I love my e-bike, and I think you’d love one too. For pennies in electricity a month, my e-bike replaces public transit for the vast majority of commuting as well as my household’s grocery trips; between panniers and a sturdy backpack, you’d be genuinely shocked at just how much stuff I can bring home from the grocery store. While the normal, human-powered variety of bike comes with limitations on accessibility, e-bikes are democratizing in a profound way. Leaving the hardest physical labour up to a battery and motor smooths the uneven distribution of physical ability and congenial geography. They are genuinely wondrous machines, and in a different world we’d be vastly more excited about them than we are about, say, AI services that produce video slop on demand.
What’s more, every e-bike that exists today is the worst e-bike that will exist next year. While the fundamentals of the device are pretty simple, e-bikes are benefiting from all of the technological improvements that are happening in the electric car market. Better batteries, more powerful motors, and greater connectivity are all coming to two-wheeled vehicles as four-wheeled ones do the pioneering work. Some of this is quite direct: automaker Rivian has spun off the e-bike company ALSO, which is now releasing a very fancy (albeit pricey-for-me) model.
That is, unfortunately, both a blessing and a curse. Already, some e-bikes pretty clearly exceed the weight and power you’d normally associate with a daily commuting bike or even a fun trail rider. Federal and provincial rules are a) a mess and b) not really being meaningfully enforced on city streets anyway, which has predictably led to c) preventable deaths.
A report from the provincial coroner’s office (as reported by CBC) looked in detail at five recent deaths in the Ottawa region that involved people riding e-bikes, and at first glance, you’d have a hard time making the argument that the mode of conveyance was really the problem in these cases. Of the five deaths, three included post-mortem toxicology exams that found drugs like fentanyl or cocaine in the blood of the deceased. In one case, the deceased “had stated on Facebook that he could achieve 180 km/h on his e-bike.” These are all extremely questionable choices, but they aren’t an argument against e-bikes any more than the existence of drunk driving is an argument against cars.
(Speaking of cars, though: one other death involved the presence of cannabis, but that could be entirely incidental. The rider was in a bike lane, riding in daylight hours, when they were struck by a motorist turning into a parking lot. They were, however, travelling at a higher-than-normal speed for an e-bike.)
Turning from the five detailed case studies, the report then looked at 25 deaths involving an e-bike collision from 2012 to 2021, and some patterns emerge. Men are overrepresented (as we are, alas, in most risky behaviours) and particularly men over the age of 45. A substantial fraction of the dead were either unlicensed or had their licenses suspended, a pattern that was found in the five detailed case studies as well. In the language of the report, “The drivers appeared to be using their e-bike as a substitute for a registered, licensed vehicle.”
The report is quick to emphasize that e-bikes are still a virtuous technology whose use should be encouraged for public health, environmental, and traffic congestion reasons, among others. But even an evangelist like myself can draw the line at allowing people to use machinery at highway speeds without a license or insurance, particularly as an option for people who’ve already had their licenses pulled for prior violations of the Highway Traffic Act.
That is, ultimately, what we’re talking about here: not whether even fast and heavy e-bikes should be allowed on the road — motorcycles do not interest me, but if they’re legal on the King’s Highways, then their electric cousins should be too. The question is what the threshold should be for distinguishing between lightly-regulated bicycles and more heavily regulated motorcycles. At what point do we impose the kinds of common requirements for highway-capable vehicles, such as licensing and insurance? The coroner’s report recommends that e-bikes be restricted to no more than 55 kilograms and be limited to 32 kilometres an hour; moped-style and more powerful models would require some degree of licensing and insurance.
There’s room for argument about the details here, about where precisely we should draw the line, and honestly, I’d personally prefer a little more forbearance by regulators. But the reality is that Ontario won’t be making any rules on its own. Provinces need to work cooperatively with the federal government on a matter like this, and we’re just as likely to copy-and-paste rules from other jurisdictions like the United States (or perhaps, given current events, the European Union). It will still be important not to go overboard: overly onerous requirements for licensing or weight or speed controls really could stifle the spread of something beneficial. But the status quo is largely the result of government inattention and not any deliberate choice. It was never going to last, so the goal for advocates should be to ensure that whatever rules we end up with add to the safety on our roads — and don’t stop or discourage otherwise sensible e-bike use.
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