A follow-up to the News we posted on March 30th -MN woman nearly killed in an e-bike crash is pushing for stricter laws
It wasn't an e-bike that hit her, it was an e-moto.

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From Erik at Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota:

By now, a lot of Minnesotans know Janet Stotko’s story. On August 12, 2024, she went for an evening walk near 15th Street West in Hastings and was struck from behind by a 14-year-old boy traveling at 25 miles per hour. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, a blown eardrum, broken bones in her face and skull, severed nerves, and a brain bleed. She was on a ventilator for two days. She spent three weeks in the hospital. She will never taste or smell again.

It is an awful story. It deserves to be told accurately. It still isn’t.

What the AP Got Wrong — and How It Spread

Last week, the Associated Press published a piece on e-bike safety that opened with Janet Stotko’s crash and described the device that hit her as an “electric bicycle.” That story ran in NBC News, the Mankato Free Press, papers in Florida, Indiana, South Dakota, and dozens of other outlets across the country. The framing is the same everywhere, because it’s the same wire story: a teenager on an e-bike nearly killed a woman in Minnesota.

The device was not an e-bike.

It was a Movcan V60 — an electric motorcycle with a 1,500-watt peak motor, a top speed of 30+ miles per hour, and full throttle capability at any speed. Under Minnesota law, and under the federal definition that more than 36 states have written into their own statutes, an e-bike must have a motor of no more than 750 watts and cannot exceed 28 mph under motor assistance. The Movcan V60 fails both tests by a wide margin.