California’s Going Too Far On E-Bike regulations – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 17th February 2025, 11:05 am

There’s two ways to look at regulations. One common way to look at them is a bit like Metamucil. The goal isn’t to stop what’s happening (which would be very bad for your gut), but just to keep things working smoothly and regularly (the word regulation used to imply this a lot more centuries ago). The other way to look at regulations is to assume that “if we can just save one life,” any amount of regulation is justified and even morally required. After all, we need to think of the children!

While the latter approach sounds good on paper, it’s really a logical fallacy, specifically an appeal to emotion. We do need to place a high value on life and plan accordingly, but when we attempt to make that value infinite, we replace safety with stagnation, which ultimately makes us all less safe. Worse, when we suspend thinking in favor of emotional appeals, we invite propagandists, grifters, and demagogues in to take advantage of our fears.

Let’s take a quick look at what California, and to some extent New York, is doing that could seriously impede efforts to clean up emissions.

When you see a news story that only shows one perspective, uses flowery language about “public safety” and the safety of children, and then interviews someone who only supports a proposal, you’re looking at something akin to “copaganda.” Governments sometimes manipulate the media to get them to support just about anything, as long as it is supposedly aimed at keeping people safe and trying to save lives.

In this case, banning e-bikes from sidewalks while not making safe space for riders somewhere else is the thing being pushed. Children who died because an inattentive driver ran them over aren’t going to be made more safe by banning them from having electric assist, and if anything, this punishes victims. Banning throttles doesn’t stop the practice of “ghost pedaling,” and doesn’t stop people from being able to go fast by pedaling at bit in a high assist mode. These “feel good” policies just don’t make much sense.

But, let’s assume for the sake of argument that these policies make any sense. If we want to save that one life, we have to think about all of the lives lost to emissions. If emissions could be reduced, thousands of people could be saved every year from heart disease, respiratory problems, and cancer. Saving a handful of lives that could be saved in some other more narrowly-tailored way at the cost of keeping the emissions murder machine going by discouraging e-bike ownership simply doesn’t make sense!

The Correct Answer: Infrastructure

E-bikes aren’t going to be un-invented. The world is adopting them. Chinese factories are building them in unimaginable quantities to serve this adoption. Electric bikes, scooters, and other electric micromobility are arguably having a greater impact on emissions problems than electric cars. No matter what regulators do, trying to do anything but keep things running smoothly means swimming against an immense global current.

Instead of wasting effort and money on punishing bike riders, governments should seriously focus on making riding safer. Protected bike lanes (and by protected, I don’t mean paint, I mean physical barriers), dedicated bike highways where possible, and improving driving infrastructure to keep cars, fast bikes, and pedestrians apart all make sense.

Featured image by Jennifer Sensiba.