By Robert Hornak
There is a plague that has overtaken New York City and in just about every neighborhood in every borough people feel at risk and that the government is doing nothing about it.
This plague is being caused by the proliferation of unlicensed, unaccountable operators of a variety of two-wheeled “vehicles” that drive recklessly on streets, in bicycle lanes, and even on sidewalks, and often at speeds high enough to seriously injure and even kill pedestrians. This includes bicycles, e-bikes, mopeds, and scooters.
This has been an ongoing problem for years with bicycles, often driven by arrogant, entitled riders who think the law doesn’t apply to them. They screamed for bike lanes on just about every street in the city, then often don’t use them, weaving in and out of car traffic, peddling at high speeds, and ignoring traffic lights and stop signs, putting people at constant risk just for trying to cross a street.
Most people have experienced a close call or worse from a reckless bicyclist. But now, in recent years, we have seen an explosion of people riding e-bikes, electric scooters, and mopeds, mostly driven by delivery drivers who obey none of the traffic laws.
All of these “vehicles” are capable of driving at spends that can seriously injure pedestrians and can often startle and cause problems for drivers of cars that are used to operating safely with other cars but are not prepared for the Evil Knievel-style driving tactics of these unlicensed and often overly competitive operators.
Over Memorial Day weekend a woman walking a dog on the upper east side was the victim of a reckless e-bike rider who hit both her and the dog she was walking, killing the 18-month old pup. The bike operator drove away and when contacted, the NYPD sadly informed the dog’s owner she could not even file a report that a crime had occurred.
As so often happens with liberal policies, the stated objectives are not only not achieved, but things are worse than before.
In 2015 there were 4,433 bicyclist injuries reported with 16 fatalities. After years of building protected bicycle lanes in every borough, reducing the speed limit for autos, putting speed cameras everywhere, and reducing the number of lanes for cars to use forcing them into an orderly, almost parade-like procession moving around the city, those numbers have not decreased, but instead increased. In 2023 there were 4,829 reported bicyclist injuries and a peak of 30 fatalities.
Bicycle activists (yes, that’s a real thing) claim it’s because they don’t have protected bicycle lanes everywhere. But we have them now throughout much of the city. That SHOULD increase safety and cut down on accidents and fatalities in many areas, making the overall numbers go down. But with 27% of bicycle fatalities occurring at intersections, that isn’t something that protected lanes would address, rather cyclists obeying the traffic laws would be a better place to start addressing this problem.
By making cars second class street users and allowing the operators of all these two-wheeled machines think the roads exist for them and that they don’t need to follow the rules, we embolden them to act increasingly recklessly. The incident with the woman’s dog being murdered by a cyclist with not even the pretense that there might be repercussions shows just how off our public policy is here.
It’s time we take this seriously and treat these machines, whether human powered or motorized, like the potential threat they often are. Licensing of all these motorized vehicles is not an option. We must begin that process immediately. Insurance also must be obtained to legally operate these machines. Without that, the NYPD must begin to impound illegal e-bikes and mopeds. Cyclists must be required to have ID and be ticketed for breaking traffic laws.
In nearly every reported crash between a cyclist and a pedestrian, the pedestrian is reported to be injured. This needs to end. NYC must take this problem seriously and start cracking down on the reckless operators of these two-wheeled machines.
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @RobertHornak on X.
