So as usual, a few idiots ruining everything for the rest of us? Combined with knee jerk legislators, i mean.

It was intended to cause.harm, that's the point

A bit heavyhanded to need registration even for low-speed (<25kph) pedal assist models. For faster ones however, their driving characteristics are more like mopeds & motorbikes anyway and it makes sense to have such requirements.

The whole problem is how e-bikes are defined. Because 25kph restricted, pedal assist models are the only ones that are e-bicycles in my mind. Anything that can go faster or does not need pedalling is an e-motorbike/moped/scooter and those should be regulated.

A dump from the article:

When New Jersey passed one of the country’s most restrictive e-bike laws earlier this year, plenty of riders, advocates, and bike shops warned that it would have consequences. Now, just a few weeks after the law officially took effect, those predictions appear to have come true.

Bike shops across the state are reporting declines in e-bike sales ranging from 20% to an astonishing 90%, with many saying customers are simply deciding that owning an e-bike in New Jersey is no longer worth the hassle.

The law, which took effect on July 19, requires every e-bike in the state to be registered, from the slowest Class 1 pedal-assist models all the way through faster Class 3 bikes. Riders under 17 without a driver’s license must pass an MVC licensing test to obtain a special e-bike license, while Class 2 throttle-equipped e-bikes and Class 3 models also require insurance, similar to owning a car.

The result has been widespread confusion. Some customers reportedly believe e-bikes have simply been banned outright. Others tell dealers they’ll just buy online and ignore the requirements. And many are choosing not to buy an e-bike at all.

The impact on local businesses has been severe. One New Jersey dealer said sales plunged 90%, another reported a 63% decline, while others described losing between 20% and 60% of their e-bike business. Several shops have already laid off employees, closed rental operations, downsized, or warned they may not survive through the end of the year.

Perhaps most troubling are the unintended consequences for the very people e-bikes help the most. Dealers who specialize in mobility-focused transportation say disabled customers are returning newly purchased e-bikes or abandoning plans to buy them altogether because they fear they won’t qualify for licensing or insurance requirements. One retailer described customers losing transportation to work or school because of the new rules.

What’s particularly frustrating is that many of these problems were predictable. The law treats a low-speed 15-20 mph (25-32 km/h) throttle-equipped Class 2 e-bike much more like a motorcycle than like a bicycle, despite its similar performance to a standard Class 1 pedal-assist bike. Bike shops and advocacy groups have instead urged lawmakers to exempt low-speed e-bikes under 20 mph (32 km/h) from licensing, registration, and insurance requirements while focusing regulation on higher-speed, higher-powered machines that more closely resemble electric mopeds.

It’s hard to argue with that logic. If the goal was to improve safety, discouraging people from riding bicycles and pushing them back into cars seems like an odd way to do so, especially when cars are the very things supposedly making e-bikes “unsafe”.

Yep, exactly. Iirc the criteria used where I live are engine wattage (max 250W), top assist speed (25kph) and whether pedaling is required (though no-pedal was allowed up to 20kph).

Anything beyond that becomes classified as a motor vehicle, and the only motor vehicles allowed on bike/ped paths are mopeds with a top speed of 25kph.

Here in QLD, Australia we beat you to this stupidity by a little. We, like Europe (and pretty much everywhere that's not US) has 25kph pedaling requirements. 'The Youf' were getting around on OP unregistered e-motorcycles (by existing laws, with no import protections) so our tough on crime right wing gov decided to step in, instead of, you know, enforcing the existing law and stop importing inappropriate devices.

You now need a license (learners or better), to travel at 12kph on shared paths (most of the bikeways) instead of just slowing down to pass pedestrians like a civilized person. The bike also needs to be European standard (protect the hard to repair incumbents) or face an unspecified certification procedure starting in Feb?.

I'm currently analogue (built a midmount 250W like a decade ago before all this but ditched it because I wasn't getting enough exercise) but looking to make a Bafang or similar so I can actually repair it and ditch a car. The whole shitshow is a mess.

I wasn't expecting to say this, but New Jersey, I feel your pain.

Funny how those idiots don’t seem to have ruined automobiles.

20mph pedal assist is pretty nice, but I would change my view if I needed insurance

Legislation doesn't protect anyone at all. It's just a feel good solution. You can look exactly at cars and see laws don't protect anyone.

yes but a few car industry execs and lobbyists got huge bonuses for their hard work on the new regulations, so there’s that!

They're just boomers who fall alone and get more severe injuries. The dutch can't even put on a helmet, that's how much they value their head.

If cars have seatbelts, bikes have helmets. It's not complex.

No need to make bikes pay insurance and vehicle tax. Have identification plates to be easily subject to traffic fines... Oh wait...

But yet the same Driver's license applies for a Honda Fit, F-250, and a Porsche.

pedestrains should also wear helmets of course. At least some should

You missed my point. You can still operate a car without putting a seatbelt on. You can even "trick" the sensor by putting the belt on first or a dummy latch. It doesn't solve the person chosing to not wear one.

Insurance doesn't stop crime or deaths l. A license or plate is only good for identification, it wont protect the rider. Having "stiff OVI" laws wont stop a person from driving intoxicated.

You can even look at OVI trends and see it's been fairly consistant with only slightly declining trend. However drug based OVI started increasing slightly due to legilization.

Your chart is misleading. It doesn't take into consideration of early vehicles that didn't have seatbelts at all or lack of safety devices (airbags, crumble zones, fibreglass bodies instead of steel). Manufacturers today are required to include all those safety devices for sale.

Tbf, 15-20mph on a throttle equipped bicycle is a motorcycle and is not safe for other isers of the sidewalk.

It is a motorcycle or a moped and it is also not safe to be riding at that speed at a sidewalk among pedestrias but what's also true is that anyone can reach those speeds on a traditional bicycle and the outcome of a crash is just as severe.

Cars arent the thing making E-Bikes unsafe. Rider behavior is the thing making E-Bikes unsafe.

I live in a town in an area that has more bike infrastructure than almost anywhere in the country. You could literally commute 40 miles each way (or more) on trails that hardly cross any roadways at all. I love bikes and think Ebikes are awesome. But when people who choose to use them decide to be idiots they are legitimately dangerous. They deserve to be treated like something different from a normal bike because they literally are.

On the trails, ebike riders in my area are often smoking pedestrians because they ride well over the posted speed limit, pass at full speed, and don’t announce themselves when passing. In one case, a woman was hit by an ebiker who then left her lying there and took off. Ebikes are not regular weight bikes. Getting hit by that rider caused her spinal damage and lasting issues, and she has no way of going after the person because they fled and everything happened on a trail. The county sheriffs wouldnt even investigate because they say the trails are the responsibility of the local transportation authority. Although realistically they would never catch them anyways

On the roads in town, the biggest danger are young kids and tourons that dont understand that if you bike on a street you are required to bike in the same way you would drive a car. They think “im on a bike, so stop signs, right of ways, and speed limits dont apply to me”. This has resulted in many young kids getting borderline killed when they get hit by cars because of things that are their own fault. Numerous times I have had kids (that cant possibly be more than 8-10 years old) blow stop signs and fly out in front of my car at 30mph. The only saving grace is that I was going the actual speed limit of 15, because if I had been going double it, like them, it would have been over with.

I have nothing against Ebikes, but this is the exact type of improper usage that these laws are trying to prevent. Both for the safety of the riders and for everyone else. 8 year olds or anyone else shouldnt be able to ride a class 2 or 3 if they are incapable of understanding road rules and how to not potentially kill someone else or themselves. Honestly class 1 shouldn’t be exempt either because it is not hard to get a class 1 to fly well over its flat ground speed, and on any bike (electric or standard) it generally feels like you are going slower than you actually are.

There is definitely argument to be made about what is the best way to go about it, but the framing of this article that we should just keep everything unregulated as if ebikes are a normal schwin is some major BS

Are bicycles normally allowed on sidewalks? I've always lived where they have to ride in bike lanes or on bike paths.

In most regions, bicycles are not legal on sidewalks.

Anti lock brakes had an equal or stronger effect. The safest crash result is the crash you avoid.

exactly what I predicted. car lobbies choking out ebikes by covering them in red tape and fees.

I'm sure the motocycle shops are happy. E-bikes have been encroaching on the market since you get a lot of the benefits without having to deal with all the gear and certifications.

Its mostly head injuries. These are between just a rider and the road, and the small number of fatalities were from geriatric riders that should have been in a wheel chair. The solution is to just wear a helmet.. And since its not harming anyone aside from the rider themself, that should be a personal choice. No need to increase the barrier to entry with license, registration, and insurance. Its like people are just trying to find ways to make money off the increase in popularity of e bikes.

Maybe people should stop walking on BIKE paths then? you dont expect to be safe walking in the middle of the street do you? people on their lambo feeties need to gtfo the way for cyclists if they are in their space. Are you one of those people who stand around in the bike lane acting like its part of the sidewalk?

They are not dedicated bike paths. They are shared use paths for pedestrians and unmotorized vehicles. Bikers dont get to bitch about pedestrians using their rights on a path but also bitch about drivers not wanting to share roadways with bikes. Absolute whiners

Not the OP, but I'm one of the people who uses the sidewalk, parks and other spaces where even regular bicycles are not meant to be ridden by existing law, and I've had plenty of people on ebikes and mopeds nearly clock me because they're going off roads and designated biking paths at 30mph or more. I've nearly been taken out while bike commuting in the designated bike path while I was exceeding the posted road speed limit by a few mph (really long downhill straight section of my commute without any intersections, so just inertia could get me above 30mph according to my cycling computer), only to nearly get sideswiped by some asshole swerving across multiple lanes of traffic on their fully motor-powered bikes trying to overtake me while weaving in and out of other traffic.

I'm not opposed to e-bikes per se, and I would vastly prefer they be adopted as a widespread replacement to cars, but you cannot argue in good faith that this ebikes with heavy batteries and frames and components that are much heavier than a typical bike, which can obtain much higher speeds than a typical consumer bike for any Joe off the streets who hops on one instantly, are not more dangerous than conventional bikes are to others.

As @ToastedRavioli@midwest.social said, it's not necessarily an inherent issue with all ebikes, but the users have repeatedly demonstrated, they cannot be counted on to use their ebikes in a safe manner without the compulsion of penalties and consequences for their actions. I personally watched one of these assholes whip around a blind corner faster than surrounding street traffic, only to jump up on the sidewalk and immediately t-bone a car that had been in the middle of backing out of a parking lot around the the corner where this guy couldn't see him since before he even approached the intersection.

Ebikes are not bad, in an of themselves, but they're in a similar situation to kids riding dirt bikes and ATVs in city streets a few years ago. They by a vehicle that is illegal for the way the want to use it, use it in this already prohibited manner, if they haven't gone out of their way to find a grey market bike from overseas that is already illegal by virtue of by-passining limiters or just not having them to begin with, and then we get to see their mom and girlfriend crying on the news about how it's so unfair, and their son is just a good boy and people are being mean to him because he turned somebodies' mom into a bloody stain on the street when they were just going about their day.

They kill and harm not just others, but themselves, at a horrifying rate, so some level of restrictions and regulations in clearly necessary here. Honestly, some level of registration, mandatory safety training and insurance is going to be necessary, given the level of damage people riding them irresponsibly can cause to themselves an others, and there will have to be a point where some people lose their privileges to operate them because they've shown themselves to be too irresponsible, same as with cars.

Well at least the rich people helped each other, that's the most important Portland party. This is America, after all, and without capitalism and graft they might have to get by as millionaires or even merely middle class.

Agree. I ride my e-bike in the street, stop for red lights, stop at stop sign, signal and use my turn signals. I have almost hit children in the street riding e-bikes and scooters with no helmets because they are running red lights and riding in the wrong lane against oncoming vehicles. I'm not happy at the prospect of my e-bike becoming regulated, but I'm tired of having to dodge cars and them. Those kids piss me off so much that if they got hit or fell I would legit just be tempted continue on my way after calling it in to 911/emergency; do stupid shit, get hit.

I feel like the best way to regulate them is to require a learners permit for driving a car, many states don't allow the permit until age 16. Then at least the rider has passed a written road test and knows the rules and is hopefully more mature that fucking 8 year olds. I don't think bikes should necessarily require insurance. Bikes with speed of 20mph or lower shouldn't require it at least. My bike weights 50lbs top speed 20 mph. If I hit someone I don't think I'm likely to kill them because most of the time I am not running at top speed anyway. It's the 80-100 lb more more bikes going 30 mph that start to get pretty dangerous.

Agree 100%. There are times that the road is so unsafe for me I get on the sidewalk, but I usually keep my speed to around 4mph, and if I see a pedestrian I stop and wait for them to pass. 4mph is about how fast a human could run.