Bipartisan legislation proposes regulating e-bikes, electric micro-mobility devices

WASHINGTON — It’s hard to miss Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., on Capitol Hill.

He’s the one zipping along the pathways of Capitol Hill to get to the House chamber. 

“When I first told my staff when I first got elected to Congress that I was going to be riding a scooter around, they didn’t love the idea,” said Min as he pulled up to the House steps.
 

But while his staff may not have originally loved the idea of their boss scootering through the busy streets of Washington, D.C., it has a proven track record of success. Since being sworn into office in January 2025, Min has missed just one roll call vote of nearly 500 called. 

And while the scooter can’t take all the credit, it has become Min’s preferred method of transportation, getting him from point A to point B much faster than he could on foot.

“I’m able to just go across the Capitol right now — I can get from my office to the Senate side in probably about four minutes,” he boasted.

Min’s love for his e-scooter helped to inspire his new piece of legislation, the Safe Standards for Personal E-Bike and E-Moto Device Specifications Act, or Safe SPEEDS Act. The legislation calls for a comprehensive federal standard for electric bicycles and other micromobility methods, directing the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to define and regulate them based on speed and other characteristics.
 

The bill has bipartisan support, with Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., signed on as original cosponsors.

“I think that’s an important first step as states and local jurisdictions try to think about how to balance the safety concerns with the popularity of e-bikes,” said Min, who noted that he’s seen these methods of transportation grow in popularity in recent years in his beloved Orange County. “If you think about DMVs before they can start regulating motor vehicles, they have to understand what a motor vehicle is, the difference between, say, a car and a truck and a motorcycle. We’re facing similar challenges right now with e-bikes.”
 

Right now, 44 states and Washington, D.C. have a definition of what an e-bike is, while 26 of those states went as far as to create a three-tiered e-bike classification system based on varying speed capabilities. Helmet laws also vary by state, creating a patchwork of laws across the country.
 

This bill, Min explained, is meant to ease some of that burden on state and local governments by creating a federal standard.
 

“We don’t want to discourage adoption of them, but we do want to encourage efforts to regulate safety,” he said. “And so trying to find that right balance, in the absence of any federal standards we’re seeing right now, it’s a lot of local jurisdictions are starting to ban e-bikes because they can be kind of a little bit of a nuisance.”

“In Orange County, for example, we’ve seen a lot of young kids — 11 or 12 years old, as young as that — riding these bicycles up to like 35 miles an hour. That can create a lot of problems. They’re not trained, they’re not subject to any insurance requirements. So it’s creating lots of new challenges. So there is an instinct out there to just ban these,” he continued. “We don’t want to ban them. We want to encourage the adoption, but want to do it in a way that’s safe.”

The Safe SPEEDS Act also calls for periodic reports on crashes, injuries and fatalities associated with e-motos and establishes a grant program for local governments to standardize incident reporting so that data can be analyzed.
 

The bill still has a long way to go before it would become law. It is currently under review by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and would need to be voted on by both the House and Senate before being sent to the president’s desk.