I'm in western NYS these days, so whenever I'm on a functional ebike I'm breaking the law anyway. But I have never stuck to a voltage/speed/power limit for any legal reason. I'm one of those "overvolters", but I believe strongly in behaving like a bicycle if I want to be treated as one. Yesterday I took a ride on the boardwalk and bike trail with my wife to enjoy the sunshine. It was crowded with cyclists, runners, walkers, families with strollers, and the like. On that seven-mile ride, we had an average speed of 9mph. My pack voltage ended up higher than when I started due to using regen to control my speed on the downhill parts. I never got a second glance, from anyone, because I was a bike, where someone expected to see a bike, behaving as a bike was expected to behave.
Now, the machine I lovingly refer to as an "electric deathcycle" is a full suspension 5" travel trail bike, with a 5303 in a 20" wheel in the rear, a commuter bag on the handlebars, and an enormous trunk. It's whacky-looking around here, and people aren't sure what to make of it. It certainly isn't stealth. That said, if I asked someone what it was, nearly everyone would call it a "bike" (though they might also throw in "strange", "crazy", or "odd"). If Denise rode her "bike" on the same path, someone would have called the cops, plain and simple. If I was the cop in question, I might be willing to write the ticket. Even if she was slow and courteous and safe and controlled around all of the pedestrians and their children. She and I would have been just as guilty of breaking the law as I was, to an equal extent. But because her "ebike" looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, I'm gonna call it a duck!
Ebikes that are overvolted and can do >40mph and are crazy powerful aren't the problem at this point, because the people who put the time and effort into building such a machine typically are responsible enough to know when they should and shouldn't use that power. I have no fear of those people making a bad name for ebikes. People riding scooters with token pedals and trying to call them "ebikes", however, will hurt the public perception... especially if they're without a license due to a DUI.