Minimum Age Laws
Effective January 1, 2025, the California Legislature enacted the Marin Electric Bicycle Safety Pilot Program. It authorized the County of Marin (for unincorporated areas) and the Marin cities and towns to enact ordinances requiring riders of throttle e-bikes to be at least 16 years of age.
The County Board of Supervisors created a Special Committee on Youth E-Bike Safety to coordinate adoption of ordinances by the cities and towns. As a result of the County’s leadership, nearly all of the Marin cities and towns have already enacted identical ordinances with effective dates of July 1, 2025. The remainder are expected to do so in time for the Fall school sessions.
The Central Marin Police Authority has issued a statement with two key points:
"Marin County schools will begin enforcing the following rules on-campus and for school commutes this fall" including that "Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes are not allowed at elementary or middle schools" and that "Illegal e-bikes, including those with motors over 750 watts or throttle-powered bikes without pedals are not allowed at any school level."
"We . . . will continue to work closely with schools to keep illegal e-bikes off campus and prevent them from being ridden to and from school” and "enforcement, including citations, will be carried out if necessary."
E-bike Access became interested in this topic when we learned that 10-15 year olds had a disproportionately high injury rate on electric throttle devices.
Our advocacy efforts took us to scores of meetings with the Board of Supervisors, the Marin County Council of Mayors and Council Members, the Transportation Authority of Marin, and the councils of 11 Marin cities and towns over the last 18 months.
The big open questions are whether local law enforcement will vigorously enforce this law and, if not, will the city and town councils tolerate the lack of enforcement.
The lackluster enforcement of existing laws against
unregistered e-motos masquerading as e-bikes is ground for skepticism. So is the buck-passing among the municipalities, the County and the schools, as illustrated by an exchange of correspondence linked here.
In our view, it untenable to allow the police to pick and chose which laws they want to enforce, or for the Board of Supervisors and municipalities to enact new laws without insisting on enforcement.
The metrics on the effectiveness of enforcement are straightforward: a) how many throttle e-bikes (or e-motos) are ridden to and from middle schools and by underaged high school students, b) how many do we see on our streets, and c) does the injury rate decline substantially for 10-15 year olds?