California Wants to Create a Driver’s License for Electric Bikes
California Wants to Create a Driver’s License for Electric Bikes
A driver's license for electric bikes? It could soon be a reality in California if a new bill passes the state assembly.
The move is in response to many young electric bike riders who often take to the streets without having tested for or received a typical driver’s license for a standard car. That means they are often ignorant of many traffic laws and safety information.
Assembly Bill 530, which will soon enter committee, would require both an online written test and a state-issued identification for riders who do not have a driver’s license. The bill would also ban riders under 12 years old from riding e-bikes.
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This is a great idea. I live in a small town in California and there are always tweens going 40 miles per hour on their ebikes, usually with no protective gear and at least one passenger. They're a menace both to pedestrians and to themselves.
These kind of bastards is what gives us fellow ebike enjoyers a bad rep. Now I'm not saying "we aren't all like that", however, isn't it the whole point? Like I mean there are enough of these menaces to warrant some sort of prohibition. But then isn't it also a kind of diversion from the main topic of corrupt city planning and availability of proper bike lanes? I mean sure go ahead and blame it on the end user, not the provider.
In the UK, in the cities, most of the ebikes I see are illegal and are ridden by said bastards. I would happily get a licence for an ebike to reduce the number of dickheads giving me a bad name. I would prefer that the bikes have to be registered with a government ID so that the owner can be traced and that there are repercussions for breaking the law.
I’m fine with ebike enjoyers. Just like car enjoyers, though, they have a certain degree of danger which could (and should) be mitigated with licensure. I don’t see the downside to ensuring competence on what ultimately are dangerous vehicles.
Let's make runners get a license too... Studies have been done to show removing barriers for alternative transit increase participation. Stuff like this just lead to profiling from police, and less people riding. Maybe if someone can show me a study of these being a serious harm and not pearl clutching I might take this more seriously.
Certainly, here you go:
While reliable numbers are elusive, the pattern isn’t. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), estimated emergency department visits due to micromobility products (e-bikes, e-scooters and hoverboards) more than doubled from 2017 to 2021. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), meanwhile, counted 53 deaths from e-bike accidents from that same period and it decried the “lack of complete, consistent and reliable data” that likely leads to vast underestimations of the actual statistics. The NTSB’s report noted that “fatalities associated with e-bike ridership have also increased exponentially.”
Data from other countries are concerning, too: in the Netherlands, e-bikes were responsible for 27% of all fatal bicycle accidents in 2017; in Israel, electric-powered bikes and scooters accounted for 3,686 hospital admissions between 2014 and 2019; and a Dutch study found that e-bike riders were 1.6 times more likely to wind up in the emergency department than riders of regular bikes.
So 53 deaths in the US? Pretty low. Especially compared to the 685k deaths caused by heart disease.
What in the world does heart disease have to do with this?
If we can save some of those people with the rather simple and easy step of licensure, shouldn’t we? Like what’s the downside when there are lives on the line?
Basically it’s the same argument as driver’s licenses. Are you opposed to requiring training and certification to operate a car?
This is a barrier of entry. Studies have shown that this would result in less participation, that's the issue.
That’s okay though. I would prefer people use regular non-ebike bicycles anyway, which are safer and healthier alternatives for everyone. So kinda win/win.
I'd rather we do whatever we can to get people out of cars. And ebikes might be stepping stones to road bikes. Adding more barriers does nothing more then reenforce a car centric lifestyle.
It’s a shame that people (in my experience, angry “nice guys”) have undermined the phrase “we’re not all like that”. Sometimes, it’s a relevant, important distinction to point out, not an attempt to delegitimize the conversation.