You don’t need a license to ride a bike in the U.S. But e-bikes are a different story. Some states classify them as bicycles, others as vehicles. And in some places, you even need insurance to ride one. How to regulate e-bikes, for personal and public safety.

Guests

Seth Alvo, YouTube creator behind the channel “Berm Peak” covering all areas of cycling.

Matt Moore, policy counsel for People For Bikes, a trade association that represents over 300 manufacturers and importers of bicycles and electric bikes.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

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Part I

AMORY SIVERTSON: Just this past weekend, I was walking with a friend and her ambling 19-month-old on a community path in my neighborhood. There were joggers, there were rollerbladers, parents pushing strollers, people walking dogs, and families out for a bike ride.

It was bustling, which means there were a lot of bells dinging and calls of “On your left” from people coming up behind us, and at some point, we paused on the side of the path. And all of a sudden, along came something going much faster than any of us. It was a guy on an e-bike, and he wasn’t traveling on the right side of the path like everyone else.

He was zooming straight up the middle. No bell, no vocal warning, no helmet, just whoosh. Now, had my friend and her younger son and I not been pulled over on the side of the path at that moment, I’m not actually sure we could have gotten out of this e-biker’s way in time. On Point listener James from Syracuse, New York, can relate.

JAMES: Now when I go for a walk, I have to carry a rear-view mirror.

SIVERTSON: Our listeners have strong opinions about e-bikes, if you can believe it. Whether or not they should be allowed at all, where they should be allowed, and who should be allowed to ride them.

JOSEPH: When I see kids on e-bikes, my soul hurts.

SIVERTSON: That was On Point listener Joseph, and we’ll be hearing from more listeners on all sides of the e-bike issue throughout the show.

But the reality is e-bikes are more popular than ever and more powerful than ever. Some can be modified to go upwards of 40 miles an hour. Some weigh as much as 80 pounds. These are not the bikes of my childhood, and the e-bike accidents are not the bike accidents of my childhood either. A WBUR report found that some of the largest pediatric trauma centers in Massachusetts have seen a sharp increase in serious injuries from accidents involving electric bikes and scooters.

According to the American College of Surgeons, Rady Children’s Health in Orange County, California, treated only one pediatric e-bike crash patient in 2021 and more than 220 in 2025. At Rady’s Children’s Hospital in San Diego, California, e-bike patients made up more than 40% of the hospital’s trauma cases in 2025.

The share of trauma cases seen by Bellevue Hospital’s emergency room in New York City that involved e-bikes or scooters was less than 10% in 2018 and more than 50% by 2023. But e-bike laws from Massachusetts to California to New York, they vary widely state to state, even city to city. And while local governments are working to make e-bikes safer, e-bike sales are climbing faster than the legislation can keep up.

Today On Point, we’re looking at the rise of e-bikes and the rising concerns around them, from safety to how difficult it is to regulate them. So why is it so hard to get e-bikes to stay in their lane, so to speak? And what even is their lane on the road and in society, or what should it be? Joining us now is Seth Alvo.

He’s the YouTube creator behind the channel Berm Peak, which has more than two million subscribers and covers all things biking. Seth Alvo, welcome to On Point.

SETH ALVO: Thanks so much for having me, Amory.

SIVERTSON: So you’re a mountain biking enthusiast, right?

ALVO: Yes, among other things. I love all bicycles.

SIVERTSON: Okay. You love all bicycles. So do you own an e-bike?

ALVO: Yes, I own several e-bikes. My wife has an e-bike. I have several e-bikes that I’ve tested that are still in the shop. I don’t ride a lot of e-bikes, to be perfectly honest, but I work on them a lot. They’re very fun to work on. They are fun to ride, and they’re very useful.

SIVERTSON: Can you take me back to the first time you rode an e-bike? As someone who is more of, what would you say, an analog cyclist, what did that first ride feel like?

ALVO: It was eye-opening because especially when e-bikes were not mainstream and not known to everyone, you just imagine, okay, it’s a bicycle with a motor.

How could it still be called a bicycle if it has a motor on it? That’s a motorcycle. And then when I tried an e-bike, my eyes immediately were opened to what they actually are. So the e-bike that I rode was a pedal assist e-mountain bike, and it had torque sensing. And so I’ll break down what that is.

When you push down on the pedal of a torque sensing e-bike, it actually senses exactly how hard you are pushing on the pedal, and it responds proportionally. And so to some people it can almost trick you into thinking you’re stronger, because it feels so much like pedaling. And an e-bike like that, I don’t think there’s much of an issue with.

It operates like a bicycle. It’s a similar size and weight as a bicycle, and it’s anything that you’ve learned from riding a bicycle can map onto that. There’s no learning curve. You can just sit on it and start riding.

SIVERTSON: Okay. Interesting. So your entrance into e-bike riding, because you are a professional cycling commentator, is this sort of a professional chef wanting to try, wanting to know how different cuisines are prepared, or did you genuinely succumb to the siren song of the e-bike as you saw more people riding them?

ALVO: I get the opportunity to ride a lot of different things, and so anything out there I’ve ridden, from unicycles to mountain bikes to old-fashioned high wheels. And so I’m generally genuinely curious about every type of bicycle there is.

SIVERTSON: And does the e-bike now, you said you have, your wife has one.

You’ve ridden several of them. Does it play a practical role in your life or fill a void that your regular bicycles don’t?

ALVO: Yes, in a way. Not necessarily for me. If one of my parents comes into town, and they’re both in their 70s and they don’t bicycle very often, I can ride with them, and we can ride at a brisk pace, and they can go the same speed as me.

And I don’t have to teach them anything. There’s no learning curve. I can just sit them on an e-bike and they can start going. And the types of e-bikes that I’m talking about with a proportional torque sensing pedal assist, there really is no learning curve. And so I think it’s a great way to get more people on bicycles.

Now, it’s also worth noting I live out in the country. I used to live in a city where I could use my bicycle to get everywhere. Now, when I’m on a bicycle, it’s mainly recreationally, and I think there’s a need for e-bikes as a practical transportation device that I don’t actually use them for on a daily basis, or I don’t anymore.

SIVERTSON: Okay. I’m definitely going to want to come back to this point that you made about no learning curve, but I want to bring another voice into this conversation for now. Matt Moore is joining us. He’s policy counsel for People For Bikes. It’s a trade association that represents manufacturers and importers of bicycles and e-bikes and works with government agencies on issues related to cycling.

Matt Moore, welcome to On Point.

MATT MOORE: Oh, thank you so much for having me, and hello, Seth. I’ve been following you somewhat on YouTube. I’m not a subscriber, however.

SIVERTSON: Not yet. So Matt, I feel like we need a little e-bike 101 because, some people might have a picture in their mind of what an e-bike is, but it turns out that what qualifies as an e-bike is not so straightforward, and the definition really does matter.

So what is an e-bike?

MOORE: And the use of the term e-bike can be very confusing. That is really not a type of vehicle. It is a more of a genericized term that refers to any cycle that has an electric motor. So there is a defined type, vehicle type under federal law. It’s called a low-speed electric bicycle, and that definition was created in 2002 by Congress to provide a uniform national definition for this vehicle type to support its adoption.

It really is, some people are very confused, what is an e-bike? It’s really just one sentence. Under this definition, it’s 15 U.S.C. 2085 for those who want to Google it right now and see what the text says. You can fact-check me. The definition is really it has a motor of less than 750 watts, it has operable pedals, and it can go no more than 20 miles per hour when it’s powered by the motor alone.

That, in essence, is the definition. It’s important to remember that this is a preemptive definition. Congress made this, chose to make this preemptive of any state or local laws that would define a low-speed electric bicycle in a more restrictive way.

SIVERTSON: Okay. So states and cities can’t redefine what an e-bike is per se, but what can they control in terms of how e-bikes are allowed to operate and where they’re allowed to operate?

MOORE: Oh, that is a great question. It’s really very similar to how the federal government deals with motor vehicles. There are motor vehicle safety standards that apply to every motor vehicle that’s manufactured or imported into the United States.

And that was really the intent of this law as well. States, however, still regulate the operation of motor vehicles, what you can do with that motor vehicle within the state, where you can drive it, the licensing registration, et cetera, are matters of state law. Similarly, 46 states now have adopted a class system for defining and regulating electric bicycles.

Now, in these states, it does basically include this federal definition, but then it also defines the various types of electric bicycles that were available when the class system was developed. And, I do say I work for People For Bikes, and we’re the trade association for the U.S. bicycle industry.

So People For Bikes created this three-class model and then we worked to have it adopted in 46 states, and actually the federal government uses it now as well.

SIVERTSON: So Matt, go ahead … we have to take a break here in just a minute. But I want to get into this class system a little bit, and I wonder if you can just start with what a, a, if we’re, if it’s Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, what is a Class 1 e-bike?

MOORE: Sure. A class one, and those are the type of electric mountain bikes that Seth was referring to, that is a pedal assist bicycle that applies motor power when the rider is pedaling, and it caps out at a maximum of 20 miles per hour. And these are often either cargo bikes or electric mountain bikes that are really intended for use off of public roads.

Part II

SIVERTSON: Just before the break, we were talking about the three-class system for e-bikes, and we talked about the Class 1 bike. This is, it can’t go more than 20 miles an hour, you said, Matt. It’s pedal-assisted, meaning you have to be pedaling the bike in order for the motor to actually work.

Let’s talk about Class 2 e-bikes. What are these?

MOORE: Sure. Class 2 is an e-bike that has a throttle. So if you recall that federal definition, no more than 20 miles per hour on motor power alone, that definition allows the use of a throttle if the e-bike stops at 20 miles per hour. And so that is a Class 2 electric bicycle.

And so you don’t have to be pedaling for it to go 20 miles an hour. Is that right?

MOORE: No. No, you do not. And this type of e-bike actually has become pretty popular, either with a throttle, maybe it has pedal assist modes as well. But, on a longer ride or on a steep hill, some people like that extra assistance of being able to use the throttle, or at the end of the ride, I’ve always found that last five miles or 30 minutes of my ride is the toughest.

They like to be able to use the throttle, to get themselves where they’re going.

SIVERTSON: Okay. And what about Class 3? So Class 3 is a pedal assist electric bicycle that has a maximum assisted speed of 28 miles per hour.

SIVERTSON: 28, you said.

MOORE: It is 28 miles per hour. People are like how did you get up to 28?

There is no maximum pedal assisted speed that’s defined in the federal law. But People For Bikes in developing our model law said, “We think 28 is about as fast as a person on an analog bicycle can ride, at a consistent speed if they’re fairly fit.

And that’s also the maximum speed of a electric bicycle in Europe that is called a speed pedelec. It is an assisted device that can go 45 kilometers an hour or 28 miles per hour. So it’s a recognized type of e-bike that was already being made and that was just translated over into the Class 3 bike for U.S. purposes.

SIVERTSON: Okay. And I understand this three-class model is based on the European approach to e-bikes. Is that right? Can you say more about how Europe treats e-bikes?

MOORE: It is different but similar in many ways. So the motor power limit in Europe is 250 watts and it’s specifically stated as continuous rated power, whereas the U.S. limit is 750 watts without further definition of how that’s determined.

But many of the, especially in the earlier days, many of the motor systems there were a few major suppliers of drive systems and those were used in both markets. They could be modified by their manufacturers to fit the limitations in each market.

A pedal assist bike in Europe is limited to about 15.5 miles an hour and that’s currently the law there, rather than 20 miles per hour in the U.S. But otherwise, the drive systems at the time were very similar.

SIVERTSON: Huh. Okay, so Seth Alvo, I’m sure a lot of people are listening to this already, and like me, are thinking, “Wait a minute, what am I even looking at?”

And in preparing for this conversation, I was doing a lot of looking around in terms of the differences between, say, an e-bike and a moped, or an e-bike and an e-motorcycle. So can you help break down some of those differences?

ALVO: Yes, and actually as Matt has pointed out, these bikes can be very different.

Before when I said that there’s zero learning curve on riding an e-bike, I was referring specifically to a Class 1 e-bike with torque sensing. If you sit on one of those and start pedaling, it’s going to feel pretty much just like a normal bicycle, and your eyes are going to light up like you almost feel like you’re the one doing the work.

They get way different from that, and actually it starts to get blurry in some cases. You have bicycles that look like mopeds and operate like mopeds, and then you have, this is where it gets really confusing, mopeds that sort of look like what we now consider bicycles. I don’t know where you would want me to start in terms of the listeners’ level of understanding on this.

SIVERTSON: I guess I know that the pedals are an important part of the distinction here. If I picture a moped, it has pedals, but you’re not pedaling. So tell us a little bit about the pedals on some of these devices, and what’s so important about them and what they can or cannot do.

ALVO: So on a Class 1 e-bike, or what we consider a Class 1 e-bike, you have to pedal in order for it to go, and that’s with or without a torque sensor. I mentioned that it can sense how hard you’re pedaling and respond proportionally. There are also just speed sensors where when it senses you pedaling, the motor kicks on.

And in that case, you only have to pedal really as hard as you want to. In many cases, you can do what some people refer to as ghost pedaling, and so you’re pedaling, and you’re not really putting any pressure on the drivetrain, yet the motor is propelling you along. And so it’s just a switch that turns on the motor.

That is still considered Class 1 as long as it caps at 20 miles per hour and is limited to 750 watts. Now, you might say if you’re not really doing anything with the pedals, if you’re just pretending to pedal, and it can move forwards, then what’s the problem with the throttle? And so indeed, a Class 2 e-bike has the same power and top speed as a Class 1 e-bike.

The only thing that’s different about it is that you have an actual thumb switch. And I would like to focus on Class 1 and 2 because they are so similar in that regard, because they have the same power and speed limit. What has happened recently that’s made things confusing is bicycles that bear no resemblance to a bicycle have become very popular.

You have these big, heavy motorcycle-like devices with big fat tires, and then they have the pedals on them. They put the pedals on them so they can be legally considered bicycles, and not only do most people not use those pedals, but it’s actually very difficult to. I’ve demonstrated in some of my videos, your foot hits the kickstand.

The seat is so wide that your legs bow out, and you can’t actually pedal. The pedals are all but ornamental, and they’re token cranks and pedals, basically. Now, that might seem benign. It might seem like okay, they’re there for legal purposes, and it’s limited to 20 miles per hour, and it’s limited to 750 watts, and so they follow the same rules as the ones that look like bicycles.

That’s true. That’s very true. But the problem is we’re getting very used to seeing vehicles that look like this out on the bikeway and out on the road, and we’re starting to call that an e-bike. So when there’s a high-profile accident or somebody loses their life on something that’s not an e-bike, the headline says e-bike.

And what most people call an e-bike is a Class 1 e-bike, and we’re talking about something very different. A company can make a motorcycle that goes 50 miles an hour, and it’s 1,500 watts and has two motors, and then they can just put cranks on it, and a parent buys it thinking it’s a bicycle, thinking that you should have a motor, a bicycle helmet or no helmet at all.

And because it is confusing, because we see these all over the bikeway and we say, “Okay, I guess those are e-bikes,” then it’s easy to make something that is actually very dangerous and not an e-bike, and everybody think it’s an e-bike. And I’m sure I’ve minced some words here and there, and Matt could probably correct me on those, but that’s the basic problem.

SIVERTSON: These bike accidents, these e-bike accidents that we’ve seen headlines about are sometimes the impetus for new legislation around e-bikes and how they’re regulated, and this is another very confusing piece of the puzzle here because e-bike regulation in this country is largely left up to individual states and even individual municipalities.

So a bike that’s street legal in one state might very well be banned in another. A rider might need insurance in one city while they could ride without insurance in a different one, and the restrictions on e-bikes from state to state really run the gamut.

NEWS BRIEF: Amid concerns about the safety of e-bikes and e-scooters, today Governor JB Pritzker signing new rules into law.

NEWS BRIEF: It is the first time safety standards for e-bikes and e-scooters are being established for the entire state. The new law includes requiring riders of those devices that can travel over 28 miles per hour to have a driver’s license and insurance.

Tyler is clarifying its rules. The city is allowing Class 1 e-bikes on park trails, but Class 2 and 3 e-bikes, which have more motor power and throttle assist, are not allowed.

NEWS BRIEF: The Village Council recently approved the new restrictions, including a minimum age of 15 to use e-moto rides. Other rules include helmets for young riders and a speed of 15 miles per hour on sidewalks and pathways.

SIVERTSON: Those were reports from WLS in Chicago, Illinois, KYTZ in Tyler, Texas, and WPTV in West Palm Beach, Florida.

And you might notice that every location seems to take a slightly different approach. So as of July 2026, New Jersey now has some of the strictest e-bike regulations in the country. Depending upon how fast they go, certain e-bikes now require registration, licensing, and insurance. Riders have to be at least 15 years old.

They may have to show proof of ownership of the e-bike, and the law has a lot of people up in arms about whether or not legislation is the best way to combat the safety risks of e-bikes. Matt Moore of People For Bikes, I wanna turn to you, particularly around this New Jersey legislation, this new law requiring both registration and a license in order to operate all classes of e-bikes, and in some cases requiring insurance.

What do you make of that?

MATT MOORE: Our federal system has 50 states that are allowed to experiment and adopt their own laws and policies, and of course, they will see the consequences of what they do. But that allows a lot of variation, and even with the three-class system states have not adopted that lock, stock, and barrel.

There’s a little bit of variation. But our organization and the New Jersey advocates, their state advocates and local advocates really regard this New Jersey law as a mistake and something that we are even now working to roll back. So New Jersey had a series of fatal crashes involving teenage riders.

Your worst-case scenario for a parent is your child is killed riding their vehicle on a public street. But those vehicles were not electric bicycles. And we have done the research, got the police reports. Those were electric motorcycles, which are already illegal in New Jersey for a child to operate, and they’re already illegal to operate without registration, license, and insurance.

So this law really was a crackdown on low-speed electric bicycles in trying to address a problem with a different type of vehicle. And Seth is exactly right. This confusion really has been caused by the manufacturers who feel that their theory as by adding pedals or by making it look like an electric bicycle, it’s legal to operate.

That simply is untrue. Anything that can go over 20 miles per hour when powered by the motor under federal law is considered a motor vehicle. That has to comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards. The importer has to be registered with the federal government, and they have to certify that their vehicle is safe because it meets those standards.

None of those things are happening, so we are seeing hundreds of thousands of what are essentially electric mopeds or motorcycles being sold directly to consumers, in some cases providing to children and leading to those increased numbers of emergency room visits and in some cases fatalities. And this is really the issue with an e-moto type device that is being confusingly sold to the public.

SIVERTSON: Okay, I want to pick up on that exactly. Confusingly sold to the public. Seth, why is it that you have people buying what are essentially e-motorcycles under the guise of or thinking that they are buying an e-bike? Why is this so confusing?

ALVO: I think what’s confusing is the size and shape of the actual vehicle.

So as I said, people are used to seeing bicycles, I’m using air quotes right now, that don’t look like bicycles. They have big bench seats like a motorcycle. A very popular version of this is known as the Super 73, and they became somewhat of a problem in California because people were modifying them. I know we’re not talking about that topic at the moment, but you’ve seen them.

They have big headlights like a motorcycle. They have big fat tires like a motorcycle. They do not have adjustable bike seats. You can’t actually raise the seat up, extend your leg, and pedal it. It’s one size fits all. They’re very heavy, and they have throttles. That is becoming very popular, and it’s legal.

It’s perfectly legal to take on a bike way, because it’s a Class 2 e-bike. It is limited to 20 miles per hour, and it is limited to 750 watts. The problem is because those exist and because we are so used to seeing them, other manufacturers can sell the same thing and then advertise it’s 1,500 watts, it’s 3,000 watts.

And so you see that and you say, “Okay, I’m getting a better deal.” But you don’t read the fine print and understand that it’s not an actual bicycle, and in many cases, the fine print’s not actually there. Especially on a website like AliExpress, you’re going to have a whole bunch of different fly-by-night companies selling these, and they’re labeled in all sorts of ways.

Sometimes they say e-bike when it is not, in fact, an e-bike. And so parents buy these.

SIVERTSON: Yeah, and Matt, to that point, if people are buying e-bikes more and more online as opposed to in person, it seems like that would make it harder to keep tabs on exactly what people are buying regardless of where they live, and whether they know that they’re buying what they think they are.

So how are online retailers part of the problem here, and what do we do about that? How do we make sure that the marketing is more straightforward for the consumer?

MOORE: That is a great question and something that People For Bikes is working on a daily basis.

Something that’s not often reported about the New Jersey law is it also contained a provision banning online sales of what they defined as electric motorized bicycles, which are e-motos. A complete ban on online sales. But has that been put into effect? Have any of these online sellers been taken to task?

We’re starting to see in other jurisdictions like New York City, New York, and California, that attorney generals have stepped up.

Part III

SIVERTSON: On Point listeners here have a lot of opinions when it comes to e-bikes. On Point listener Joseph told us that he sees them as something of a metaphor for the direction society has gone in.

JOSEPH: E-bikes, to me, are emblematic of everything that’s wrong in our society. We want to replace everything that was once hard and rewarding with what’s easy.

You see it with people using AI to write their essays or their emails. You see it with how texting replaces a phone call and social media replaces physical human interaction. What pure example of human happiness is there than a child learning to ride for the first time? When I see kids on e-bikes, my soul hurts.

I’m convinced there’s a spiritual poverty to this. The pedal bicycle is the most beautiful, simple machine ever invented, and to get in sync with your pedal strokes, to convert that effort into speed, feel the wind in your face as the landscape rolls by under your own power, is to live beauty. But yes, as a practical matter, an e-bike can help people replace car trips for short commutes.

I support this. The trouble is most people use them as a toy, not a tool. They will literally load their e-bikes onto their car and drive to the public parkways that used to be peacefully enjoyed by pedestrians and cyclists. Excuse me, real cyclists.

SIVERTSON: Seth Alvo, I wanna get a quick reaction from you on that.

Joseph here talking about the wind in your hair, feeling the bike that you yourself are powering. What do you make of that as someone who rides a lot of analog bikes, but also can appreciate an e-bike?

ALVO: So I’m sympathetic to his view in some ways. I disagree with probably about half of it and agree with half of it.

I agree that bicycling is a rite of passage, and a child riding a bike, that freedom, that’s why I still ride a bike. That’s why I still get on a bike and pedal it, is because it’s this beautiful, simple machine. You can see how it works right on the outside. That’s all emotional stuff. In reality, people who enjoy that still enjoy that, and people who are lazy, they don’t get out and go on an e-bike.

They get in their car, and they drive someplace and sit around. And so I think in reality I don’t know if it perfectly maps onto what’s happening to society as a whole, but I do get his point.

SIVERTSON: So Matt, I wanna go back to you, Matt Moore from People For Bikes. Just before the break, we were talking about online retailers and clearer marketing.

So what is People For Bikes doing to help ensure that bike sellers are not misleading customers? And is there accountability there?

MOORE: There definitely is and should be more accountability. You can’t sell somebody black paint and tell them it’s driveway sealer. It’s consumer fraud, and we have laws in every state that protect consumers from fraudulent sellers that misrepresent products that they’re selling.

Additionally, some states are aware of this issue especially with respect to products, motor vehicles being represented as electric bicycles, and have passed specific laws calling out that behavior as consumer fraud, making it actionable by private attorneys or by attorney generals. And those were the actions I referenced earlier, that attorney generals in these states are, have put these manufacturers on notice, that they will be looking at their online sales and taking action if they’re selling vehicles that are not legal to operate in the state.

I think five or six states have these specific provisions, and then we expect to have more of them in the future in 2027.

SIVERTSON: Okay, I want to hear from another one of our listeners, because there’s also just the appearance of bikes, whether they are what they say they are or not, and Steven Jones in Takoma Park, Maryland really spoke to this.

He makes the point that e-bikes might be viewed differently than motorbikes even in situations where they’re doing fundamentally the same thing.

STEVEN: My family has an e-bike that has the seat on the rear for my child. Now, if 10 years ago I had suggested, “Hey, everybody, I’m gonna buy a motorbike and strap my two-year-old daughter on it and drive her around town,” everyone would say that I was a fool.

But nowadays, make that motorbike electric, paint it orange, and somehow everyone thinks it’s a great idea. I’m still driving my child around at 25 miles an hour.

SIVERTSON: Matt Moore, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, our perception of e-bikes and the fact that now we have these vehicles that have motors on them, and so we say, “Okay, it’s legal. We can do it.” But maybe we’re using them for things that in a pastime or even just on a different day or with a different lens might go, “Is that a good idea?”

MOORE: If I look to take back the wayback machine and look at bike commuting, when I started commuting in the ’80s, there were no bike lanes at all.

That’s no longer the case. Many cities have built out networks including protected bike lanes that make it safer to operate bicycles of all kinds, including electric bicycles. And not 100%, but in large part, that was work that People For Bikes accomplished. That was one of our founding missions is to get funding, federal funding to build bike facilities across the country, and we’re seeing the results of that work.

So things have changed. And yes there is definitely a place for the cargo bike, the kid hauler as we call it widely used in Europe. I live across from a great school here in Minneapolis where I live and we have lots of parents bringing their kids to the grade school via cargo bike.

Or when they get older they ride as a family to school and it’s great. Yes, there’s a place. At the same time, allowing a child to independently operate an electric motorcycle, that is a whole different thing. And this is akin to the mini bike craze, in the ’60s and ’70s when little gas-powered mini bikes were super popular all of a sudden, and guess what?

There were mounting crashes and fatalities, and those devices were banned. So I think we’re in a place where these e-moto devices, again, which are motor vehicles if they’re used on public roads are going to face increasing regulation both in their sales, their sellers who are selling them, how they are advertised, and where they can be operated to the extent, they’re not already illegal.

So even states like California, which have pretty advanced and complicated vehicle laws California’s just passed a bill, Senate Bill 1167, which passed unanimously to better define both low-speed electric bicycles and electric mopeds and motorcycles and establish appropriate regulations.

SIVERTSON: Okay, I want to hear from another one of our listeners. This is Peter in Klamath Falls, Oregon, who called to tell us how, in his view, e-bikes have become an essential part of our transportation ecosystem.

PETER: I view e-bikes as an essential form of transportation for people that do not have good access to a car or to public transportation, which is the case in many small towns like mine.

I think that e-bikes should be more heavily regulated due to the speed that they are capable of. I think that for this regulation to come to fruition, it is unfortunately going to take some tragic event involving someone who is probably not even old enough to have a driver’s license to get it onto the radar of public officials and law enforcement.

SIVERTSON: So Seth Alvo, turning the conversation now to safety. When you hear Peter say that he feels like speed is really what should make these e-bikes regulated more heavily, do you agree that speed is the ingredient of e-bikes that makes them potentially more dangerous?

ALVO: In a way, yes, but in a way, no.

So we already have the Class 1, 2, and 3 system, and if you’re riding a Class 1, you’re limited to 20. But as we’ve been saying today, a lot of them are sold and mislabeled, and they end up going much faster. And I think the problem that, I think why that happens is the confusion.

So because it is now difficult to tell the difference between a bicycle, a moped, and a motorcycle, because they’re all starting to look the same, that is why we end up with devices that are not Class 1 e-bikes, that are not low-speed electric bicycles, and those are the ones that are generally causing the injuries.

Now here, the viewer that called in seems to be pro-bicycle, and even he appears to be mixing up low-speed electric bicycles with motorcycles, which just speaks to how confusing it actually is.

SIVERTSON: I hear you, on one hand, but on the other, 20 miles an hour, to me, is still pretty fast.

And when I’m going 20 miles an hour on an analog bike, on a regular bike, I have powered that bike. I made it go 20 miles an hour. I am one with the bike, and I am one with the bike at that speed. And I think what you have here is you have a bunch of people who can either go 20 miles an hour with pedaling, or they got the Class 2 e-bike, they can just go 20 miles an hour without pedaling, and they are not, they don’t have a relationship to that velocity.

A lot of these, the fatal crashes that we’re hearing about, I don’t know what percentage of those occurred on bikes that were not actually e-bikes, but might be more like e-motorcycles, but there are concussions, there are broken bones. All sorts of things can happen even just at 20 miles an hour that, as you’ve said, with no learning curve, that can present a real problem for people who are not comfortable on those bikes or not experienced on those bikes and the speeds that they can go.

ALVO: You bring up a really good point, and that’s why in Europe, pedelecs are limited to 15.5 miles per hour, and 250 watts, actually but it’s also notable that in Europe, they don’t have a lot of the same problems we do. Now, first of all, it’s a different place. Bicycling infrastructure in almost every European country is, on the whole, better than the United States if you take it all as a whole.

But also, it’s very easy to tell the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle in Europe. And you made the point before that somebody that can just go 20 miles per hour with a throttle has no relationship to that speed. They’re not huffing and puffing. They’re not pedaling faster and faster. And in many cases, an e-bike is the first kind of bicycle they’ve ridden, and so they don’t have experience building up the strength to actually get up to that speed, and that is a very real issue.

But I think the fact that in Europe, they don’t have bicycles with throttles. If you have a throttle, it becomes something else. It becomes very easy to tell the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle, and you just don’t see them mixed up in the same places. You don’t see them on bikeways. You don’t see them around pedestrians and other bicycles that are going very different speeds.

I think the United States has bigger roads. A lot of people are using their low-speed electric bicycles out on New York City streets, and in some cases, you might want to be able to go 20 miles per hour to get into traffic safely without somebody coming up behind you and swerving around you.

And so I think there’s a lot we can learn from Europe, but also the United States and Europe are two different places, so I don’t necessarily think that a 20-mile-per-hour limit is the whole problem.

SIVERTSON: I want to turn now to specifically focusing on kids. Because several of the recent headlines that deal with fatalities in the country have been kids on e-bikes.

And there was a recent TikTok video that went viral from a doctor at MGH, Cornelia Griggs, saying basically, “If you wouldn’t put your child on a motorcycle, don’t put your kid on an e-bike.” And so Matt, I wanna turn to you and just ask plainly, do kids need to be riding e-bikes at all?

MOORE: I would say we would love to sell analog bicycles to every child in the United States.

I agree that with the eloquent listener who’s talking about the rite of passage that the kids learn to ride their bikes in the parking lot of the school across the street, and it brings, it makes my heart sing to see that. As part of our model law, we recommended that states not allow kids under the age of 16 to operate a Class 3 electric bicycle.

That was has been adopted in probably half of the states. That’s sound policy. Here in Minnesota, a child needs to be 15 years old to operate any class of electric bicycle. We still have 12-year-olds riding electric motorcycles in the suburbs and group rides right through our downtown last week.

That’s just unacceptable. A study in California commissioned by the legislature found that 90% of what kids are riding to middle schools were actually electric motorcycles. This is really the problem, these too-fast devices. And I would agree that 20 miles per hour is important because if it goes faster than that, it’s a motor vehicle.

And lastly, I have to disagree with Seth on Europe. They have a tremendous problem with fat bike. They call them fat bikes there, but they are actually emotos. They’re imported illegally. The difference is that the governments are taking action at the border, and they’re taking action on the street, even using dynamometers.

They have seized, I think, 800 e-bikes in the UK, and they destroy them. So there is an enforcement element here when devices are being sold that are illegal to use or that are being misrepresented to the public.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.