E-BIKES CAUSE CHAOS! COUNTY OFFICIALS 'CONVENE' WHILE KIDS CRASH

It appears the vaunted 'experts' at the County, after years of cheerleading every eco-friendly, car-bashing trend under the sun, are now shocked — *shocked*, we tell you — that their push for e-bikes might have some... *unintended consequences*. The Santa Barbara Independent, ever vigilant for a story about 'officials looking to get a handle,' reports that a grand 'roundtable' has been convened. One can practically hear the polite clapping and the clinking of artisanal kombucha glasses as our local luminaries gather to earnestly discuss the 'problem' they so gleefully subsidized into existence.

Of course, while these deep thinkers are busy 'convening' and 'partnering' and 'strategizing' about how to put the genie back in the bottle, Cottage Hospital’s emergency room is apparently seeing a 'steady stream' of patients. Mostly, we imagine, youngsters who were promised a guilt-free, carbon-neutral commute and instead received a broken arm or a concussion. And the school district? They're now imposing 'new safety requirements' because, apparently, common sense wasn’t part of the initial e-bike rollout plan.

This is classic Santa Barbara County governance: promote, subsidize, then scratch your head when reality bites. The same folks who want to mandate your energy-efficient toaster oven are utterly flummoxed by basic physics and adolescent exuberance. Perhaps instead of yet another roundtable, they could simply *stop* actively encouraging a mode of transport that clearly outpaces the judgment of its primary users, especially when the taxpayer is footing the bill for the emergency room visits. But that would be too simple, too logical, and far too conservative for our esteemed local administrators. Next, they’ll probably convene a roundtable on why the ocean is wet.