After 227 E-Bike Crashes In 5 Years, This Amish-Heavy County Has Printed 20,000 Safety Guides

Holmes County, Ohio is full of e-bike users – many, if not most, of them Amish. We’ve looked at this phenomenon before, such as in one 2024 report describing the community as “ground zero” for e-bikes.

The transport tech has gradually been accepted in some of the area’s diverse group of Amish churches. It’s an alternative to the buggy or the hired driver – offering mobility, range, and convenience for short-to-medium range trips.

The adoption of e-bikes among Amish in Holmes County and other communities has not come without its issues, however. Leaving aside the matter that not all Amish think embracing them is a good idea, one big one is safety. To take one of the highest profile examples, in March, a 30-year-old Amish man was killed in a chain-reaction crash while riding an e-bike on a Holmes County highway.

This accident got a lot of attention, but it’s been far from the only such incident. A month after the fatal wreck, Ohio State Rep. Mark Hiner met with the county commissioners on the issue, and ideas ranging from wider roads to an e-bike safety course were discussed.

227 (Reported) Crashes In 5 Years

Ideas for safety improvements were later discussed at a county Bike Safety Workgroup, which first met in June of this year. At the meeting, Holmes County Emergency Management Director Jason Troyer drew attention to the scope of the issue, as reported at the time by Your Ohio News:

In identifying the gaps in education and exploring how to better create safer routes of travel on all county roads, Troyer began by sharing a map of statistical trends put together by Holmes EMA Assistant Director Jordan Tschiegg. It highlighted the 227 reported e-bike accidents over the past five years.

The map showed every incident involving an e-bike and vehicle and every e-bike-only accident, but it didn’t include the many accidents that were never reported, some of which have ended up at Pomerene Hospital.

I’d guess that many more went unreported, and the ones that do get reported are probably mostly the more serious ones.

As to the causes of crashes, fault falls both on e-bike riders and drivers:

From a vehicle standpoint, the causes were people speeding, not paying attention, being on their phones, not allowing the state-mandated 3-feet clearance when passing, people being surprised by the speed of the e-bikes, miscalculating safe distances and passing e-bikes in dangerous situations.

For e-bikes the main causes were failure to yield (often by turning left in front of a vehicle), failure to use proper hand signals, not paying attention to their surroundings and driving in clusters rather than single file, which is deemed to be the safest.

“The Roads We Share”

Now, the county has printed 20,000 copies of a new road safety booklet aimed at e-bike riders, buggy drivers and motorists. As reported by News 5 Cleveland:

To address the trend, the county brought together a group of community partners — including local law enforcement and members of the Amish community — to develop a unified safety message.

The result is a new booklet called “The Roads We Share.”

The guide covers tips for navigating the hills and curves of Holmes County roads. For e-bike riders, it includes hand signals and advice on staying visible.

For drivers, it explains how to safely share the road with buggies and bikes. There is even a chapter on what to do after an accident.

According to Troyer, copies will go out through the Chamber of Commerce, local businesses, schools, sheriff’s deputies during traffic stops, and directly within the Amish community.

A digital version will be available using QR codes placed around the county, and, I assume, will be linked somewhere online. Despite searching, I have not been able to find it anywhere yet; it does not appear to be on the Holmes County EMA site yet, though they feature an e-bike safety video.

State Departments of Transportation have produced buggy safety guides before, so a guide like this is not unprecedented. Sounds like a good step to helping people understand the potential physical dangers of this transport tool.

I wouldn’t really ever expect this technology to be “put back in the box” by those churches who’ve formally or informally accepted it, so in the Holmes County community at least, e-bike riders are going to be a permanent and, you’d expect, growing part of the transportation landscape. Hopefully the guide will prove useful in other communities where the technology has been taken on by Amish as well, either on its own or as inspiration for further safety education efforts.