A few months ago, a family came into Pasadena Cyclery in Pasadena, California, for a repair on what they thought was their teenager\u2019s e-bike. \u201cI can\u2019t fix that here,\u2019 Daniel Purnell, a store manager and technician, remembers telling them. \u201cThat\u2019s a motorcycle.\u201d The mother got upset. She didn\u2019t realize that what she thought was an e-bike could go much faster, perhaps up to 55 miles per hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s definitely an education problem,\u201d Purnell says. In California, bike advocates are pushing a new bill<\/a> designed to clear up that confusion around what counts as an electric bicycle<\/a>\u2014and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a tricky balance. On one hand, backers want to allow riders access to new, faster, and more affordable non-car transportation options, ones that don\u2019t require licenses and are emission-free. On the other hand, people, and especially kids, seem to be getting hurt. E-bike-related injuries jumped more than 1,020 percent nationwide between 2020 and 2024, according to hospital data<\/a>, though it\u2019s not clear if the stats-keepers can routinely distinguish between e-bikes and their faster, \u201ce-moto\u201d cousins. (Moped and powered-assisted cycle injuries jumped 67 percent in that same period.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re overdue to have better e-bike regulation,\u201d says California state senator Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who sponsored the bill and represents parts of North County in San Diego. \u201cThis has been an ongoing and growing issue for years.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Bill 1167 would make it illegal for retailers to label higher-powered, electric-powered vehicles as e-bikes. It would clarify that e-bikes have fully operative pedals and electric motors that don\u2019t exceed 750 watts, enough to hit top speeds between 20 and 28 mph.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not against these devices,\u201d says Kendra Ramsey, the executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, which represents riders and is promoting the legislation. \u201cPeople think they\u2019re e-bikes and they’re not really e-bikes.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill backers say they hope the fix, if it passes, makes a difference, especially for teenagers, who love the freedom that electric motors give them but can get into trouble if something goes wrong at higher speeds. Kids 17 and younger accounted for 20 percent of US e-bike injuries<\/a> from 2020 to 2024, about in line with the share of the total population. But headlines\u2014and the laws that follow them\u2014have focused on teen injuries and even deaths<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are no national laws governing e-bike riding. But bike backers spent years moving between states to pass laws that put e-bikes into three classes<\/a>: Class 1, which have pedal-assist that only works when they\u2019re actually pedaled, and goes up to 20 mph; Class 2, which have throttles that work without pedaling but still only reach 20 mph; and Class 3, which use pedal-assist to move up to 28 mph. Plenty of states and cities restrict the most powerful Class 3 bikes to people older than 16. (In a complicated twist, some e-bikes have different \u201cmodes,\u201d allowing riders to toggle between Class 2 and Class 3.)<\/p>\n Last year, researchers visited<\/a> 19 San Francisco Bay Area middle and high schools and found that 88 percent of the electric two-wheeled devices parked there were so high-powered and high-speed that they didn\u2019t comply with the three-class system at all.<\/p>\n E-bikes have clearly struck a chord with state policymakers: At least 10 bills introduced this year deal with e-bikes, according to Ramsey.<\/p>\n Some bike advocates believe injuries have less to do with e-bikes than \u201ce-motos,\u201d a category that\u2019s less likely to appear in retail stores or the sort of social media ads attracting teens to the tech. These have more powerful motors and can travel in excess of 30 mph. Vehicles, like the Surron Ultra Bee<\/a>, which can hit top speeds of 55 mph, or Tuttio ICT<\/a>, which can hit 50, are often marketed by retailers as “electric bikes.\u201d Because so many sales happen online, it can be hard for people, and especially parents, to know what they\u2019re getting into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few months ago, a family came into Pasadena Cyclery in Pasadena, California, for a repair on what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16499,7,9,8,37743,45774,15755,1727,5409,5323],"class_list":{"0":"post-196948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-bicycles","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-cycling","13":"tag-electric-bikes","14":"tag-electric-vehicles","15":"tag-outdoors","16":"tag-policy","17":"tag-public-transportation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}