child. “It’s always a good idea to start with class one,” she said — pedal assist, lower speed. A missing or removed label can be a sign the machine did not come from a reputable seller, she said, and modification carries its own hazard. “It can be very fun and alluring to figure out how to modify a device,” she said, “but it can be incredibly dangerous.” The hospital’s own guidance goes further than Colorado law does, advising that children under 12 should not ride an e-bike or e-scooter at all.
What the Legislature Decided
Colorado’s legislature drew its own line this year, and it drew it twice.
House Bill 26-1079 requires a minor under 18 to have the written permission of a parent or legal guardian to obtain an instruction permit to drive a motorcycle. It passed without a single no vote — 64-0 in the House, 34-0 in the Senate — was signed on May 26, and took effect Aug. 12. The act says nothing about electric bicycles. It reaches e-motos because a device above 750 watts or 28 mph is legally a motorcycle, so a minor who wants to ride one lawfully now needs a parent’s signature to begin.
A second bill went further and failed. House Bill 26-1125 would have penalized a parent who permits a minor to operate an electric bicycle, motorcycle, scooter or skateboard in violation of age, operation or safety-gear law. The House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee voted 10-0 on March 4 to postpone it indefinitely. Rep. Brandi Bradley was a prime sponsor of both.
The distinction the legislature settled on is between consenting to a permit and answering for how a child rides. Thirty minutes north on I-25, the Town of Castle Rock crossed that line by ordinance, with a $250 fine for a parent who knowingly allows a child under 18 to ride an off-highway vehicle in town.
What Happens Next
Monument’s police department has taken the education route, and said so. Answering a resident who objected to the enforcement talk, the department wrote: “We aren’t looking to stop kids from riding bikes. MPD supports lawful e-bike use. Our focus is on safety concerns involving high-speed riding, reckless behavior, and motorized vehicles that may not qualify as e-bikes.”
Monument has no ordinance. Palmer Lake’s dates to 1979, and its chief is reviewing the statutes. The county permits two of three classes on its trails while its own published guidance describes a different rule. Woodmoor has banned electric bikes from its common areas and has not yet posted the rule. Gleneagle reads a 2017 document to permit them. The schools address conduct rather than eligibility.
The Independent put questions to nine organizations. Children’s Hospital Colorado supplied the Colorado Springs figures above and made an injury prevention specialist available for an interview. The Colorado State Patrol answered four questions in writing. The Woodmoor Improvement Association supplied its current common-area rule. Lewis-Palmer School District 38 said it has seen no increase in students riding to campus and that its handbooks are where its guidance stands. UCHealth referred questions about children to Children’s Colorado and declined to release injury figures of its own. Questions remain outstanding with the Monument and Palmer Lake police departments, El Paso County Parks and the Gleneagle Civic Association, and this article will be updated as they answer.
The rider struck on Baptist Road on Aug. 24 is a person, not a case study. A support page organized on his family’s behalf describes injuries it calls significant and life-altering, and asks for help with meals, travel, lodging near the hospital and medical costs insurance does not cover. Readers who want to contribute can do so there.
Sources & further reading
Colorado law: C.R.S. § 42-1-102, the three classes and the definitions · C.R.S. § 42-4-1412, operation, including the sidewalk rule at (10) · C.R.S. § 42-4-1412.5, controlled intersections · HB25-1197, seller disclosure and labelling · HB26-1079, parental permission for a motorcycle permit · HB26-1125, postponed indefinitely · 15 U.S.C. § 2085, the federal 750-watt definition
State agencies: Colorado State Patrol, “E-Bike vs. E-Moto,” July 15, 2026 and “Back to School on an E-Bike or E-Scooter,” Aug. 11, 2026 · Colorado Department of Transportation E-Bike Safety Campaign, which carries the helmet-standard chart the state statute does not require
Local rules: Town of Monument Municipal Code ch. 10.04 and § 12.28.130 · Town of Palmer Lake Municipal Code ch. 9.44 and ch. 13.20 · El Paso County Parks Rules and Regulations, Exhibit A, the adopted text, at § 6.7 · Woodmoor Improvement Association common area rules, the version posted publicly · Gleneagle Civic Association Ray Berg Open Space rules, adopted Aug. 10, 2017 · Lewis-Palmer School District 38 student handbooks · Monument Academy Student Handbook, 2026-2027 · City of Colorado Springs e-bike rules · Town of Castle Rock
Health and injury data: Children’s Hospital Colorado, “How to Protect your Kids from Severe Injuries Caused by Electric Bikes and Electric Scooters”, the source of the Anschutz percentages and the helmet-speed guidance, together with figures supplied directly to The Independent · Consumer Product Safety Commission, “Micromobility Products-Related Deaths, Injuries, and Hazard Patterns: 2017–2024” · Easwaran et al., Journal of Surgical Research, 2026 · Colorado Springs Gazette, Aug. 27, 2026
Methodology
Statutory text was read directly from the Colorado Revised Statutes and the United States Code rather than from agency summaries. El Paso County’s park rules were read in full from the county’s own adopted Exhibit A and compared against the county’s published FAQ, which describes a different rule. Woodmoor’s current common-area rule was supplied by the association’s HOA manager in response to an inquiry from The Independent; the older text still posted on the association’s website was read separately and is quoted from that document. Figures attributed to Children’s Hospital Colorado were supplied to The Independent by the hospital on Aug. 28, 2026, and the Colorado Springs campus figures were provided on request. All of them are drawn from the hospital’s trauma registry, which captures injuries meeting specific inclusion criteria and weighted toward higher injury severity, and which the hospital states does not account for all micromobility injuries it treats. The percentage increases are given without the underlying case counts. The figures of around 100 patients across 2024 and 2025 and more than 60 in 2026 are Anschutz campus counts, and are a subset of the few thousand patients in that registry for all traumatic injuries. Consumer Product Safety Commission injury figures are national statistical estimates projected from a sample of roughly 100 emergency departments, not counts, and the commission re-weighted its sample in 2024, so its figures are not comparable across report editions. Every source linked above was opened and read; where a document could not be reached, the reference is left unlinked rather than pointed at an unverified page. Neither the state transportation department nor the state health department publishes an e-bike category, and no injury or crash data specific to the Tri-Lakes was located.
