Legislation

[boss]

CA and UT have passed similar laws recently designating classes of e-bikes. These laws are "useful" in that they provide for relatively low power bikes to be ridden on bike lanes or trails, but don't define off road activities AFAICT. The laws were passed without many riders being aware of the assembly bills that spawned them. Anybody know of legislation ongoing in their areas?

 

[Walt]

The UT bill was an attempt to fix the last screwy one that would have required e-bike riders to have a license, turn signals, etc - essentially the old law treated them as cars/motorcycles.

The new law, AFAIK, is not intended to address e-bikes on what most of us would call a "trail". But as usual in UT, nobody knew about it until it had been passed, and it's quite likely that if queried, the legislators involved would be all for e-bikes (and motorcycles, and atvs, etc) on trails, as long as they thought it would be profitable.

This is a state where most of the BLM/FS/Wilderness land would be actively being mined/fracked/bulldozed for building strip malls if the legislature had their way.

 

[boss]

Kind of why I asked the question since other states may have similar legislators. Some riders are up in arms in socal, but the horse is out of the barn and has jumped the fence (sorry, bad cliche day --- too much garlic yesterday). Other areas better try to keep up with potential changes.