The complaint that reaches a board is almost never about property values or noise. It is a neighbor who watched a twelve year old come down the main drive at twenty miles an hour, no helmet, popping the front wheel up, with a friend riding on the back. It is somebody’s kid taking the curb cut by the mailboxes as a jump. It is three of them riding abreast through the parking lot after dark in dark clothes.

The thing residents are actually afraid of is that one of these kids is going to get badly hurt.

They are right, and the data is not close.

What follows is what the evidence shows, whether the association is on the hook when it happens, and what a board can and cannot put in a rule. That last part matters more than boards expect, because the rule almost everyone writes first is the one the Justice Department has been suing over for a decade.

The residents are not imagining this

In national emergency department data covering ages two through eighteen from 2011 to 2020, e-bike injuries to children climbed sharply while conventional bicycle injuries fell. The worst affected age band was ten to thirteen. Children hurt on e-bikes were hospitalized at 11.5 percent, against 4.8 percent for pedal bicycles. Same kids, same neighborhoods, materially worse outcomes.

The mechanism matches what your residents are describing. In pediatric e-scooter data, 78 percent of injuries were falls and only 13 percent involved a motor vehicle. When public health investigators studied scooter injuries in Austin over three months, all 190 injured people were riders and 183 of them were riding alone. Most injuries came from falling or hitting something that was not moving.

That is the wheelie into the curb. That is the kid who took the jump.

Head and facial trauma runs around forty percent of pediatric e-scooter injuries. Studies looking at speed find that crashes above twenty miles per hour produce internal organ injuries at more than twice the rate of slower ones. Children’s hospitals in Ohio have been saying publicly this year that they are seeing volumes and severities they have not seen before, and in Boone County six juveniles under sixteen were struck by vehicles on county roadways in 2026, five of whom were hospitalized.

Then there is the number that should determine what your rule says.

97.3 percent

Of children treated for e-bike injuries across that decade of national data, 97.3 percent were not wearing a helmet. For pedal bicycles the figure was 82.1 percent, which is bad enough. In the Austin study, one rider out of 190 had a helmet on.

Adults are no better. A review of e-bike injuries from 2017 through 2022 found helmet use among injured riders falling about six percent a year, with unhelmeted riders nearly twice as likely to sustain a head injury.

If your board does exactly one thing, a helmet requirement for anyone riding on association property is better supported by evidence than every other measure available to you. Hold that thought, because the fact that it applies to adults too is what makes it survive legal review.

What the law requires, which is almost nothing

Ohio treats electric bicycles as bicycles and sets up three classes at ORC 4511.01. Under ORC 4511.522, no one under sixteen may operate a class 3 e-bike, the kind that assists to 28 miles per hour, and class 3 riders and passengers must wear a helmet.

That is the whole regime. Ohio sets no minimum age for a class 1 or class 2 e-bike and requires no helmet for either. The twelve year old doing twenty on a throttle powered class 2 bike, bareheaded, is riding entirely legally.

Kentucky is thinner. KRS 189.289 sets sixteen as the minimum age for an electric low speed scooter. For e-bikes, Kentucky has no statute at all. No definition, no classes, no age, no helmet rule.

Medical guidance is far stricter than either state. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no motorized scooter operation under sixteen, and for e-bikes recommends none under twelve, class 1 only from twelve to fifteen, and class 3 only at sixteen. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends children under twelve not operate motorized products exceeding 10 miles per hour.

That gap is why local governments started moving. Fort Mitchell and Fort Thomas both took up e-bike ordinances in August 2026, and Ohio cities including Parma and New Albany have adopted sidewalk restrictions, path speed limits, and in Parma’s case a helmet requirement across all classes. If your community sits in Kenton, Campbell or Boone County, the rule may now turn on which city you are in, which is one more illustration of why the statutory framework matters so much in Northern Kentucky.

If a kid gets hurt out there, is the association liable?

This is the question underneath the complaint, and boards routinely assume the answer is worse than it is.

Start with what we could not find. There is no Ohio or Kentucky appellate decision deciding whether a community association is liable for a child injured riding a bicycle, e-bike or scooter on common area pavement. We looked. That absence matters, because it means nobody is walking around with a judgment against an association on these facts.

What the law does impose is a duty about the condition of the property, not about the conduct of the people using it.

In Ohio, a possessor of land owes an invitee ordinary care to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition and to warn of known latent or hidden dangers. Residents and their guests using common areas for their intended purpose are generally treated at least that well. Critically, that duty runs on notice. Ohio courts have held there is no affirmative obligation to inspect for prospective dangers; the association needs actual or constructive notice of a defect before a failure to fix it becomes actionable. And Ohio has never imposed a general duty to control the conduct of a third person absent a special relationship. An association has no custodial relationship with a resident’s child. The parent does.

Kentucky reaches a similar place by a different road, and the difference is worth knowing if you manage on both sides of the river. Kentucky moved the “open and obvious” question out of duty and into comparative fault in Shelton v. Kentucky Easter Seals Society in 2013, so a hazard being obvious no longer ends the case the way it can in Ohio under Armstrong v. Best Buy. Practically, the same facts are somewhat likelier to reach a jury in Kentucky. But the duty is still framed around discovering and addressing unreasonably dangerous conditions. In a 2023 Kentucky Court of Appeals decision, a resident injured on a subdivision common area lost on summary judgment precisely because he could not tie his accident to any unsafe condition on the association’s property.

So the honest answer to the board is this. Your obligation is that the pavement, the walks, the lighting and the amenities are reasonably maintained, that you respond to defects within a reasonable time after you learn of them, and that you can document both. It is not an obligation to supervise how children play.

Where associations genuinely do get exposed is narrower and more concrete:

• A known and unrepaired pavement heave, hole, or drop off.
• An amenity the association built or installed that is defective or off code, such as a ramp, bridge, or retaining wall.
• An unfenced retention pond. Ohio adopted the attractive nuisance doctrine in Bennett v. Stanley in 2001, a case about a child who drowned in a neglected pool, and open water that draws children is the closest analogue in a community setting. Kentucky recognizes the doctrine as well.
• Snow and ice removal the association undertook and performed badly.
• Inadequate lighting on shared drives.

Two things not to count on. Ohio’s recreational user immunity statute applies only to nonresidential premises, so it almost certainly does nothing for a residential association. Kentucky’s version has no such limitation and even lists bicycling, but no Kentucky court has held that an association can invoke it against a member’s family, and assessments are a real argument against it. Do not plan around either.

One more caution on children specifically. Ohio conclusively presumes a child under seven incapable of negligence, so a young child’s own recklessness cannot be assigned against them. That affects how fault gets apportioned, not whether the association owed a duty in the first place.

“If we adopt a rule, do we have to enforce it?”

This is the objection that stops more boards than any other, and it deserves a straight answer.

We could not find an Ohio or Kentucky case holding that a community association created liability for itself by adopting a safety rule. The doctrine boards are worried about is negligent undertaking, and it requires that you actually take on a protective service and then perform it badly, or that someone reasonably relies on it and ends up worse off. The Kentucky Supreme Court addressed a version of this in 2005, holding that a national organization’s published guidance did not amount to an undertaking, and that a governing document giving it only revocation authority suggested it had contemplated a passive role.

Publishing a rule is not an undertaking. What creates exposure is affirmative physical conduct: installing a barrier and letting it fall apart, promising to patrol and then quietly stopping, taking on snow removal and doing it badly.

There is a drafting consequence, and it is the most practical thing in this article. Write the rule as a restriction on resident conduct with parental responsibility expressly reserved. Do not write it as a safety promise by the association. “Riders must wear a helmet on association property, and owners are responsible for the compliance of their family members and guests” reads very differently from “the Association will ensure children ride safely.” The first is a rule. The second is an undertaking.

Since this is reasoning from general tort principles rather than from an association specific holding, have counsel look at any rule that commits the association to inspect, patrol, or supervise anything.

What your board can regulate

The objection you will hear is that e-bikes are street legal so the association cannot restrict them. That is wrong. Ohio’s traffic code governs public streets and highways, treats private roads as a separate category, and grants regulatory power to cities, counties, townships and park districts. Nothing in it preempts a private association’s declaration or rules.

An Ohio condominium board may adopt rules regulating the use or maintenance of units and common elements where the conduct affects common elements or other units, under ORC 5311.081, and may levy enforcement assessments after written notice, notice of hearing rights, and ten days for the owner to request a hearing. For planned communities, ORC 5312.06 covers maintenance, repair, replacement, modification and appearance, plus any other rules the declaration provides. The condominium statute says use and the planned community statute does not, so an Ohio HOA writing a use rule should confirm that authority is in its declaration. Kentucky condominiums have similar power under KRS 381.9167. Kentucky HOAs have whatever the declaration gives them.

There is also a charging dimension worth a line. Effective November 20, 2025, Ohio added Section 323 to its fire code at OAC 1301:7-7-03, requiring micromobility devices to be listed to UL 2272 or UL 2849 and charged with manufacturer equipment, and setting requirements for battery charging areas including no extension cords and no obstruction of any means of egress. It carries an exception for an owner charging her own device in her own unit. It applies squarely the moment your association builds a shared bike room.

What your board cannot do

Here is the part that costs associations real money.

Familial status is a protected class under the Fair Housing Act, and under ORC 4112.02 and KRS 344.360. It covers any household with someone under eighteen. Rules that single out children for restrictions the rest of the community does not face are the most frequently prosecuted category of association rule there is.

And the rule a board reaches for after reading everything above, the one that says no one under sixteen may ride and children must be supervised, is precisely that rule.

• In a 2015 Justice Department case, a community had prohibited children from riding bicycles on the property, banned skateboards and scooters, required adults to accompany children at all times, and confined children’s play to one small designated area. The consent order carried $60,000 to the complainant, a $100,000 fund for other affected families, and a civil penalty.
• A Minnesota condominium association settled the same year over a rule requiring adult supervision of children in common areas. One hundred thousand dollars to six families, plus a penalty.
• A 2003 federal decision struck a rule providing that children under fourteen could not ride a bicycle on park streets without an adult.
• A 2023 HUD consent decree over rules restricting outdoor play and requiring supervision of children under fourteen ran to three million dollars.

Courts reviewing these have required the association to show a compelling business necessity and the least restrictive means of achieving it. That formulation comes from federal district courts rather than the Sixth Circuit, so we will not tell you it binds an Ohio court. We will tell you that no association has won one of these on a generalized safety concern, and that a genuine worry about children getting hurt is exactly the kind of justification that has repeatedly failed.

The distinction is between age and conduct. In a 1997 case, a rule barring children from playing or running inside the building was held facially discriminatory, while the same community’s rule against unnecessary noise, running, and dangerous behavior, which applied to everyone, was not even challenged. The child specific rule was, in the court’s word, superfluous. Everything the association legitimately wanted was already accomplished by the rule that applied to all residents.

Note also that the written rule creates exposure by itself. A discriminatory statement in a rules document is independently actionable whether or not anyone enforces it.

There is one narrow carve out. Consent orders have permitted supervision requirements narrowly tailored to a genuine hazard at a specific amenity, a pool being the recurring example, with a reasonable age cutoff. We covered the pool version of this problem here. There is no authority anywhere blessing a supervision requirement for riding a bicycle down a sidewalk.

Separately, an outright ban on powered devices collides with the reasonable accommodation duty the first time a resident uses one as a mobility device because of a disability. HUD and Justice Department guidance addresses that fact pattern directly, and the answer is that you make an exception, and you may not charge a fee, a deposit, or an insurance requirement as its price.

The rule that actually works

Write every provision so it applies to all riders and every unit, and regulate behavior and location instead of age.

• Helmets for all riders on association property. Better supported by evidence than anything else here, and it never mentions children.
• A posted speed limit on private drives and paths, with dismount zones in congested areas.
• Named no ride areas. Pool decks, breezeways, garages, stairwells.
• A conduct rule. No reckless or careless operation, no stunt riding, no riding that endangers the rider or others, no more riders than the device is built for, lights after dark. This is the provision that reaches the wheelie in the parking lot, and it reaches the eleven year old and the forty year old identically.
• Charging and storage rules. Manufacturer chargers only, direct to a wall outlet, no extension cords, nothing blocking a door or exit path.
• Owner responsibility. The owner is responsible for family members, tenants and guests. This is how a board addresses a child’s conduct without writing a rule about children.
• A written accommodation process, decided individually, with no fee attached.

Leave out an age based restriction on who may ride, and leave out a general supervision requirement for common areas.

None of this is legal advice, and your counsel should review anything before you adopt it. But the board’s actual goal here is fewer kids in the emergency department, and the honest read of the evidence is that a helmet rule and a speed limit get you closer to that than an age cutoff ever would. The age rule would not have prevented the injury, and it is the one that ends up in a consent decree.