Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition strongly opposes legislation requiring licensin
S4834 – Regulates ALL motorized bicycles. This means even low speed pedal assist bikes, which would be regulated along with high speed e-motos: Senator Nichols Scutari’s e-bike bill would also require a license to operate low-speed (class 1 and 2) e-bikes.
“E-bike” is a generic term that lumps together everything with two wheels and an electric motor and can include a variety of devices including electric bicycles, electric mopeds, scooters, electric dirt bikes and electric motorcycles. These are all different vehicle types and their differences need to be taken into account when developing appropriate laws and regulations to govern their safe use on public roads and trails. Let’s dig into electric bicycles and “e-motos” to understand how they are currently regulated and where the issues are actually arising.” People For Bikes: It’s An E-Moto Problem
E-bikes are a game changer for residents who cannot afford cars, many of whom are immigrants, elderly or have disabilities – nearly 25% of the population in the city lives at or near the “poverty line”, and many need to ride bikes as their main transportation.
Legislative focus on the dangers of e-bikes is a distraction from the 40k people a year who die in car crashes. Globally 1.5 million people are killed by cars (and many more by the effects of pollution, noise, tire rubber particles, and climate change they produce.)
This doesn’t account for those who are seriously injured, and the families affected by the trauma and devastating financial impact of a father, mother, or child killed, insurmountable hospital bills, maybe displaced from their homes.
The numbers of vulnerable road users are disproportionately people of color and poor people. In NJ there were 695 traffic deaths, and a significant rise in pedestrian deaths. For the current year (2025), as of early December, there were already 281 fatalities in 263 crashes, showing a continued high rate of road deaths.
Death by car is the leading cause of death for people aged 5 to 29, close to the number killed by guns in the U.S. in 2021, but the issue of systemic car fatalities barely registers in political debates when compared to debates over firearms.
The sensationalized NYT article, “The Shocking Crash That Led One County to Reckon With the Dangers of E-Bikes makes it seem like proof of the “e-bike menace”. The problem is inconsistent, unclear state-by-state regulation. And articles like this one that fail to acknowledge that car crashes account for vastly more vehicular deaths – over forty thousand people a year in the US, both inside and outside of cars which has become normalized. It’s not news.
In three of the 4 recent tragic NJ e-bike incidents, the e-bike riders were hit by the driver of a car, truck, or a van, and one was intentional – so e-bikes themselves were not to blame at all.
The title of the NYT article is a perfect example of vilifying e-bikes – but we never see details like this about a car crash death in the media. Deaths and near death of a person in a car crash isn’t “shocking” because it happens every day, and it’s been happening for a hundred years.
When automobiles were first introduced in the US on city streets and country roads, CARS were deemed a menace. So in the 1920s the titans of the auto industry literally met up and took action to make way for more cars everywhere by moving people off the streets with concepts like “jaywalking”, tearing down neighborhoods to build highways, building suburbs with no easy direct access to services or amenities without a car, making all other modes (example trolleys) obsolete, and even stigmatizing transit, like implying that buses are for poor people.
Peter Norton is the author of Fighting Traffic The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. Norton was shaken early in his career reading an article in a 1920s engineering magazine when cars were taking over city streets, “The obvious solution … lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for.”
This deep dive Yale University Climate Connections article cites Peter Norton: American society wasn’t always so car-centric. Our future doesn’t have to be, either.
We must reduce reliance on cars by offering transportation options, and if legislation makes it harder to accommodate e-bikes, this country will continue to be dominated by cars.
Cars have taken over cities and towns to our peril.
We now have micro mobility options which we should be vigorously supporting, but the auto industry is threatened…it’s not going to be easy.
E-bikes must be classified clearly, and infrastructure must be built to accommodate pedal bikes, e-bikes and walking safely, enabling all modes outside of cars to access road space equitably. It’s a socialized approach to road use. High speed e-motos need separate designation, as well as regulation.
Let’s make sure they get the message clearly: E-bike users “scare” people. But cars kill people. Please email your opposition to S4834 here:
Here is the Transportation Committee’s statement following passage through Thursday’s committee meeting.Here is the full bill which includes some amendments from the Transportation Committee:
TOMORROW! The e-bike bill S4834 is on the agenda of the Budget and Appropriations Committee for Monday, 12/8 at 1pm.
Simple text: I oppose S4384. Increased regulatory burden of S4834 would discourage all e‑bike adoption, and conflict with NJDOT efforts to expand micro mobility, and to mitigate reliance on cars.
Here’s a previous thought piece on the subject on the APCSC website: The E-Bike Problem.
Onward~
Polli Schildge, Editor
