The complaint is familiar to anyone who drives in Everett in the afternoon: teenagers on electric bikes, some in ski masks, running red lights on Broadway and Ferry Street and weaving through the school dismissal crowds. A post in the Residents of Everett Massachusetts group this week put it bluntly, with a photograph, and drew 23 comments, most of them asking the same two questions. Why the masks, and where are the police.
What the law says an e-bike is
Massachusetts wrote electric bicycles into the motor vehicle law in recent years, and the definitions in General Laws chapter 90, section 1 are specific. An electric bicycle has fully operable pedals and a motor of 750 watts or less. A Class 1 e-bike assists only while the rider is pedaling and cuts out at 20 miles an hour. A Class 2 e-bike can run on the throttle alone but also cuts out at 20. Both are treated like bicycles: no license, no registration, no minimum age in the statute, and they may use bike lanes.
Most of what residents are describing is not that. A bike with a throttle that goes past 20 miles an hour, or a motor over 750 watts, is not an electric bicycle under the statute. Depending on its power and speed it is a motorized bicycle, a motorized scooter or a motorcycle, each of which requires the operator to be at least 16 and hold a license or permit, and each of which is barred from bike lanes and, in the case of a motorcycle, requires registration and insurance. The fat-tire bikes with a fake pedal set and a 40-mile-an-hour top speed that are sold online as e-bikes fall on the wrong side of that line.
What police can do
The enforcement problem is real. A 14-year-old on an unregistered electric motorcycle cannot be cited the way a driver can, police departments are reluctant to chase teenagers on two wheels for good reason, and the bikes are sold with no requirement that the buyer understand which category they fall into. Some departments have started confiscating illegal bikes at the scene and returning them only to a parent. Everett has not announced a policy, and we have asked the Everett Police Department what it is doing and how many e-bike crashes it has recorded this year.
Parents buying one of these for a child should look at two numbers on the listing: watts and top speed. Over 750, or over 20, and the child is operating a vehicle that legally requires a license the child cannot hold.