How many New Yorkers have to get killed or seriously injured by rampaging e-bike riders before the political class stops protecting them?
A group of e-bike victims, backed by Staten Island City Councilman Frank Morano and centrist policy outfit NYC Common Sense, is suing the city over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s insane decision to end criminal enforcement against e-bikes and their riders.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch launched that crackdown last year to stem the rising tide of deadly e-bike lawlessness, explaining the need in these pages: “When it comes to traffic safety, compliance is not optional” — but it effectively is optional unless scofflaws get criminal summonses, because the penalty for not showing up in traffic court is losing your license, but e-bikes don’t require licenses.
Mamdani ignored that reality in March when he ordered the NYPD to back off, claiming it was about fairness, because other motorists don’t face criminal summons for traffic violations.
What about fairness for the victims?
E-bikes are a serious menace, as a recent NYU-Langone study shows. Data from the Bellevue emergency room show that:
- Crashes as a share of bike and scooter trauma more than quintupled from 2018 to 2023.
- They now account for nearly 7% of all trauma admissions.
- One‑third of e-bike crash patients (mostly the pedestrians) suffered traumatic brain injuries.
But killed or maimed by street crime don’t count as victims for progressives and Democratic Socialists; their sympathies are reserved for the perps who suffer for breaking the law.
Indeed, far-left City Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-B’klyn) explained the progs’ true gripe with criminal e-bike ticketing: “A delivery worker missing a stop sign shouldn’t get swept up in deportation proceedings.”
That is, many of the scofflaws are illegal immigrants doing delivery work; criminal charges render them prime candidates for deportation — as they should.
It’s one thing for the city to shield people who’ve broken the law to come here but done nothing else wrong, entirely another to protect them again when they’re breaking basic public-safety laws.
And crazier still to shield an entire class of perps just to coddle the illegal immigrants among them.
If progs actually cared about public safety but wanted to shield illegals, there’s an easy alternative: Require licensing for e-bikes, so that riders have real reason to obey the rules of the road.
Or support Priscilla’s Law — named for Priscilla Loke, killed by an e-bike driver in 2023 — to require license plates and registration for the e‑bikes themselves.
But lefties have blocked it in in both the Legislature and the City Council because . . . why?
Well, the anti-car fanatics at plugged-in lobby Transportation Alternatives don’t like it, because they privilege everything above automobiles.
Plus, TA got a ton of donations from Amazon, Uber, Lyft and other companies that hire e-bike deliverymen soon after Priscilla’s Law was introduced: The outfit’s pristine reputation on left then helped kill the bill that threatened the firms’ selfish interest.
As it happens, Mamdani hired several top TA officers for his administration; they likely advised him to order Tisch to quit her e-bike crackdown.
“We cannot tolerate these vehicles speeding through traffic, running red lights, ignoring stop signs, driving on the sidewalk and careening through crosswalks,” the commissioner warned in The Post; how obscene that her new political masters disagree.