The Florida Traffic Crash Report gives an officer seven ways to describe a person who was not in a motor vehicle, and page 3 of the form prints all seven: pedestrian, other pedestrian, bicyclist, other cyclist, occupant of a motor vehicle not in transport, occupant of a non-motor vehicle transportation device, and unknown type of non-motorist. An electric bicycle is not among them. The word electric does not appear anywhere in the form’s five pages.

That is the record this county’s e-bike rules are being written against. St. Augustine Beach took Ordinance 26-06, “to Regulate the Operation of Electric Mobility Devices,” to a public hearing and final reading on Sept. 8. The county commission passed a resolution on Aug. 5, 2025 “promoting safety for operators of e-bikes, e-scooters, and other electronic motorized devices,” and the county, the Sheriff’s Office and the school district announced an alliance on education and enforcement. Neither instrument can be measured against a crash count, because the state does not keep one.

The counts it does keep are bicyclist counts, and page 100 of the 2024 Florida Traffic Crash Facts Annual Report carries them for this county under the heading 2024-2022 Vulnerable Road User Crash and Injury History by County. It gives St. Johns County 79 bicyclist crashes in 2024, against 88 in 2023 and 92 in 2022, with a three year average of 86 and a change from 2023 to 2024 the report prints as -10.23 percent. It gives 79 bicyclist injuries in 2024, against 83 and 88, and a three year average of 83. It gives no bicyclist fatalities in 2024, against three in 2023 and one in 2022. Every e-bike rider counted in this county over those three years sits inside those rows, and nothing in the record separates them out.

What the form asks for instead

The report’s own definitions page says so directly. Page 3 of the annual report defines a bicyclist as “Any rider of a bicycle or pedalcycle” and adds that “Bicyclists are listed on the Crash Report as Non-Motorist Description code of ‘3’ for Bicyclist or ‘4’ for Other Cyclist.” Those are the only two cells available, and the manual’s glossary defines a pedalcycle on page 103 as a category that “Includes bicycles, tricycles, unicycles, pedal cars, etc.”

The vehicle side of the form does not help. Page 22 of the Uniform Traffic Crash Report Manual lists seventeen vehicle body type codes, and the ones nearest to an e-bike are 11 for motorcycle, 12 for moped and 15 for low speed vehicle, which the manual defines as a four-wheel electric vehicle with a top speed above 20 miles per hour and not above 25. A bicycle is not a motor vehicle under the manual’s own definition, so it gets no body type code at all and its rider is handled as a non-motorist.

The manual and the statute do not agree

The document that defines these terms is the Uniform Traffic Crash Report Manual, which the department links as Crash Manual Complete on its Forms and Resources page. Its cover prints a revision date of Feb. 5, 2019, and that cover is the only place the manual dates itself.

Its glossary, on page 91, defines a bicycle as “Every vehicle propelled solely by human power, and every motorized bicycle propelled by a combination of human power and an electric helper motor capable of propelling the vehicle at a speed of not more than 20 miles per hour on level ground.” The same entry closes with the sentence “No person under the age of 16 may operate or ride upon a motorized bicycle.” The 2024 annual report carries a shorter version of the same definition and sets the ceiling differently, at “an electric helper motor rated at 200 watts or less.”

Neither matches the statute as it reads now. Section 316.003(4), Florida Statutes, defines a bicycle as “Every vehicle propelled solely by human power, having two tandem wheels,” with no motor in it at all. The electric bicycle is a separate definition at subsection (23), and it covers a bicycle or tricycle with operable pedals, a seat and “an electric motor of less than 750 watts,” sorted into three classes: pedal assist to 20 miles per hour, throttle to 20 miles per hour, and pedal assist to 28 miles per hour. A search of all 114 pages of the manual returns no occurrence of the phrase electric bicycle, none of e-bike, and none of micromobility.

What that leaves

Section 316.20655, Florida Statutes, gives a person operating an electric bicycle the same rights and duties as the rider of a bicycle, and it is the authority a city uses when it writes an e-bike ordinance for its own streets and sidewalks. The crash record treats them the same way, and the practical result is that an ordinance can be written, enforced and reviewed in this county without any party to it being able to say how many crashes involved the machines it governs.

The department’s Crash and Citation Reports index lists annual reports from 1994 through 2024, and the 2024 report is the newest on it. The 2025 report is not posted. When it appears, the St. Johns County bicyclist rows will again carry an e-bike and a ten-speed in the same cell.

A criminal charge is an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The Tattler tracks the cases it reports and publishes the outcome, including when charges are dropped or reduced. If you are named in this story and the case has resolved, write to corrections@stjohnstattler.org and we will update it.