California is taking the smarter route to make electric bikes safer

By Paul Thornton, especially for CalMatters

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Electric bicycles are driving a revolution in urban transport. They level hills, hauling loads and people and offer an alternative to driving that doesn’t involve a lot of sweat or waiting for a bus.

I have experienced these wonders first hand. For the past three years, I’ve been using an e-bike—a bicycle with an electric motor—to do everything from traveling 23 miles through Los Angeles for work to meeting friends in places where finding a parking space takes longer than the journey. In a city choked with traffic and pollution, it is no exaggeration to call these machines liberating.

But there has also been a whirlwind on media coverage about mind-boggling injuriesprompting local and state governments to crack down on e-bike use. And earlier this year, California lawmakers appeared poised to put the brakes on that revolution hard. Fortunately, they’ve since moved on from the 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 aimed at e-bike safety. one would add licensing and registration requirements for most e-bikes; another would rewrite the state’s classification system, making most e-bikes already on California streets illegal.

Fortunately, those bills died, and with them a level of regulation that could slow down an efficient, clean, and fun transportation option in California and hinder a technology that already drives most of the bike industry’s revenue growth.

In contrast, Senate Bill 1167introduced by Sen. Katherine Blakespearis a carefully considered answer to the most important safety issue in motorized bicycles. It seeks to stop the sale of high-powered 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 motor-assisted (models that people under 16 can legally ride are even slower). But more powerful devices that go faster than 28 mph – sometimes much faster — are often marketed as electric bicycles, although they are more properly understood as electric motorcycles. I’ve seen such powerful electric bikes comically misrepresented as e-bikes simply because, look, it has pedals.

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

SB 1167 would, among other things, prohibit sellers and manufacturers from calling electric motorcycles e-bikes — and require them to go further in disclosing to customers that what they’re about to buy is definitely not an e-bike. This is an attempt to prevent people who want an e-bike from inadvertently buying something more dangerous.

Of course, even a true e-bike has its dangers. Studies they have noted an alarming increase in children presenting to hospitals with alarming injuries from motorcycle 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, medical director of trauma at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, in testimony last month before the Senate Transportation Committee in support of Assembly Bill 2346, another e-bike safety bill introduced in the Legislature. “From our bedside conversations, it’s clear that parents and users are confused. They often don’t realize how fast these devices work or that modifying them is illegal.”

But Robin Pam of Streets for All, a group pushing for better cycling and walking infrastructure, wonders if medical professionals are collecting different types of devices. During a webinar Thursday hosted by her organization, Pam reiterated the points made in a studied last year from San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute, which cautions that reports of increased injuries do not distinguish between actual electric bicycles and electric motorcycles.

SB 1167 may shed some light on this. Motorized bicycles must now carry a permanent label indicating their power and maximum assisted speed. Blakespear’s bill would require law enforcement officials to note that information when taking reports of injuries or crashes, laying the groundwork for e-bike policy — including possible licensing restrictions and age requirements — based on evidence, not intuition.

Done intelligently, safety regulations should not limit the adoption of e-bikes and all the benefits these joyous devices bring to traffic-clogged cities. Policies created using data instead of panic can actually get more people out of their cars and onto two wheels.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.