Anya Dalal
Electric bikes have given teenagers greater independence, but they have also raised concerns about crashes and unsafe riding. Why do teenagers take risks, even when they know the rules?
On November 3, we presented our youth-led research at the International Cycling Safety Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, sharing our findings on how friends, parents, and social media influence teenagers’ e-bike behavior with cycling safety researchers and policymakers from around the world.
Our study surveyed 262 California students in grades 5-12, including 148 who had ridden an e-bike. The results were concerning: 71% of riders reported experiencing a crash or fall, yet only 56% said they always wore a helmet.
But what interested us most wasn’t how often teenagers crashed. It was why they chose not to wear helmets.
The most common reason? Helmets don’t look cool.
Another frequent explanation was that friends didn’t wear them. In fact, teenagers whose friends wore helmets had 8.4 times the odds of consistently wearing one themselves. Parents also played an important role: teenagers whose parents required helmets had 15.8 times the odds of consistently wearing one. Perhaps surprisingly, teenagers are listening to their parents after all!
What surprised us was that traditional safety education showed no detectable association with consistent helmet use. Similarly, knowing about traffic violations wasn’t associated with less risky riding. Simply understanding the rules didn’t necessarily translate into safer behavior.
Social media also appeared to influence riding habits. Teenagers who sometimes watched e-bike videos on social media were approximately six times as likely as non-viewers to report imitating risky behavior.
This finding gave us an idea: if social media can encourage dangerous riding, why can't it also promote safer habits?
Through CAYC, we organized our statewide E-Bike Video Contest inviting students to create videos showing the potentially serious consequences of risky e-bike riding. Rather than relying on adults to tell teenagers what not to do, we wanted young people to communicate with their peers in ways that would resonate. After watching the creative submissions, we're even more convinced of the potential for peer-led safety campaigns.
Our findings suggest that making safe riding socially desirable may be just as important as teaching safety rules. For policymakers, that means looking beyond cafeteria posters and safety lectures. Better helmet designs, stronger parental expectations, and peer-led campaigns could help change what teenagers consider normal.
This research also reinforced something we’ve long believed at CAYC: young people shouldn't just be the subjects of public policy research. They should help conduct it.
Reaching teenagers can be challenging for adult researchers, who often must navigate school permissions, parental consent, and other barriers. Through our statewide network of youth commissions, we have an opportunity to engage directly with our peers, ask questions about their experiences, and better understand the behaviors behind the statistics.
We started this project hoping to understand why teenagers weren’t always riding safely. What we learned was that knowing the rules is only part of the equation. To change behavior, we also need to understand the social influences shaping teenagers’ decisions.
We were excited to share our findings in Knoxville and hope to continue using youth-led research to inform policies that reflect how young people actually behave, rather than how we assume they do.