Committee advances bill to tighten e-bike labeling and battery-safety rules, sends it to Committee of the Whole

Representative Smith introduced an amended version of House Bill 25-11 97 on safety and sales of electrically assisted bicycles, and the Energy & Environment Committee voted to advance the measure to the Committee of the Whole as amended.

The bill’s sponsors said the rewrite focuses on two objectives: enhancing safety for riders under age 16 and reducing property-fire risks from uncertified batteries. "HB 25-11 97 has 2 goals. The first is to enhance the safety of e bike riders, particularly for those riders who are under the age of 16," Representative Smith told the committee. She said dealers, parents and manufacturers raised concerns during stakeholder meetings and that the new text resulted from that outreach.

The amendment adopted by the panel does three main things: it adds a statutory definition clarifying that a vehicle modified so it no longer meets a legal e-bike class is excluded from the e-bike definitions; it prohibits selling a vehicle that is falsely labeled as a class 1,…