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Say NO to Mandatory E-Bike License Plates and Registrations [California]
(bikeeastbay.org)
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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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Honestly, bicycles should have license plates, period. They may not be as dangerous as cars, but they can still be very dangerous. And considering an unfortunate number of cyclists see themselves as above the law, it's necessary. And honestly, I would have absolutely no problem with registering my bike, as long as the process isn't overly complicated.
I wouldn't consider 100x less dangerous to be "very dangerous". And this is just another step to get us used to the burgeoning police and surveillance state. I say fuck no to that.
Unlicensed cyclists injure hundreds of people per year in the perfidious Albion alone, especially children and people over 65.
Less lethal doesn't mean non-lethal. All wheeled vehicles are dangerous, and must be regulated.
Now compare to the number of injuries caused by cars. Not that data from another country is all that relevant.
Who the fuck said anything about cars? Car drivers being maniacal murderous bastards doesn't give cyclists a license to be equally abhorrent.
In any case, you need a test and a license to drive a car, even in the USA, and the car needs a license plate, same as any other vehicle should, bicycles included.
As for the data, it was just the first article I found, but it's easy to extrapolate to get a bare minimum for a lawless uncivilised shithole like the USA.
The commenter in the chain you're replying to? Do you even read the context before firing off angry replies like this?
In the USA, car is the default form of transit. If you make alternatives, like e-bikes, more difficult to access, some number of people will switch to driving. Because cars are far, far more dangerous than bicycles, those switchers will create a large increase in injuries and deaths. So you cannot ignore that factor when discussing overall safety.
And when you are placing legal restrictions on people, you are targeting people with police violence. As such, you have an obligation to prove the proposed change will help more than it hurts. Given the issues I just outlined, and the chart I shared above, I think it's fairly obvious that is not the case here.
Something else being much more dangerous doesn't make that first thing less dangerous. Otherwise, why worry about rail safety then, for instance? Taking the train is also somewhere around 100x less dangerous than driving (and I'm pretty sure if you evaluated the statistics the way they are in your picture, it would be well more than 100 times less dangerous).
Add to that, just because it doesn't kill you, doesn't mean it's not dangerous. Injuries are also something that are, well, not good, especially when it's caused by other people's recklessness.
And let's not mix up licensing and surveillance. You get a surveillance state when that information is then used to track you where you go (see flock cameras). Otherwise you could make the same argument that cars shouldn't have license plates, either.
The entire purpose of license plates is to enable surveillance. I don't know how you can't see that.
No one is against safety. But this bill makes us less safe rather than more by entrenching car transportation as the default mode, which is far far more dangerous than any e-bike ever could be. If there are ways to improve safety that don't have this effect then let's talk about it, but it can't impose onerous bureaucratic hurdles on ordinary, law abiding cyclists. That's a non-starter.
So are you arguing that cars shouldn't have license plates, either? Because if the point of license plates is to enable surveillance, then that would apply to cars, as well.
Cars are much, much more dangerous, and the system of surveillance already exists, so that's not a fight worth getting into right now. Once we've solved the issue of street safety, which, frankly, license plates have done little to mitigate, it would probably be appropriate to eliminate them.
Although honestly maybe there is a stronger case to be made against them because we're having this debate right now. The fact that people are required to give up their privacy and autonomy simply to get around makes them much more likely to accept further concessions in areas where the safety benefits are far less obvious.
Lol licensing. You mean paper surveillance. Fucking clownshoes
It's fun that everyone pushing this position sounds like a fucking retard.
I’ll try to go slow for you.
Did you ever see that movie with the slappy black guy where everyone in the entire world he met was this nightwalking vampire monster but in the end he turned out to be the monster?