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California Wants to Put License Plates on E-Bikes and Slow Them Down. Cyclists Are Not Happy About It
(guessingheadlights.com)
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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FYI 45 kph on a non-motorized bicycle is not really "freakishly fast", that's a normal downhill speed on your average middle age guy's weekend workout. And I think this concern is already addressed by signed speed limits.
That's also not a speed you hit on a pedestrian walkway between intersections with crossings where you have to look out for cars or pedestrians stepping in front of you.
I think the most I've ever clocked on a bicycle was 56 km/h (as I didn't usually ride with a speedometer and me being in good enough shape to do that without having to go downhill was before I had a phone with a decent enough battery to run Strava or something for every little ride), but that was out of town, on a straight road. On a pedestrian walkway that requires me to stop or slow down every hundred or two hundred meters, it would take effort to even consistently hit 25 km/h. But with a motor assisting you, you can hit higher speeds much quicker.
Why are you biking on a pedestrian walkway? That seems like it's own seperate problem.
Uh most people don't cycle in car lanes unless going very fast.
Where do you live? I'm in the US where almost all vehicles, including cyclists, ride in the street and only car drivers refer to them as "car lanes".
Estonia. Bicycles are allowed on either the light traffic road, or the car lanes. You're not supposed to go very fast around pedestrians if you opt for the former, but a lot of people (teenagers mostly) do anyway. That's why I'm saying an e-bike that can do 45 km/h should be considered a moped, and be restricted to being used on the road where cars go. In fact that's how it is here. An e-bike that's considered a light traffic vehicle is only allowed to assist until 25 km/h. This is also what California seems to be doing, with higher speeds requiring a license plate and the class 1 vehicles getting restricted.
Here in the states we don't have a "light traffic road" as you describe. That's just not a thing in our infrastructure. This situation would be easier to resolve if we did.
Fair enough. Yeah if all e-bikes are going to be sharing the road with cars anyway, I can see why it wouldn't make sense to limit unlicensed ones to 25 in your case. But at the same time, it makes sense that if a vehicle is capable of speeding, it should have a license plate on it and require the user to be 18. No?
Yes and a driver's test, like any other licensed vehicle. What I would oppose are speed capping the vehicles themselves or outright banning them, as I think both of those "solutions" are more in service to the automotive industry than anything else. And throws the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.
Well, nobody's outright banning them luckily, and only the ones that don't require a test are being capped AFAIK. If your ebike is registered as a motorcycle, it requires a driver's test and doesn't need to have the speed capped at all.
Yes, if it can go over the speed limit I agree. However I cannot.