Why did Oregon lower the legal age for e-bike riding?

In the latest episode of the BikePortland Podcast, you’ll meet Cameron Bennett, a self-described “champion of things with small wheels” and board member of The Street Trust who leads the Oregon Micromobility Network. I wanted to bring Cam on to tell us about the big legislative victory they scored last week when lawmakers passed House Bill 4007.

HB 4007 does several important things: it lowers the legal age for riding a Class 1 (no throttle, 20 mph max) e-bike from 16 to 14 years of age; it defines “powered micromobility device” in Oregon law for the first time; and it prohibits retailers from selling “e-bikes” that are actually e-motorcycles. The new laws are also notable for what they don’t do: They don’t create absurd regulations around e-bikes like we’ve seen in places like New Jersey where a recent bill passed by their legislature requires all e-bike riders to have license and registration.

I asked Cam about all this and more in our conversation this morning that’s now available for your listening and/or viewing pleasure on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Below is an excerpt from a short clip of the interview.

Jonathan:

“We see headlines about young people crashing, and that’s always gets a lot of attention, but this bill actually lowered the age where people can ride e bikes. So tell me a little bit about the thinking behind that.”

Cameron:

“It allows kids under the age of 16 to learn safe road behavior before they’re behind the wheel of a vehicle. You know, we see this in countries with higher rates of cycling. When you have a familiarity with being a vulnerable road user, you’re a more respectful driver down the line. So we see this this really potent through-effects for getting folks on e-bikes before they get behind the wheel of a car.

The last major piece that this age change will allow is it will give educators more flexibility to bring e-bikes into the classroom at a younger age. So now any safe routes for Safe Routes to School education that happens in a high school environment can include e-bikes. This just gives us another opportunity to help foster a safer road culture at a younger age throughout state.”

Jonathan:

“Are we safe from those kind of absurd laws that we saw in New Jersey and a couple other places?”

Cameron:

“I think that the law that we saw pop up in New Jersey, which which now requires licensing registration for all e-bikes in the state,
is maybe the best selling point for the approach that we’ve taken here in Oregon. Yeah, definitely finding ourselves playing defense to some extent and I don’t think that we’re necessarily safe.

This will allow local governments to regulate these devices in the ways that make sense to them. So anywhere where you’re expecting to see mixing with pedestrians and pedal cyclists, we felt that it was appropriate that local governments should have a say on how that mixing plays out.

There are also some new provisions set up that regulate the sale of e-bikes and micromobility devices. If a device is capable of going faster than 28 miles per hour, it would be illegal to sell it as a micromobility device in Oregon. The same goes for an e-bike, right? If a device is capable of going faster than 28 mph or faster than 20 with a throttle, then it would not be legal to sell that device as an e-bike in Oregon — because that would be a deceptive marketing practice. The way that the statute is set up is that there’d be a $250 fine per vehicle sold in that manner. And what we’re seeing in other states, California and Minnesota in particular who’ve have passed legislation to this effect, we’ve seen a wholesale change in the way that many retailers are marketing their devices. So it’s really just the threat of punishment that seems to be effective enough to elicit enough of a behavior change that the market shifts in the correct direction.”