![\""Two\"](\""https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/100323-UC-Davis-E-Bikes-Scooters-MG-CM-07.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1"\")
\n\t\t\t\tPeople ride bicycles and e-bikes through campus at the University of California, Davis on Oct. 3, 2023. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n
By Paul Thornton, Special for CalMatters<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tPeople ride bicycles and e-bikes through campus at the University of California, Davis on Oct. 3, 2023. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n
This commentary was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n This commentary was produced by and co-published with Golden State. Sign up for their newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Guest Commentary written by<\/p>\n Electric bikes are powering an urban transportation revolution. They flatten hills, haul cargo<\/a> and people, and offer an alternative to driving that doesn\u2019t involve breaking much of a sweat or waiting for a bus.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve experienced these wonders firsthand. For the last three years, I have used an e-bike \u2014 an electric-motor assisted bicycle \u2014 to do everything from commuting 23 miles across Los Angeles<\/a> 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\u2019t an overstatement.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s also been a flurry<\/a> of media coverage<\/a> about skyrocketing injuries<\/a>, 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\u2019ve since retreated from e-bike panic and are focused, at least for now, on smarter safety measures.<\/p>\n Lawmakers in Sacramento have introduced at least eight bills this year targeting e-bike safety. One<\/a> would have added licensing and registration requirements for most e-bikes; another<\/a> would have rewritten the state\u2019s classification system, making most e-bikes already rolling on California streets illegal.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n In contrast, Senate Bill 1167<\/a>, introduced by Sen. Catherine Blakespear<\/a>, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 sometimes much faster<\/a> \u2014 are often marketed as e-bikes, even though they are more properly understood as electric motorcycles. I\u2019ve seen such powerful electric motorcycles comically passed off as e-bikes simply because, look, there are pedals.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s often electric motorcycles that are implicated in news stories about teenage hooligans on \u201ce-bikes.\u201d Consider this one in the Los Angeles Times on June 10: \u201cCalifornia\u2019s new Hells Angels: Teens on e-bikes cut a path of danger<\/a>,\u201d along with photos clearly not showing e-bikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n SB 1167 would, among other things, make it illegal for sellers and manufacturers to call electric motorcycles e-bikes \u2014 and require them to go further, disclosing to customers that what they\u2019re about to buy is definitely not an e-bike. It\u2019s an effort to prevent people who want an e-bike from unintentionally buying something more dangerous.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, even a real e-bike has its dangers. Studies<\/a> have noted<\/a> an alarming rise in children showing up to hospitals with troubling injuries from motorized bike accidents.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re seeing a high concentration of injuries in children and young adults, many of whom now face lifelong disability,\u201d 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. \u201cFrom 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a> by San Jose State University\u2019s Mineta Transportation Institute cautioning that reports of increased injuries fail to distinguish between actual e-bikes and electric motorcycles.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u2019s bill would require law enforcement officers to note that information when taking reports on injuries or crashes, laying the groundwork for e-bike policy \u2014 including possible licensing restrictions and age requirements \u2014 based on evidence, not gut feeling.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Paul Thornton, Special for CalMatters People ride bicycles and e-bikes through campus at the University of California,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,1843,8,964,1709],"class_list":["post-397190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-legislature","tag-california-news","tag-commentary","tag-exclude-module"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397190","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=397190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}