Sid Wordell with Jim Hummel

In many communities, you see a lot of kids wheeling around or buzzing around on scooters that move pretty quickly, in my opinion. And then you have electric assisted bikes. all different classes up and down. I spent it, what kind of prompted me to talk about this today was I was on the East Bay bike path where I go regularly for about an hour today. And people were, I mean, there were some what looked like motorcycles to me, which are clearly illegal on the bike path. So I was wondering what has been the police response? In Barrington, I know my chief, Mike Coria, who's not available today. He had a family obligation has talked about this extensively. They have banned actually. Any scooter from using the Barrington Shopping Place. I think that's the owner. I think Joe Palino actually owns that. And it said, we don't want them there. We think it's a public safety hazard. So I kind of wanted to widen it out. And I thought, is this an issue in other parts of the state? And what is the law enforcement response to that? So joining us, he's no stranger to WPRO. Welcome, Sid Wardell. Sid, how are you today? I'm doing good, Jim and yourself. Good. Sid is the former, I should probably call you chief, is the former chief of the Little Compton Police Department and has been the executive director for the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association. Has it been a decade? Sid, is it longer than that? Yeah, I was just creeping up on 11 years now. Oh, wow. Wow, the time goes by. It does. So thank you for spending some time with us. You and I had a phone conversation this afternoon, and you said actually there was an East Bay lawmaker, one of my representatives, Representative Jennifer Boylan, who's interested in some legislation. We'll get to that momentarily. But just from a law enforcement standpoint. And just traveling throughout the state, I'm sure you see this. What about these scooters that have proliferated and the bikes that are powered beyond what I think would be called pedal assisted? Yeah, I mean, you've hit it right on the head as far as being an issue across the state. It's not just on the bike path. It's not just in parking lots. I have to tell you, I would just pulled into my driveway and about five houses down, two kids came out into the middle of the road with the electric bikes. It's, yeah, I mean, it's, and you know, I. Honestly, it came about sort of out of the blue. I mean, everybody has them now. You know, parents are getting them for kids. You question on how young a kid should be even riding a bike that's, you know, not self-powered. And then you get into the helmets. And then you get into, you know, how safe on the roads are they and so forth. So it really is.

an issue, and it is something that we're looking to address, hopefully, in this next legislative session. Yeah, particularly in the East Bay, and I live in Barrington, but I'm up and down the East Bay. You see a lot of what I think are pretty young kids taking these to school, and I just don't know where the parents' heads are. Maybe it's, hey, mom, you know, this means I don't have to get a ride from you or I don't have to take the bus. But the scooter, now, so to me, it's two different things. You got the, you got the power assisted bicycles, but the scooters also go incredibly. quickly, and I see some with helmet, some without. I have read in our coverage, Josh Bigford, who does a wonderful job as the editor of the Barrington Times, he has reported that if you're under 16, state law prohibits you from using these power-assisted scooters. Is that your understanding, too? Well, yes, partially, and that is one of the issues, is the statute that covers. scooters, motorized bikes and all of those. Really, you have to sit down and do some studying to be able to figure it out what, you know, if this, then this, those types of things. And a lot of it used to be on CCs on the motor, which now is no longer a measurement with electric motors. Sure. So, you know, that brings into another aspect to it. So I looked quickly after I got off the phone with you. The statute is 3110.1-4, I think is the appropriate statute. And the bill that was put in by Rep Boylan was H-7382 in case anybody wanted to look it up. But when we got looking at it and had a hearing on it, we really, you know, stepped back and said, wow, there are so many things to be addressed here, not just within the scooter and the helmet and under 16. but also all the new types of bicycles that are coming out if you can still call them a bicycle. Right. The laws need to catch up with the technology, which is sometimes the case. I mean, laws were written years ago when some things didn't exist that are on the roads now. Absolutely. So I, as I'm driving on my, riding my own bike, my old 10 speed on the East Bay bike path, it says class one bicycles are allowed. So I don't even, so I look that up. It seems to be pedal assisted. You can't go over 20 miles an hour. But I think isn't that a challenge for law enforcement? What are the other categories? How do you define them? And on the fly, how do you enforce it? Yeah, so I mean, usually there's not any patrols that are out there are not actually doing speed patrols, right? Right. I do, we do have some agencies that do the bike path. They have bike patrols. So, you know, there's certain aspects of it that they can look at.

You know, as we just said, the statute needs to catch up with really what the issues are. Start your day with the morning jolt of Drake Toll. Anywhere in the country. Your home for talking sports. The United States hockey team has four teeth left. What is LeBron James Legacy? Leonel Mess. 906 career goals is stupid. All of it. The Knicks. The Los Angeles Lakers. Aaron Rogers. Georgia football players. The Dolphins. The Mets. As it happened, when it happened. We'll talk all of it. Westwood One sports talk. Your home for Drake Toll follow and listen on your favorite platform. Out there right now. Yeah, anecdotally, you live in Little Compton, so a little bit more rural. It's a little more compact up where I am. But, you know, you travel across the state. Just from day to day, do you see a proliferation of these across the state, or is it in certain areas that you're in? Or what do you see when you're out on the roads? Yeah, I don't think it's... I don't think it's any specific area is where they're at. I mean, I've gone through Providence. You see them whipping through intersections. I've seen them, like I said, I just saw out here in Little Compton. You know, I've seen them East Providence. I've seen them all over the state in different areas. So, you know, I think it is a statewide problem. It may be different avenues that we need to address across the state, but it's definitely something that's a statewide issue. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but is it 16 for a helmet or kids under 12? Do you recall what it is? If you're right, just a regular bike. Yeah, I think, right, I think the regular bike comes into play, which is the 12, but I think anything that has an assist under 16 has to have it. Sid, I'm a little older. Go ahead. Then the issue is when is a license actually required, right? What type of operation? And again, we're not measuring in CCs anymore. We're measuring in volts. Volts, yeah, I guess. Pedals per rotation. I don't know. Well, and that's the law needs to address that. So I'm whizzing down. I was probably in East Providence at this point. And I had my AirPods in, so I'm listening to music. And I could hear the roar behind, not the roar, but I could hear a pretty loud noise. And I just looked over my left shoulder. And this thing went by me. It looked like a motorcycle. This guy must have been going 40, 45 miles an hour. And I think part of it is the cover. You might not do that on a regular road if you weren't registered. But if you're on a bike path, it's really hard for law enforcement to be out there and patrolling. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you brought something up that I hadn't even thought of until you just said it. But I don't think the statute speaks to someone having earbuds or something in their ears when they're operating one of these types. Maybe I'm violating something there, right? No, I don't think you are. I don't think you are. But how about the 15-year-old that's got earbuds in and is operating one of these motorized vehicles? You know, we say if you're operating a vehicle, you're not supposed to have the earbuds in. You know, that's maybe something we need to look at on that end, too. Yeah. Well, particularly if he's at an intersection, now you think a lot of these kids have good reflexes, but if you don't hear a car or a truck coming, it's a recipe for disaster.

Absolutely. What would you like to see? And at 415, we're speaking with Sid Wardell, former chief of Little Compton. He's the executive director of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association. When you were talking with Representative Boylan and others and looking at this legislation, you're now in what we'd call the offseason. But before you know what the new General Assembly session is going to be here, what do you think needs to be done? to codify and maybe present some new legislation. Is it a lot of work to try to, I mean, at first you've got to do, you've got to do definitions of what's out there, right? And a little research. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got to really identify what is every vehicle that's out there now, a bicycle that's being manufactured and how are they being assisted. I just shared with Rep. Boyland two or three days ago, Massachusetts has really gotten out in front of this, and they've instituted a commission that's looking at it, and they have some legislation. I believe that they're looking at signing. So that's one thing that we said we needed to look at, see what Massachusetts is doing. You know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel on some of this stuff, but, you know, look to our neighbors and see how they're being addressed. But really, at the end of the day, we've got to identify what these types of bicycles are and what type of assistance that they're getting, you know, for peddling and power and all of that type of stuff. Do you have it in front of you? I'm going to look it up during the break. Tell me again, the statute. It's 31 what? I think it's 31-10.1-4. Okay. I'll take a look in the... And Rep Boylan had put in... Yeah, Rep Boylan had put in... 7382. House 7382. Yeah, I'll look up both of that. Any final thoughts that you have on this as you travel the state? What is your message from the police chiefs? Well, it's obviously, you know, we're always about highway safety. So we want to make sure whatever the roadways are safe for everybody, whether it's pedestrians, whether it's folks on these bicycles, or whether it's the motorist that's out there. So highway safety is the number one concern, you know, be aware. I tell you. We're in a time where you really have to be a defensive driver. Don't expect that somebody, you know, sees you, hears you or is going to do the right thing. You need to be the defensive driver out there. Well, we'll go in the way back machine. When I first met you, you remember you were a probationary patrolman. You were a year out of high school, and I had just bought my Honda 1,100 V-65 Magna. came down to visit you because I was doing a profile on you on the Little Compton police. And I was, this was before I had kids, obviously, then I gave up the motorcycle. But that was anybody who's ridden a motorcycle in this state knows 85% of the accidents or maybe more are not your fault. It's somebody who doesn't see you. Somebody's backing out of a driveway and clips you. It's the same thought.

Yeah, no, you're spot on with that. And, you know, it's really just the awareness of that. And we've had way too many fatalities and motorcycle fatalities this year. And that, you know, that really does, I think, speak to the idea of having to be defensive when you're driving. And just to clarify, I might have been a little older than a year out of high school. Well, maybe a couple years. You were young. You seemed very young at that point. Sid, I don't know whether I ever told you this story, but I got pulled. I got pulled at some point before I did that story. And I'm sure it was like whipping down that road to Sakonet. And I was on my new bike and I was going. And you guys had that great program where you would give a warning and then it would go in the system. And then so, okay, we're going to give you a mulligan on this one. But next time we pull you over, they're going to say. And so I got pulled again by one of your guys that might have been Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Hawes. And he said, Well, Mr. Hummel, we gave you a warning a year ago, and you were going X, no, so I always thought that was a great way to have, and you told me for that story, when you pull people over either for a license plate or whatever, it's to, it's the show, look, we're here, we're paying attention, we're not here to bust your chops, but we want to let you know the Little Compton police are on the ball and looking at what's going on in town. I still think that's the same philosophy that happens out here. I think it's the philosophy of many departments. I know if I was still a chief and running a department, it would still be mine. So that's first and press. The U.S. soccer podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingeberg. And after interviewing so many dudes during this men's world cup, I'm so happy to be back with my U.S. women's national team players. I know the U.S. men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that World Cup. And we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in U.S. soccer. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. U.S. soccer podcast. Presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Sid, you did some research since I hung up with you. What's going on? Well, I'll tell you, sometimes you're in the right place at the right time, Jim. Just sat back down at my desk, and I actually have an email that came out from Highway Safety here in Rhode Island, and it's specifically talking about injuries in 2020, specifically to e-bikes and e-scooters. Okay. And they're a tribute, so they've only started tracking it since 2022. Okay. The lack of helmets and the speeds have significantly driven those numbers up. And like spleen injuries and those types of things from the liver and spleen from the higher speeds. But I wanted to give you some context that under 11 years old, so far this year, 11 and younger, there have been 43. kids who've gone into Brown Health, 12 to 17, 98. Wow. Over 18, there's been two. But the comparison is we're up to 143 major injuries from e-bike and e-scooter compared to 85 last year, 61 the year before, 45 the year before that. So there's the trend.

Yeah, there it is. So I just wanted to give, you know, a little more substance to what we just talked about. You know, that is real, and that really puts meat on the bones. You know, it's interesting, Sid, as I, as we were, you were calling in to offer the addendum. I got a text from a friend of mine who's an insurance agent and he said, Self-propelled e-bikes and scooters are excluded from both your homeowners and your personal auto insurance policy. That means bodily injury and property damages expenses are coming out of mom and dad's pocket. Auto insurance excludes any vehicle with less than four wheels and home orders insurance excludes personal liability on all shelf propelled vehicles with some small exceptions when used on your own property. And then he added, get hit on the bike path and you could end up with a house on rumstick point. I'm not sure about that. But think of that. I mean, so parents who are buying this for their kids and setting them off and think, oh, this gives them a little freedom, this takes it to a whole other level of seriousness. Yeah, it sure does. I mean, it's just, you know, and I did not realize the significance of the injuries that are happening. That is really 143 major compared to 80. Yeah, compared to 85 last year. That has bro emergency, okay? Across all brown health, it's over, it's about 340 to date. That's amazing. Listen, I appreciate your spending the extra time and I hope you have a great weekend. All right, Jim. All right, thanks. Former Little Compton Police Chief Sid Wardell. It was the executive director of the Royal and Police Chiefs Association. The U.S. Soccer Podcast. These players are battered and exhausted, but you don't hurt like this if you don't care about this team, about this country, about this game. I think you can feel the intensity. The goals, the energy that, wow, look at us. Here in the U.S., I have got some news for you. There's so much more to come. My name is Megan Klingberg, and we're just getting started. The U.S. Soccer podcast. Presented by Henkel. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.