Two bills moving through the California legislature this year could change how e-bikes are bought, ridden, and regulated across the state. One would require

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition weighed in with a pointed response, arguing that the state should be making it easier, not harder, to own and use e-bikes. Their senior organizer echoed the sentiment shared by many riders: the real confusion and danger comes from people not being able to tell the difference between a legal e-bike and an electric moped, not from the bikes themselves.

Brett Thurber, co-owner of a San Francisco e-bike shop, raised a practical industry concern about AB 1557. Restricting California’s speed limits below what manufacturers currently build for the U.S. market could push companies to skip California customers entirely, shrinking the supply available to local shops and consumers.

  • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    Cars being an issue isn’t an excuse for anarchy everywhere else.

    This doesn’t really address the logic of what you’re responding to though, and it clearly is a justification. If people are deterred from using ebikes for transportation and therefore use cars instead, then the resulting harm is whatever difference there is between injuries/deaths caused by an ebike and injury/death caused by a car over the same time period, it hardly matters for that where they are using them.

    And I’d hardly call a speed limit for a bike a “burden,”

    Whatever you call it, if there is an effect where a registration requirement results in more driving than otherwise, that has to be taken into account.