-And the Indy recently did a fact brief about our next topic, finding that injuries from collisions involving e-bikes are increasing across the country.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says so far this year, at least three e-bike users and five e-scooter users have died in traffic collisions, and some of them were children.

Collectively known as e-devices, e-bikes and e-scooters were the focus of Part 2 of our children and safety traffic discussion with Deputy Chief Jose Hernandez of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department; Lieutenant Mike Campbell of the Clark County School District Police Department; Jennifer Grube, Coordinator for Safe Routes to School; and Rebecca Dirks Garcia, Board Member of the Nevada PTA.

(Lieutenant Campbell) Nearly half the kids that are at fault for the crashes that we're seeing in our school district school zones are on e-devices, on e-scooters, on the bikes.

If you're under 18, the law now says you have to wear a helmet.

That's not being done.

It's a fresh law.

It's going to take time.

But again, the speed of those vehicles... We're already having enough issues with the kids that are pushing the scooters, that are riding regular bicycles under their own power.

Now you're adding a whole other category of having to be so skilled to understand how to stop fast enough, how to maneuver around things, and that doesn't even factor in when you start adding more kids on devices that they're not supposed to be on.

It should be one person to one device.

And nobody thinks about the other things with that like, is that device-- well, how much weight can that device hold?

And everything has a weight.

So if you add another person, you're probably over the weight.

It might break.

But on the thing with traffic safety is if something pops out, if a car pops out, or a person's crossing and you're doing 35 or so with another person on your e-bike, those brakes on the, on that bicycle are only made to stop the weight that is recommended.

So if you add another 150 pounds to it and an unskilled driver who doesn't have any helmets on, it's just an absolute recipe for disaster.

(Jennifer Grube) We see that a lot with students doing two per a device, where there should just be one rider.

So that's a message we want to just come across if you see parents, to educate and for our students to realize that the importance of following the rules of that device, that one per.

And we even see parents picking up students on e-scooters and regular scooters, because it's convenient and it's quicker because they can zip in and out of traffic.

And they're putting their kids on the back of them and taking them to and from school as well.

Noted, most of the time not wearing a helmet, unfortunately.

(Rebecca Dirks Garcia) One of the challenges with this is we have to recognize the reason behind some of this.

It is convenience, but it's also cheaper.

And for a lot of, you know-- CCSD says if you live under two miles, you're not going to get a bus.

If you want to go to a magnet school out of a zone, you're not going to get a bus.

If you have work at certain times of day, parents can't pick up, drop off.

If you're trying to get a high school kid to get to an elementary school within that 10-minute window to get your kid, a scooter is going to do it-- an electric scooter is going to do it a lot faster than walking.

And so I think part of what's driving all of this is not just fun; it's real family needs, challenges with economy and timing and jobs and all these types of things.

So we need to recognize that it's not going to go away, and instead focus on all the ways that we can make it safer.

For me, one of the things that I've seen is I don't understand why all these are flowing into a school zone.

And I've seen not a single staff member at my daughter's high school say a peep about, Where's your helmet?

Why do you have two kids on this?

And you know, those are things, to me, that if you're on a school campus, then it should be well within the limits of the school to say, you're not riding on this campus if you don't have a helmet.

You're not riding on this campus with two kids on that device.

And that there should be intervention and also education so that they know that it's not going to be allowed.

-There are proposals right now that I've assisted with, that they're discussing right now.

So I agree with you.

Anytime there's an adult involved anywhere, a kid is going to be safer for the most part, especially with traffic safety.

We have a crossing guard out there.

We have more staff members.

We have more police.

We have anybody being patient or slowing down that just has the knowledge or the forethought that can say, what could happen if I don't do this?

But we are discussing that.

I'm a proponent for that.

I'm trying to push for-- I mean, obviously they can't have those certain e-devices on the road as it is.

They can't have the motorcycle.

They can't have the bicycle over 750 watts.

They can't have a scooter that goes faster than 20 miles an hour or it's over 150 pounds.

-How well aware are people of that, that some of these aren't even legal?

-Well, we're sharing with it across all jurisdictions.

We've done a PSA with Henderson.

We're planning on doing plenty with Las Vegas Metropolitan.

It is out there.

Safe Routes put together a whole guide about bikes, which is awesome, that should be shared.

We sent it out in the Weekly Wire.

The school district did in the beginning of the year.

It's available.

It's everywhere.

We're in a time where, you know, you have a thought and you put it on Facebook, and everybody knows how you feel about something.

But they won't take the time to look for this information or read it.

It comes home in backpacks.

It goes like, through emails to parents.

It's on school district websites.

It's how do we get them to read it?

And that's the hardest part, is that we're looking at all these different tragedies.

Vegas is very different compared to a lot of different cities.

It's very people moving, coming and going.

So they're learning about the law, then they're leaving.

Then people are coming in where it was different.

And it's happening so often.

But then we're just glazing by all of these things that are just traumatic tragedy just because that's all that life is now--social media, the news--it's just, really, that's the things that gather people's interest is the worst thing that happened that day.

Oh, I want to read about that, but I won't read about what the best thing was or how to keep myself safe.

And you know, there are plenty of laws that are being added every year to drivers, to everything else, and it's incumbent of them that they read them, because you're out on the road.

You're driving that multi-thousand pound vehicle, and even if you're not under the influence, which we hope you aren't, Vegas is very fast paced.

There's a lot of lanes.

They're wide, they're big, they're straight.

There isn't a lot of curves.

And all these things add together.

Just goes back to that same thing: We have to slow down.

We have to work together.

And law enforcement is doing it.

We're partnering with Safe Routes.

We listen to the parents.

We're doing everything right.

We just need to do it more, I guess.

-Metro, from your perspective, from the Metropolitan Police Department's perspective, do you just start giving out more tickets for people driving these that are illegal, and are you doing that?

-Absolutely.

(Jose Hernandez) For us, this is a zero tolerance approach to unsafe driving.

I mentioned several causal factors that we've identified, and those are-- Those are violations that you will absolutely get a citation for.

If a vehicle isn't safe to drive, we're going to tow that vehicle.

If you don't have a driver's license and you shouldn't be driving a vehicle, we're going to tow your vehicle.

That's the-- That's the approach we've taken.

I know that's the approach all our law enforcement agencies have taken.

It has to be a zero tolerance approach, because if, if we're not making it clear how critical it is that safe driving be a priority, we're going to do everything we can to make sure that we send that message across.

And so the zero tolerance is one thing, but we also look at this from an education perspective.

So we always talk about the three Es, the education, the enforcement education, and the engineering all have to come together so that we can, as we identify those, those school zones that need attention or we identify, you know, for instance, Las Vegas is unique.

We have blocks that go for hundreds of, you know, feet.

Very unique.

In other cities, blocks are much smaller.

Well, what happens when you have a very long block?

Well, you build up speed, unintentionally, intentionally, whatever the case is, but we begin to build up speed.

Not good.

And so but these are things that we are looking at, you know, as from an engineering perspective.

I'll give you an example.

Over in the southeast part of town, on Boulder Highway, for pedestrians it was one of our most critical areas.

We were-- Pedestrians were getting hit quite often.

And so part of the engineering process is to put up pedestrian railing along Boulder Highway.

Now, it's a long stretch of road, but we were able to put some in the areas where we saw a majority of the crossings.

And so it's helped quite a bit.

It's reduced the number of pedestrians that are being hit.

And so we have to look at that.

We have to look at how can engineering help us.

We know we're doing the enforcement, and we're going to continue to do more enforcement.

We know-- I'll tell you what we're missing.

We're missing education.

We're missing an education, an educational piece that truly grabs people and that makes them understand, makes them realize just how critical.

Because if not, the only time we think about this is when we lose a child.

And it becomes-- It's tragic.

Yes, it's tragic.

And we-- and we can't, you know, we start to scratch our heads and wonder how this could have been prevented.

But that's when we draw attention, right?

And then two weeks go by, and then we completely forget about how horrific that incident was.

-We use something on our department.

It's our Facebook, our social media, where we do things different.

We try to go against the grain to grab people's attention.

We haven't gone into that avenue of using it for scooters and e-bikes.

We have put out information.

We have shown that they're being towed, that kids are getting cited or parents can be cited for allowing their kids to do this behavior.

But we are out there.

We are probably writing a record amount of citations.

We have officers that have a directive now to be in every single school zone with at least their lights on and looking for offenses to try to curb behavior with officer presence.

But I don't know what the answer is.

I don't know what the magic pill is, because as soon as we get the magic pill, there's probably going to be some sort of repercussions from that, too, that we never thought of.

I think we're all doing everything we can with what we have.

And in a perfect world, like I said, I wish we could have more police officers and manpower, but what we're doing together right now, through this discussion across jurisdictions, sharing manpower, doing anything we can, having these discussions and then not just talking about it, but making a plan and doing it.

That is what we need to do.

-That was the second part of a larger discussion on traffic safety in school zones.

To see the rest of it, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.