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Can I Ride My E-Bike Here? Perhaps… But Please Consult a Lawyer - The rules of the road that govern the use of electric bicycles is a fundamental question that is relevant to not just e-bike riders, but also other travelers who interact with them. Many sources on the internet attempt to unpack the rights and responsibilities of e-bike riders, however they sometimes provide conflicting information. In this research, we examined e-bike laws in all 50 states and in the process discovered that the inconsistency seen in e-bike advice is not surprising.
We sought to answer three questions about e-bike regulations:
1) How are e-bikes defined in state code?
2) What rules govern how riders may use e-bikes?
3) How do the rules for e-bikes differ from the rules for human-powered pedal bicycles and electric scooters, devices with similar operating capacities?
We found that most states have adopted rules that specifically apply to e-bikes. However, there rules are just one layer in a tapestry of regulation. E-bike riders are also frequently subject to rules on bicycles and vehicles, meaning discovering the rules that apply to e-bikes means looking in several different places. When one finds the rules though, they are not necessarily easy to understand. Verbiage can be jargony, technical, and or not be particularly explicit, requiring users to infer, hopefully correctly, what rules are. This leads to a situation where one bike organization we corresponded with suggested literally consulting with a lawyer to correctly decipher rules.
Numerous problems arise when the public is not aware of the laws where they live. Most obviously, e-bike riders will not follow them. There is also a higher risk of crashes when other road users, from drivers to pedestrians, do not know what behaviors to expect from e-bike riders. Yet another problem is that police officers may either ticket e-bike riders for behaviors that are actually legal or fail to enforce rules on the books. E-bike riders not following rules that do exist could perpetuate perceptions of “scofflaw e-bike riders,” a phenomenon already sometimes seen with riders of pedal-bicycles. And finally, the lack of clarity around rules for riding e-bikes can also scare off potential riders who are worried about inadvertently running afoul of the law.
