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.
But they’re not.
Most scooters can go 35+ mph, usually 45+, and they’re not allowed on multi-use paths, sidewalks, or anywhere cars aren’t allowed to go. There’s also no way to pedal most of them.
Ebikes, on the other hand, can only go 20mph, 28mph if it has a speedometer, they are allowed on multi-use paths, and they are banned from many highways. Further, they generally have a very limited range, like 10-20 miles if you don’t pedal at all.
I see absolutely no reason to treat them like cars. We should instead see the increased demand for ebikes as a good time to invest in cycling infrastructure. That means more multi-purpose paths, bicycle lanes, and bicycle parking at popular destinations. In other words, encourage safe adoption of bicycles instead of normalizing bicycle/car interaction. Ideally, bicycles are kept separate from cars as much as possible, and that would be reflected in the laws.
A 10 mph is trivial as far as rider safety in traffic, especially on public streets, where both are applicable.
So no, not like cars, like slightly slower more vehicles. As long as it’s being pedaled, it’s a motor vehicle in-use, subject to the same speed limits and safety gear requirements as a motorcycle/scooter.
Normalizing interaction is fine, encouraged even. But it has to be within a framework of traffic laws that can be enforced. And 10-20 miles is irrelevant to rider safety since most traffic accidents are within a mile of home in/on a motorized vehicle.
Traffic laws don’t exist to protect the driver, they exist to protect other roads users from the driver. For example, helmets are optional in my area for bicyclists and motorcyclists alike, though they’re both really good ideas. The main one that stands out is the seatbelt law, but pretty much every other driving law exists to protect other road users.
The potential impact of me riding a bicycle unsafely on other road users is extremely minimal. If I hit a car, I’m unlikely to do much more than dent a panel or crack a window. If I hit a pedestrian, they’ll certainly be injured, but the risk of serious injury or death is extremely low. So it makes a ton of sense for riding a bicycle to be governed by laws, but it doesn’t make sense to subject everyone to obtaining proof of knowledge about how to ride a bicycle safely. The risk to other road users just isn’t high enough to warrant such a burden on the public.
And traffic laws absolutely do apply. I can be ticketed for riding too fast, taking up too much of the road, not having proper safety equipment, or failing to signal a lane change/turn. We also have age restrictions (16yo or older to operate a class 3 ebike, 14yo to operate any ebike without parental supervision, 8yo to operate ebike with supervision). But I am not required to pass a safety knowledge test or carry a driving license. Why? Because a bicycle just isn’t a realistic danger to other road users, and most bicyclists avoid interaction with other road users most of the time anyway.
My point here is that it’s not a realistic transportation option for most people, so car/bicycle interaction is pretty rare. Most people ride bicycles on separate bike paths at parks, or on low speed, residential roads where road users should be expecting pedestrians anyway. Bicycles do occasionally share the road with cars, but usually in places where appropriate infrastructure exists (bike lanes, signage, etc).
So motor vehicle traffic just doesn’t interact much with bicycle/ebike traffic, and when they do, it’s in an area where they would expect pedestrian traffic anyway, such as in the downtown part of a city, residential areas, or parks.
If people were regularly traveling long distances, I could see a need for more formalized training since they’d interact with motor vehicles far more often. But most of the time when that happens, it’s because appropriate cycling infrastructure exists (e.g. a separate path that joins larger cities).
So no, I don’t see a point in requiring a driving license to ride a bike. That’s just ridiculous and would only serve to discourage bike use. The only requirement I could reasonably understand is carrying proper identification to assist in writing tickets (not required in my area, but you are required to provide an accurate name, address, and age to officers), but only if officers write tickets so frequently that it becomes an issue. I usually carry mine anyway because if I’m riding long distances, I’ll want my wallet, which has my state issued identification (in my case, a driving license).