A bureaucratic slip created Australia's e-bike crisis

WHEN AUSTRALIA'S e-bike boom turns out to have been a public-safety failure, it will not be because regulators were malicious. It will be because they deregulated quietly, in 2021, then spent five years trying to catch up.

That is the uncomfortable story behind the spate of new e-bike laws sweeping Australia. In Queensland, parliament passed sweeping amendments on June 5th, World Bicycle Day, that for the first time allow police to randomly breath-test e-bike riders, impose a learner's-licence requirement for those over 16, and authorise the seizure and destruction of illegal machines. New South Wales has given officers the power to crush illegally modified bikes and is proposing to halve the maximum power output for legal e-bikes to 250 watts, with anti-tampering provisions. At the federal level, Transport Minister Catherine King announced last November that import rules will be brought back in line with the European standard, EN 15194, which caps motor power at 250 watts, limits assisted speed to 25km/h, and includes anti-tampering protocols.

The laws look like a crackdown. They are, in part, a cleanup.

E-bikes are useful. They are cheaper than cars, emissions-free in use and, in sprawling suburbs, often the quickest way to cover the distance that a regular bicycle makes tedious. Their appeal has nothing to do with trends and everything to do with economics. As fuel prices rise and household budgets tighten, more Australians are treating e-bikes as a practical transport alternative rather than a recreational purchase.

But the problem is not e-bikes as a category. It is the quality of what has been allowed onto Australian streets, and the gap between what is legal and what is riding. Under Australia's national standard, a compliant e-bike must have a continuous-rated motor of no more than 250 watts, assist only while the rider is pedalling, and cut motor assistance at 25km/h. Throttles are permitted only for a walk-assist mode at speeds up to 6km/h. That is the European-derived EPAC standard, and it is reasonable enough. A 250-watt pedal-assist bike is mechanically close to a conventional bicycle, albeit a heavier and faster one.

The reason the problem is worse than it needed to be is a change few noticed in 2021. Then-Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Barnaby Joyce, along with Assistant Minister Kevin Hogan, amended the Road Vehicle Standards Act to remove the requirement for e-bikes entering Australia to meet European safety standards. The change was never debated in parliament; the government described it as "relatively minor in nature" with "minimal regulatory impact". Bicycle Industries Australia, the industry body, did not learn about it for four months.

The effect was the opposite of minimal. Before 2021, the European import standard acted as a filter. After it, importers no longer had to demonstrate that e-bikes met any minimum safety standard or even notify that they were importing e-bikes at all. As Peter Bourke of Bicycle Industries Australia put it, the government effectively said importers need not meet the bicycle standard or the e-bike standard. The result was a flood of high-powered, non-compliant machines - many far exceeding the 25km/h speed limit - entering the country alongside legitimate products.

E-bike imports rose from around 55,000 units in 2017/18 to roughly 350,000 in 2024/25, with a spike to 400,000 during the pandemic. Annual sales jumped from approximately 9,000 units in 2017 to an estimated 254,000 in 2025. These are not the numbers of a fad. They are the numbers of a transport mode that has taken hold.

The injuries follow the same trajectory. St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney treated double the amount of injured patients from e-bike incidents compared with 2024 figures, with 200 people with e-bike injuries that required a trauma team response and 10 per cent requiring intensive care treatment. In 2023, the hospital recorded just 43. More than half of patients self-reported speeds above 25km/h. New South Wales recorded 233 injuries and four deaths in the first seven months of 2025, already exceeding the 226 total injuries recorded for the whole of 2024. E-bike-related emergency admissions in Victoria have risen by more than 400 per cent since 2020.

The hospital evidence points to a mechanism, not merely a correlation. E-bikes are heavier and faster than regular bicycles. Riders average around 13.3km/h compared with 10.4km/h for conventional cyclists. That extra speed, combined with the machines' weight, means more kinetic energy in every collision. International data from the Netherlands, China, Switzerland and Israel show a consistent pattern: e-bike riders face a higher risk of death per kilometre ridden, and their injuries - particularly to the head, spine and lower limbs - are more severe.

To be sure, a good part of the harm comes from rider behaviour. Many of those ending up in emergency departments are riding at night, often without helmets, sometimes under the influence of alcohol. Xavier Sedger, a Sydney carpenter, was in an induced coma for nine days after clipping a bus-stop edge while riding a rental e-bike after drinking. He has no memory of the crash. That is a choice, not a regulation failure. The new Queensland laws that allow breath-testing and impose 0.05 blood-alcohol limits - the same as for drivers - are a direct and appropriate response to this problem.

Yet behaviour alone does not explain the scale of the crisis. A 250-watt pedal-assist bike ridden sober and at legal speed is a far less dangerous proposition than the throttle-equipped, high-speed devices that have flooded the market through the regulatory hole created in 2021. The incentive structure was clear: remove the import filter and every importer with an eye on the margin will sell the most powerful machine the regulations still permit. When the regulations permit almost anything, the result is not a nice product. It is a motorbike on a bicycle frame, ridden by teenagers and commuters who have no training, no licence, no insurance and, often, no helmet.

Queensland's new licensing requirement, which takes effect on August 31st, raises a deeper question. The state is the only in Australia to require a learner's licence to ride an e-bike on a public road. Critics, including the Bicycle Network, argue that this misidentifies the problem: a 250-watt pedal-assist bike is mechanically a bicycle, and no comparable overseas jurisdiction requires a licence for one. The licence requirement burdens law-abiding riders while doing little to stop the illegal, modified machines that caused most of the harm. Both positions have force. Licensing may deter casual riders, but it does nothing about the machines that can exceed 60km/h, which are the ones causing the worst injuries. Queensland has at least paired its licensing rule with seizure powers for prohibited devices - a sign that the government understands the real problem lies in the supply side, not merely the rider.

The better answer starts at the border. The federal government's decision to restore the EN 15194 European standard for imports is the right move. It reinstates the filter that was removed, including its anti-tampering provision, which prevents manufacturers from offering software codes, apps, or controllers that allow consumers to remove speed and power limits. Shipments that do not comply can now be rejected. That is the point at which the supply of illegal machines is easiest to stop.

But import rules are only half the solution. State governments must update their road rules to enforce the new federal standard and give police a clear basis for targeting non-compliant bikes on the road, not just at the border. New South Wales is moving in this direction with its proposed anti-tampering and certification requirements. Other states need to follow. The danger is that without state-level enforcement, the improved import rules will mainly raise prices for compliant bikes while doing little about the stock of illegal machines already on the road.

A second neglected issue is cost. E-bike injuries are not merely a problem for hospitals. They are an emerging liability for insurance schemes. Where e-bike crashes involve motor vehicles, compensation may fall on compulsory third-party insurers or, for catastrophic injuries, on lifetime care schemes. Where they do not, costs may be borne by workers' compensation, private insurance, or the public health system. Australian data on e-bike injuries is still fragmented - e-bike cases are often lumped together with e-scooter and other micromobility injuries - which makes it difficult for regulators to judge the scale of their exposure. As Taylor Fry, an actuarial and analytics consultancy, notes in a recent analysis, the long-term cost of catastrophic e-bike injury care is the hidden bill that no one is budgeting for. The first task is to count it properly.

The broader lesson is not specific to e-bikes. It is about the politics of deregulation. Reducing red tape is a popular aspiration. But when deregulation removes verification without replacing it with something else, the result is not a freer market. It is a race to the bottom on quality, followed by a public-safety crisis, followed by expensive regulation. Australia's e-bike crisis is a textbook example. The 2021 amendment was sold as minor. It turned out to be one of the most consequential regulatory decisions of the decade.

Governments should treat e-bike safety as a problem of standards and enforcement, not of rider policing. Fix the import filter. Enforce it at the border and on the road. Pair it with sensible rules on helmets, alcohol, and speed. Let compliant bikes ride freely. Seize and destroy the illegal ones. The aim is not to make e-bikes inconvenient. It is to make the legal ones safe enough that no one needs to be afraid of them.