The great e-bike crackdown has begun

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Last week I did something I don’t usually do, which was call one of my elected officials and yell at him about a new bill.

Car-loving New Jersey lawmakers had just passed a law that would place heavy restrictions on e-bike ownership in the state, and I was furious. Clearly, there is a lot of concern about the growing number of teenagers injured or killed while riding e-bikes, many of which are powerful and fast, more akin to motorcycles than bicycles. Lawmakers claim they are simply trying to bring order to what is increasingly becoming a wild, unregulated market.

But the bill unnecessarily pairs high-powered electric motorcycles with low-speed pedal-assist bikes, often used by food delivery workers or parents who want to take their children to school without using a car. Forcing someone who owns a throttle-free e-bike that cannot go faster than 20 mph to register their bike with the DMV, acquire a license, and purchase insurance seems ridiculous on its face and will absolutely harm efforts to encourage more sustainable modes of transportation in the state. And for that reason, I called my governor and asked him to veto the bill.

Well, he didn’t listen.

Now, New Jersey residents will be forced to reckon with one of the most restrictive e-bike laws in the country. Bicycling advocates are dismayed by the way this bill sailed through the Legislature and was signed into law at the eleventh hour by an outgoing governor. And they fear other states may follow New Jersey’s lead, given growing panic around teens riding e-bikes.

New York City recently capped e-bike speeds at 15 mph, which is painfully slow and robs an e-bike of its ability to outsmart SUVs and multi-ton trucks on busy city roads. And now, some Manhattan residents are calling for an outright ban on e-bikes in Central Park, citing a handful of collisions between pedestrians and e-bikes. Meanwhile, California lawmakers have proposed a bill that would ban the sale of e-bikes with motors greater than 750W.

To be sure, lawmakers are certainly getting attention from their constituents about the proliferation of high-powered, high-speed e-bikes in their communities. Dive into any city’s Facebook group and you’ll likely find plenty of information about teens riding e-bikes. And their concerns are often justified, given the increasing rate of e-bike-related injuries and deaths. This is a problem that can be solved with better infrastructure and more safety education for both parents and their children.

But when these complaints result in disastrous legislation, as in New Jersey, it negatively affects the broader community of people who want to use an inexpensive, environmentally friendly mode of transportation to replace car travel, including teenagers. Numerous studies have shown that e-bikes are used more often than traditional bicycles and are generally used to replace car travel, leading to reduced carbon emissions and cleaner, healthier communities. But rather than supporting and promoting this mode of transportation by building bike lanes to protect riders, lawmakers are becoming more reactionary, which fails to address the real safety issues that contribute to the increasing number of deaths and injuries on our roads: cars.

Bicycle advocates are scrambling to fix glaring problems in New Jersey’s e-bike law, hoping to redirect energy toward stricter rules regarding children and electric motorcycles. Their success is not a guarantee.

But in the meantime, misinformation about e-bikes proliferates online. My colleagues at the Montclair Bike Bus are inundated with negative comments from people illogically equating all e-bikes with death and danger, without understanding the huge difference between a 40 mph electric dirt bike and a no-throttle pedal-assist bike that maxes out at 20 mph.

None of this is surprising. In a country as automobile-dependent as the United States, we sometimes fail to understand the need to promote better, more sustainable modes of transportation, instead of simply working within the same broken, automobile-centric system. There are many names for this phenomenon – windshield bias, car brain, motonormativity – the idea that all decisions should be in service of the automobile. Legislators are particularly prone to these biases.

It is true that some electric bikes pose a threat, just like some cars. But treating all e-bikes the same, regardless of their power capabilities and speed, ignores the enormous potential of e-bikes. I can’t help but think that e-bikes are victims of their own success. I’ve seen nasty comments from drivers annoyed at having to slow down for an immigrant delivery person or a mother with her children on a cargo bike, or about a new bike lane in their town. E-bikes are as polarizing as they are popular, so it was perhaps inevitable that motorists, who cannot accept any delays, no matter how small, would fight back.