MOLLY'S LAST RIDE

Twelve-year-old Molly Steinsapir crashed onto the pavement from a Rad Power e-bike and never woke up. With a poorly regulated electric-bike industry, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE WHEN A CHILD DIES?

- PETER FLAX

The hills cradling Los Angeles are woven with roads like this-dead-end residential streets that corkscrew toward the sky, the views and the homes expanding as you ascend. Enchanted Way lies in Pacific Palisades, an affluent neighborhood on L.A.'s Westside that borders Malibu, Santa Monica, Brentwood, and the Pacific Ocean. If you are a fit road cyclist with proper gearing, it's a nice little grind. According to the workout app Strava, the final 0.3 mile of Enchanted Way rises 150 feet, with a sustained pitch topping 14 percent. On a clear day you can see all the way to Catalina Island, 45 miles to the south, from the cul-de-sac at the top. It's the kind of spot where anyone on a bike might pause to soak in the vertiginous panorama.

This story also begins with two preteen girls on a bicycle-to be specific, since it matters, on an electric bike made by the ascendant Rad Power Bikes. It was the final day of January 2021, on yet another balmy morning in Los Angeles. An 11-year-old named Eme Green was piloting the e-bike, and her friend Molly Steinsapir, 12, was nestled behind her on a cushioned seat intended for a passenger. Molly and Eme were friends and neighbors, and both lived about a half mile downhill from this dramatic perch. One can imagine or at least hope that the girls felt some awe and delight up there, marveling at the expanse of earth and ocean and blue sky before them.

But then they turned that e-bike downhill and a terror unfolded. As Molly's parents would later allege in a lawsuit, Eme could not stop the RadRunner, and the two girls crashed at high speed near the bottom of the steepest stretch of Enchanted Way. Molly, who was wearing a bike helmet, hit the pavement hard and lost consciousness.

Tragically, she would never wake up. Despite a series of increasingly desperate surgeries to address her head injuries, Molly would be pronounced dead a little more than two weeks later.