Making e-bikes safer in California is smart. Smothering this new technology is not

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Electric bikes are powering an urban transportation revolution. They flatten hills, haul cargo and people, and offer an alternative to driving that doesn’t involve breaking much of a sweat or waiting for a bus. 

I’ve experienced these wonders firsthand. For the last three years, I have used an e-bike — an electric-motor assisted bicycle — to do everything from commuting 23 miles across Los Angeles for work to meeting up with friends at places where finding a parking spot takes longer than the drive over. In a city choked by traffic and pollution, calling these machines liberating isn’t an overstatement.

But there’s also been a flurry of media coverage about skyrocketing injuries, prompting local and state authorities to start cracking down on e-bike usage. And earlier this year, California legislators looked ready to squeeze the brakes hard on this revolution. Happily, they’ve since retreated from e-bike panic and are focused, at least for now, on smarter safety measures.

Lawmakers in Sacramento have introduced at least eight bills this year targeting e-bike safety. One would have added licensing and registration requirements for most e-bikes; another would have rewritten the state’s classification system, making most e-bikes already rolling on California streets illegal.

Thankfully, those bills died, and with them a level of regulation that could throttle an efficient, clean and fun transportation option in California, and hamper a technology that is already driving the majority of revenue growth in the bicycle industry. 

In contrast, Senate Bill 1167, introduced by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, is a carefully considered response to the most crucial motorized-bike safety concern. It seeks to halt the sale of powerful electric motorcycles disguised as e-bikes, and it cleared the state Senate in May and is moving through the Assembly. 

Under California law, electric bicycles cannot exceed 28 mph assisted by the motor (models that people younger than 16 can legally ride are even slower). But more powerful devices that go faster than 28 mph — sometimes much faster — are often marketed as e-bikes, even though they are more properly understood as electric motorcycles. I’ve seen such powerful electric motorcycles comically passed off as e-bikes simply because, look, there are pedals. 

It’s often electric motorcycles that are implicated in news stories about teenage hooligans on “e-bikes.” Consider this one in the Los Angeles Times on June 10: “California’s new Hells Angels: Teens on e-bikes cut a path of danger,” along with photos clearly not showing e-bikes. 

SB 1167 would, among other things, make it illegal for sellers and manufacturers to call electric motorcycles e-bikes — and require them to go further, disclosing to customers that what they’re about to buy is definitely not an e-bike. It’s an effort to prevent people who want an e-bike from unintentionally buying something more dangerous. 

Of course, even a real e-bike has its dangers. Studies have noted an alarming rise in children showing up to hospitals with troubling injuries from motorized bike accidents.

“We’re seeing a high concentration of injuries in children and young adults, many of whom now face lifelong disability,” said Dr. Timothy Browder, the trauma medical director at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, in testimony last month to the Senate Transportation Committee in support of Assembly Bill 2346, another e-bike safety bill before the Legislature. “From our bedside conversations, it is clear that parents and consumers are confused. They often do not realize how fast these devices go or that modifying them is illegal.”

But Robin Pam of Streets for All, a group pushing better cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, wonders if medical professionals might be lumping together different kinds of devices. During a webinar Thursday hosted by her organization, Pam echoed points made in a study last year by San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute cautioning that reports of increased injuries fail to distinguish between actual e-bikes and electric motorcycles. 

SB 1167 could shed some light on that. Motorized bicycles are already required to carry a permanent label that states their wattage and top assisted speed. Blakespear’s bill would require law enforcement officers to note that information when taking reports on injuries or crashes, laying the groundwork for e-bike policy — including possible licensing restrictions and age requirements — based on evidence, not gut feeling.

Done intelligently, safety regulations do not have to curtail e-bike adoption and all the upsides these joyous devices bring to cities clogged by traffic. Policies crafted using data instead of panic might actually lure more people out of their cars and onto two wheels.