Assembly Bill 2595 cleared the Legislature almost without dissent — 75-0 in the Assembly, 36-1 in the Senate — and now sits on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk, ready to let San Mateo County bar children under 12 from riding the two slowest, most legally compliant classes of e-bike. The problem, according to the state's own commissioned research, is that those aren't the bikes putting kids in the hospital.

AB 2595, authored by Assemblymember Diane Papan, D-San Mateo, would create a pilot program running through Jan. 1, 2031 that authorizes San Mateo County jurisdictions to prohibit anyone under 12 from operating a Class 1 or Class 2 e-bike — both capped at 20 mph and the two lowest, most compliant classifications. But a December 2025 study the state itself paid for found that the fast machines actually maiming young riders overwhelmingly fall outside those legal classes entirely, meaning the near-unanimous "youth e-bike safety" bill regulates the compliant bikes while the illegal ones ride on untouched.

The mechanics of AB 2595 are modest by design. As detailed by CalMatters' Digital Democracy (external source, opens in a new tab), a local ordinance would open with a two-month grace period; a violation draws only a warning at first, and not until 60 days pass does it become an infraction carrying a $25 fine. A cited child can erase the penalty by finishing an approved safety course. And the ticket does not stop at the kid: under the bill, a parent or guardian shares the fine, held — in the statute's phrase — "jointly and severally liable." The bill as enrolled (external source, opens in a new tab) is now awaiting the governor's signature.

Papan casts the bill as measured rather than punitive. In her statement announcing passage, she said it lets communities respond "thoughtfully and responsibly" and leans on education and what she called data-driven policymaking. The bill backs that framing with a mandate: San Mateo County must report to the Legislature by 2030 on how many traffic stops the ordinance generates, what those stops turn up, and what officers do during them.

Here is the tension nobody said out loud on the floor. A state-commissioned December 2025 study by San Jose State University's Mineta Transportation Institute found that only about 30% of the bikes Bay Area children ride are electric — and of those, only 12% actually met one of California's three legal e-bike classifications (external source, opens in a new tab), as the Press Democrat reported. The other 88% were higher-powered, higher-speed devices — effectively unregistered electric motorcycles that the law does not treat as e-bikes at all. AB 2595 reaches Class 1 and Class 2 bikes. It does not reach the 88%.

That gap is central to the case pro-bike advocates have pressed all year. Streets For All (external source, opens in a new tab), which is tracking the eight e-bike bills moving through Sacramento — sponsoring two, it says, while fighting to amend or oppose six others — argues the Legislature should follow its own commissioned report and go after illegal e-motos rather than the legal, low-speed bikes, a position that cuts directly against pilots like AB 2595. The group says the state "has not adequately documented" the safety problem it is now legislating against, and it is instead backing measures aimed at manufacturers and mislabeled devices.

The bill's supporters are not wrong that something is happening on the trails. April brought a consumer alert from Attorney General Rob Bonta (external source, opens in a new tab), co-signed by San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe along with San Francisco's Brooke Jenkins and Marin's Lori Frugoli, that told parents bluntly: "if it's too fast, it's not an e-bike." That warning points straight at the 88% — the illegal e-motos — not at the pedal-assist Class 1 bikes an 11-year-old rides to soccer practice. The state's own alert, in other words, describes a problem AB 2595 is not built to touch.

AB 2595 does not regulate the manufacturers flooding the market with mislabeled machines, and it does not reach the 88% of fast youth bikes that already sit outside the law. It hands San Mateo County a $25 ticket book, points it at the youngest and slowest riders, and calls the resulting paperwork data. The single senator who voted no is not named in the record; the rest of the Legislature, which waved it through nearly unanimously, will get its answer in 2030, when the county reports back on a program aimed at the wrong bike.