Efforts to implement stricter rules and more consistent standards have taken on urgency amid a sharp increase in traffic fatalities this year.

Hawaiʻi could ban some electric bikes from public school campuses in response to rising traffic fatalities statewide, some of which involved e-bikes, as government officials take aim at reckless behavior on the roads.

This top-down thinking departs from the Department of Education’s current policy, which puts the onus on individual schools and area complexes to ban e-bikes. So far, that’s led to a piecemeal approach to the problem.

“This is a big problem within DOE itself,” ʻEwa neighborhood board chair John Rogers said. “DOE takes a decentralized approach to almost everything it does.”

The issue is complicated by the popularity of e-bikes among

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