The Automobile Association is pushing for a major overhaul of the rules covering electric bikes and scooters, warning that the current settings have been left behind by battery technology and are now creating a public safety headache that police cannot easily enforce.
Speaking on RNZ’s Checkpoint programme on Wednesday evening, the AA’s principal policy adviser Terry Collins said the existing framework offered very little clarity for riders, councils or police, and undermined both compliance and public confidence in the system.
Under the current rules, a low powered electric bicycle is defined as one with a motor of less than 300 watts. That cap dates back to a time when 300 watts was roughly enough to keep a rider pedalling along at about 30 kilometres per hour. Crucially, the law contains no separate speed limit on the bike itself, because the assumption was that the modest motor output would naturally cap the speed.
That assumption has now been overtaken by what is actually available for sale. Collins told Checkpoint that anyone with an internet connection could buy bikes claiming 9 kilowatts of motor power, which is 30 times the legal limit, along with e-scooters marketed as reaching 120 kilometres per hour. Some of these machines are visually almost identical to a compliant entry level e-bike, making roadside policing extremely difficult.
“What we’ve seen is the battery technology is allowing us to have much bigger, more powerful motors for these bicycles, so they’re bigger, heavier, more powerful and they go way quicker than what the old ones used to do,” Collins said. “As we get better at building these batteries for electric vehicles they’re going to go for longer distances and they’re going to go faster, so we really need to get a solution sorted out now, because if we don’t more accidents are going to happen.”
The AA’s preferred fix is to carve out a new class of vehicle, somewhere between a pushbike and a moped, that captures the heavier and faster electric machines without forcing them through the full warrant of fitness and certification regime that applies to cars and motorbikes. Once a rider crossed into that class, however, they would be expected to follow the broader land transport rulebook covering speed, alcohol limits, turn signals and similar obligations.
“I think if we set up what would be known as a class of vehicle that may not have to go through all those rigorous requirements of certification and warrants of fitness, but because they’re classed as a vehicle then the riders of them are subject to other land transport rules around use of a vehicle, around speed rules, use of alcohol, turn signals, that would be the expectation of the riders of these devices,” Collins said.
He argued that focusing enforcement on rider behaviour, rather than trying to police the technology inside the battery casing, was likely to produce better real world outcomes. “How do you visually inspect that a bike is only 300 watts in power? You can’t. A lot of them look very similar to each other, yet they have a completely different power ratio and speeds they can attain. I say by trying to moderate the behaviours of the driver, as opposed to setting standards around the technology, we’ll probably have a better outcome.”
The push comes at a time when councils across the country are trying to work out what to do about e-scooters and e-bikes on footpaths, shared paths and cycleways. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have all wrestled with shared path conflicts, while smaller centres are now seeing the same machines turn up on their seaside promenades and rail trails. Tourism operators report that some of the high powered imports are being marketed deliberately to visitors who want a near motorbike experience without needing a licence.
Hospital emergency departments and the Accident Compensation Corporation have flagged a steady climb in injury claims tied to electric mobility devices over recent years, with head injuries, lower limb fractures and pedestrian collisions all featuring. Helmet wearing on e-scooters in particular remains patchy, in part because riders treat them more like pushbikes than mopeds.
The AA’s submission is not a call for a ban. Collins was clear that low powered, genuinely 300 watt machines used as a commuting or short trip option are not the problem. The lobby’s concern is the long tail of imported devices whose actual specifications bear little resemblance to the legal definition, and which can outpace urban traffic without their riders ever needing to demonstrate any knowledge of the road rules.
Any rewrite of the framework would fall to the Minister of Transport and the New Zealand Transport Agency, working alongside police and local councils that handle bylaws on footpath and cycleway use. A change of vehicle classification would also need to fit alongside existing rules for mopeds, which already require registration, a licence and a helmet, but which start at higher engine sizes than the typical e-bike.
For now, the practical reality is that a rider on a quiet suburban street might be passed by a machine that looks like a child’s first bike but accelerates like a small motorbike, with no warrant, no registration, no licence test and no easy way for a police officer to tell which side of the legal line the rider is on.
What do you think? Should high powered e-bikes and e-scooters be reclassified as vehicles, with the road rules that go with it, or are the current settings about right? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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