This story was originally published by Capitol Weekly.
As the popularity of e-bikes has grown, so too have the instances and severity of crashes involving the motorized bicycles. With that in mind, lawmakers this session have pondered several bills seeking to balance expanding e-bike use and road safety.
Of the bills introduced this year in the legislature, four have made it through their house of origin and on to the next chamber. The remaining bills range from those clearly defining the difference between e-bikes and similar vehicles, commonly called e-motos, to enforcing a lower age limit for riders under 16, which critics call an “enforcement nightmare.”
Many of the bills under consideration follow a 2025 report — requested by lawmakers — from San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute. According to Asha Weinstein Agrawal, the report’s co-author and MTI’s director of education, she and co-author Kevin Fang offered recommendations on how the state could regulate the e-bike industry while supporting the industry.
“We looked for data on e-bike injuries, EMS reports, fatalities, crashes, where we could find that, there’s not a lot,” Agrawal said. “We also looked at how e-bikes are regulated at the state level for all 50 states, as well as a number of other countries around the world.”
According to the report, 961 crashes involving e-bikes were reported in 2024 compared to 10,372 crashes involving conventional bicycles. However, the report notes that data typically shows e-bike-related crashes resulted in more severe outcomes than crashes involving a conventional bicycle.
According to Agrawal, she and Fang used news articles to gather numbers on e-bike-related fatalities because the lack of data on the matter. Agrawal said the report recommends “encouraging better data collection because we don’t actually have very good data on e-bike crashes, injuries and fatalities,” to provide better insight on how e-bikes can be regulated.
Here’s a look at the four bills currently in the California legislature.
SB 1167: Prohibiting the sale of other vehicles as e-bikes
Authored by Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) and co-sponsored by biking advocay groups Streets For All, CalBike, Streets Are For Everyone and People for Bikes, SB 1167would amend what vehicles can legally be advertised, sold and labeled as e-bikes.
“There are all kinds of devices that the general public would call an e-bike,” Agrawal said, noting such devices could even be called e-bikes in police or patient care reports. “I think all of the data that we see about e-bike crashes, injuries, and fatalities is really data about injuries and fatalities of people using bicycle-shaped devices with electric motors.”
Under California law, e-bikes are categorized into three classes: Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes have a speed limit of 20 mph when powered by an electric motor. The two classes differ in that Class 1 e-bikes provide electric power only while pedaling, and Class 2 e-bikes have an additional throttle providing electric power. Class 3 e-bikes only provide electric power while pedaling, but can reach 28 mph from their electric motor. Riders must be 16 or older to ride a Class 3 e-bike.
Damian Kevitt, founder of SAFE, said the MTI report “really helped to sort of solidify what we’ve been sort of anecdotally observing, and it gave us some hard numbers,” after a similar bill that died in the legislature last year.
Assemblymember Laurie Davies (R-Laguna Niguel), a co-author of the bill, said the bill will help consumers, especially parents, know what they’re buying.
“You can walk into stores right now, and you have your e-motorcycles, and then you have your e-bikes, Davies said. “Parents need to understand what the difference is and what’s legal and what’s not legal.”
According to Kevitt, SB 1167 will hold retailers accountable for false advertising if they don’t make clear distinctions between e-bikes and similar devices like e-motos and mopeds. However, Kevitt said the goal of the bill is not to ban e-motos, but to regulate them similarly to mopeds, requiring safety features and driver’s licenses to operate.
“It’s not that we want to see these things banned; that’s not the point of the bill,” Kevitt said. “Let’s make sure that they are being regulated in such a way that they’re safe, and those who are using them know how to use them.”
AB 1569: E-bike safety training for students
Authored by Davies and Assemblymember Phillip Chen (R-Yorba Linda), AB 1569 directs the California Department of Education to work with the California Highway Patrol to develop a standardized e-bike safety and training program for schools and parent groups to offer to students in grades 7-12.
Originally, the bill required K-12 students to complete a training course before they could ride e-bikes to campus. Davies said the bill was amended to not place a burden on schools.
“If you look at funding and the lack of with our schools, a lot of things are now going on the shoulders of teachers, superintendents, and their hands are full,” Davies said. “So we wanted to make sure that wouldn’t be a burden, and so that’s why we took the amendment.”
Davies says the bill will allow for a statewide certification instead of a patchwork city by city, “what this bill really does is it allows the California Department of Education and CHP to work together on putting together certification for training and for safety.”
AB 2346: E-bike speed limits and safety features
Authored by Assemblymember Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) and sponsored by the California Medical Association, AB 2346 would require speedometers on Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes and require running lights on all e-bikes. A speed limit of 15 mph would also be put in place for E-bike riders under the age of 16.
Additionally, local authorities would be able to set speed limits of 15 or 20 mph for bike paths or as low as 10 mph for multiuse trails. A speed limit of 10 mph on sidewalks would be established statewide.
“It’s the first time we’ve sponsored a transportation bill, to my knowledge,” said Angela Hill, a Legislative Advocate at CMA. “It’s in response to our member physicians, specifically a lot of our trauma physicians, people working in ERs, our surgeons reporting that there’s an alarming increase of e-bike injuries that they’re handling.”
Hill says CMA worked with Wilson’s office to adopt some of the recommendations from the MTI report, based on CMA members’ firsthand experience with patients and Wilson’s experience as Assembly Transportation Committee chair, to inform the bill.
“I think all of the data that we see about e-bike crashes, injuries, and fatalities is really data about injuries and fatalities of people using bicycle-shaped devices with electric motors.”
However, Kevitt said SAFE and the other co-sponsors are in alignment with wanting changes to AB 2346 despite supporting parts of the bill.
“When you put restrictions on there that are, 12 years old can ride this one and 14 years old can ride this one, okay, that’s nice,” Kevitt said. “But the truth is, how is that gonna ever be enforced?”
According to Hill, the bill is not “a tool to run and chase kids down the street,” but another tool for police at schools to have conversations with kids about safer practices.
“Our physicians are really troubled when they’re sending someone home, hopefully they are going home, but they have lifelong injuries that are going to change the trajectory of their life,” Hill said.
AB 2595: Minimum age pilot program
Authored by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo), AB 2595 would launch a pilot program in San Mateo County to allow local cities, or the county in unincorporated areas, to adopt ordinances or resolutions to prohibit children under 12 from riding Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes until Jan. 1, 2031. The county must submit a report to the legislature on the results of any ordinances or resolutions to the legislature by Jan. 1, 2030. Similar pilot programs are currently active in San Diego and Marin Counties.
“The measure will give the local communities tools to address growing public safety concerns surrounding young riders operating powerful e-bikes on neighborhood streets, bike paths, and around school campuses,” David Burruto, Papan’s district director, said in a statement following AB 2595’s passing the assembly. “Local governments participating in the pilot program would be required to conduct community outreach and report enforcement activity, collisions, injuries, and other safety outcomes back to the Legislature.”
The bills that didn’t make it
Biking advocacy groups were thrilled to see some of the proposed measures fail, saying they could harm a growing industry.
“Two of the worst bills both died; those bills are now dead, they’re not moving forward,” SAFE’s Kevitt said, referencing AB 1557 and AB 1942. “We weren’t entirely opposed to them; we wanted to see key amendments,” adding that the goal is to protect the right of legal e-bike riders.
AB 1557 was authored by Papan and would lower the speed of Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes to 16 mph and lower their wattage to 250 watts from the current 750 watts. The bill was held under submission by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, effectively killing the bill.
AB 1942 by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) would have required Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes to be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles and be issued license plates. The bill was also held under submission by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
AB 2284 by Assemblymember Diane Dixon (R-Newport Beach) and sponsored by Streets For All, would have required the Attorney General to publish a list of vehicles commonly mistaken for e-bikes. The bill died in the Assembly Transportation Committee.
SB 956 by Senator Steven Choi (R-Irvine) would have authorized a pilot program in Orange County requiring license plates on all e-bikes until Jan. 1, 2032, when a report would be filed to the legislature. No votes on the bill took place, as an April 21 hearing was cancelled at the request of the author.
Capitol Weekly covers California government and politics in order to enlighten and educate Californians about public policy and state governance, and to provide a platform for engagement with public officials, advocates and political interests.
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