Horry County’s crackdown on e-bikes causing confusion. What vehicles are targeted?

A new ordinance is cracking down on certain motorized vehicles in Horry County, but the language and roll out of the new rules has sparked confusion.

Horry County has banned electric-powered, seated, wheeled devices on roads with speed limits over 20 mph, public sidewalks and county-owned property – including parking lots and green spaces, unless otherwise designated. The ordinance calls them personal electronic devices, or PEDs, but how are those vehicles defined?

The ordinance doesn’t apply to mobility scooters, electric wheelchairs, standing e-scooters – like the ones available to rent in some areas, mopeds, golf carts, bicycles with pedal-assist motors or e-bikes with pedals.

It does target e-bikes without pedals, often referred to as “electric dirt bikes.”

“These are truly motorized vehicles, electric devices, I should say, and that’s what it is creating safety parameters for, in terms of their use,” said Horry County spokesperson Thomas Bell.

The ordinance also prohibits operating these PEDs recklessly, at speeds over 20 mph, with more people than it’s designed to carry or while holding, supporting or using devices like cell phones that can impair safe operation.

Horry County Council moved to pass the ordinance after complaints around the county, particularly in one unincorporated area.

“This ordinance came out of concerns from the community, especially in the Carolina Forest area, of having these devices being ridden, typically, in manners that maybe were not always the safest, not always following, certainly, rules of the road and things like that,” Bell said.

The new regulations don’t ban PEDs in areas where they’re currently allowed, but it does outline rules for operation. PEDs must have adequate white-light front lamps and red rear reflectors when operated between sunset and sunrise.

When possible, riders should use bike lanes, stay to the right side of the roadway and ride in the right-hand lane. Operators must also signal turns and stops with their arms when they’re able, as well as yield to pedestrians and audibly alert them before passing.

“It was decided that there needs to be some regulation around them that doesn’t prohibit the use of them when there’s no ban on these devices, it’s just creating parameters in which they can be more safely operated, both for the riders on those devices, as well as for pedestrians and drivers of vehicles,” said Bell.