NYC Drivers Who Run Red Lights Get Tickets. E-Bike Riders Get Court Dates

Yea I partly agree I guess. I am a cyclist in NYC and there are definitely "e-bikes" that present more like motorcycles and people drive them over the Queensboro Bridge bike path which is like 3 feet wide. It's crazy. I'm surprised I don't see more streaks of blood on the concrete there to be honest.

So I would like to see better e-bike laws that make it illegal to have a machine that's too heavy and/or fast, and to issue court summonses to people operating those machines in bike lanes. That seems fair. It's a clear hazard, it's a selfish use of resources, and if everyone did it they'd just close the bike path altogether because it'd become unusable.

Having said that, that's not what the city is doing. They're fixated on cyclists running red lights and stop signs, not distinguishing between different kinds of bikes. Bikes, and e-bikes, are safer than cars for everyone around them. We want to encourage people to bike more and drive less because they're so much safer. (Remember a bike isn't like a car -- if a cyclist hits a pedestrian, they're gonna get hurt too!) For this reason, many states allow bikes to treat red lights as stop signs and stop signs as yield signs. So NYC's sudden shift in policy, to me, feels backwards.

It sucks because if safety was really the major concern the mayor could have just built more and safer bike lines -- which was what he promised to do, made a plan to do, and then just didn't.

I'm not rabidly pro-bike like some HN posters, but I'm at least in favor of the concept.

But I would exhort city bikers and e-bikers, I know it feels convenient to flip back and forth between being a "car" and a "pedestrian" at a whim, but please don't. You're generally supposed to be a "car", at least where I live. And the step where you were a pedestrian a moment ago and just come wandering into my lane because you're a "car" now is probably about the most dangerous thing you do on a daily basis. Pick a lane, literally and metaphorically.

I'm aware of this issue so I'm watching you like a hawk if you're doing this, but I'd advise against betting that everyone else is watching that well. That ped->car transition is very rough on everyone around you.

I'll also agree that cars need to be a lot more aware of bikes in general, but this particular issue is definitely on the bikers.

Trains are much more dangerous than cars (bigger, harder to stop, even trams) but I don’t worry about them as much, because they rarely leave the rails and they’re easy to predict.

Cars are much more dangerous than bikes, but they rarely leave the lanes, travel in (mostly) known directions - though I’ve learned from experience to always look both ways even on one-way streets.

Bikes aren’t that terribly dangerous (though a pedestrian hit by an e-bike at 28 mph can be killed), but they’re entirely unpredictable and seeming appear as if by magic from directions you wouldn’t think possible.

And here's my problem. Lives saved/taken is not the only dichotomy present, yet that is the one focused on my proponents for ebikes.

Injuries sustained is much more difficult to quantify yet it's the more interesting comparison. The article says the ratio is 120 to 1 of lives taken by cars vs ebikes. I think that is because a car accident is significantly more likely to kill the pedestrian rather than only injure them. I would be interested in reading how many pedestrians are injured at all by other people's ebikes vs other people's cars.

> The comparison around deaths is only useful if those figures are primarily car deaths caused by running red lights.

I don't know about the UK or US, but here in France, the majority of pedestrians killed each year die on "protected" crossings. So whether those are traffic lights or "zebra" crossings, yes, that's a very major source of accidents.

Addendum:

Would love to see per-modality statistics on this for UK/US. Here in France, the preliminary stats for 2024 look like this:

https://masto.bike/system/media_attachments/files/114/521/93...

The table shows the deaths per modality (leftmost column, "tués") and in collision with which modality they were killed (and "sans tiers" for "no counterparty").

Needless to say, cars and trucks are dominating the "who kills the most people" contest, far outweighing their percentage in transport usage.

Source: https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/sites/default/fi...

> I feel like the most sensible policy is requiring licenses for e-bikes above a certain power level (not easy!)

It’s already the case in the EU and the UK. An e-bike is limited to 250 W and 15.5 mph (25 km/h). Above that it’s a speedbike and require a license, helmet, insurance, licence plate, and cannot use cycle lanes.

Also, actual e-bikes aren’t that much heavier than normal city bikes, maybe 5 kg extra.

The context, stated in the article, is "crackdown on unsafe cyclists". This is in part an intervention.

In Washington DC last year, people finally were fed up with all the psycho moped riders zipping around. When the police investigated, the said the city only had 150 registered mopeds, which were most likely not the offending vehicles. So they took trucks around the city and checked every moped, seized 500 on sight, and arrested 129 people. These were unregistered (a crime/misdemeanor), and they were all operated by unauthorized immigrants.

The response from a DC "community organizer"? "It's an education issue".

By the way, they never bothered enforcing electric bikes/scooters, and they don't need a license or helmets.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/investigations/dc-police-...

> I feel like the most sensible policy is requiring licenses for e-bikes above a certain power level (not easy!) and then bringing parity to the treatment of cars vs e-bikes after that

Au contraire, it is fairly easy.

Around here, e-vehicles are classified according to weight, power amd max speed. These parameters define where and how you can use them, what features are required, what protective gear is required and what licenses or insurance are required to operate them.

https://www.traficom.fi/en/transport/road/electric-personal-...

They are giving court dates to (regular) cyclists, they are harsher on bikes than cars, and they are stopping cyclists at a higher rate than they stop drivers of cars.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/04/18/exclusive-cops-writin...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/05/02/policy-change-nypd-wi...

If the police don't care about the difference, why do you?

If an e-bike meets the legal standard for being a bike and using the bike lanes, that seems like the right place for them to be. If the law needs to change, we have processes to change the laws.

Same for the Amazon ones. They either are or aren't bikes/are or aren't eligible for the bike lanes.

"not the intended use of the bike lanes" doesn't have the same force and certainty of "not allowed to use the bike lanes by statute".

I think you're confused about what this article is about. Which law are you pointing to when you say "its position that these laws are bad"?

Because you're talking about ebikes on bike lanes, but this article is entirely about court cases vs traffic tickets for red light violations. It mentions bike lanes only offhand as evidence of general trends.

Remember Casey Neistat's film about being ticketed for going around an obstacle in the bike lane? NYC uses the public as a for-profit revenue source and will extract it from the weakest people.

Certainly it is a much more serious offense to run a red light in a car than on any kind of bicycle (also electric bicycle, limited to some speed like 15mph or similar).

I'm also in Brooklyn and this is also my experience, though its not just e-bikes, its also gas-powered mopeds. The 2-wheeled motor vehicles treat the sidewalks like a loophole for 1-way streets. A gas-powered moped even honked at me once for being in their way *on the sidewalk*.

I'm all for e-bikes. They're great. We need police to start giving a fuck and ticket people riding on the sidewalk. Even for the ones classified as bicycles, in NYC you're only legally allowed to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk if you are 12 years old or younger.

I can't understand how anybody who's been in Brooklyn can say that you're safe on the sidewalk from cars.

https://old.nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/01/31/85-year-old-drive...

One of many

This is correct. Riding with an actual bicycle in NYC's traffic between cars and buses is rather safe. The delivery E-Bikes on cycle lane and cycle paths are a danger. It is not the speed. I also ride fast on a roadbike. It is the behavior. They pass you without any space on a small cycle lane between walkway and parked cars. Don't expect "On you left" or "On you right".

Which caused this:

https://thevillagesun.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/e-bikes...

PS: I think bicycles and E-Bike shall be not considered as the same type of vehicle. In Austria they distinguish even between roadbikes (can always select safest surface depending on their speed: road, cycle lane, cycle path) and bicycles (should use distinct cycle paths when possible).

Subway fares disproportionately penalize the poor and force them into encounters with police. Transit should be free.

> why are drivers of automobiles not getting this treatment?

FTA

> “Since e-bikes do not require a license, drivers of e-bikes can simply ignore their traffic summons with no repercussions whatsoever, making any enforcement futile,” the police spokesperson said. However, the new requirement that cyclists appear in court, or face an arrest warrant if they fail to, creates “a strong incentive to show up in court.”

To answer the “why not do this to drivers?” question, the answer is arguably that the enforcement mechanisms for drivers were more effective than the enforcement mechanisms for bikes. Whether or not this justifies what they’re doing is another question.

What was your desired outcome from talking to the police about that? The job of the police is to enforce the laws as they are, not pick and choose which laws they care about. The fact of the matter is, what you are describing is illegal. If you want that changed, you need to talk to politicians, not police. That's like complaining to a cashier about grocery prices.

You're looking for "Idaho stop"

I don't accept that bicyclists are safe when they run red lights, cute name for the practice or not. Red light means stop until green.

The red-light-running bicyclist blows past the stopped traffic that just had to safely navigate getting around the bicyclist occupying a vehicular travel lane, only to be forced to do it all over again.

From the other side:

I live in Ireland, and own a class 3 e-bike. (That is, with motor assist up to 45kmph)

That’s legal here, though in practice power limits mean I don’t get above 35-38 kmph unless the wind is on my back. However, the law states that I cannot use the bike lane; I must take the car lane at all times.

I do that, of course, except when someone tries to run me off the road. I’ve been stopped twice by the police, though they weren’t sure what to do about me; one asked me to keep up with the traffic please. Right…

In practice I cause traffic jams every time I cycle to work, but on the bright side nobody is going to miss my existence.

> I've spoken with Cambridge MA bicycle police about this (who've been issuing warnings to cyclists doing this) and they were willfully obstinate and disingenuous to the point I wondered if they'd ever ridden a bicycle before.

So what is a bicycle police if not one that rides a bike?

being a pro-bike activist in a very car-friendly french city, this argument comes up in every. single. comment section. no matter whether there's anything related to actual bikes in there, or whether accidents were the topic at all. Literally in comments on articles like "hey we're organizing a bike ride for kids this weekend."

So forgive me if it's a bit hard to take this seriously. I'll still try to address this because for once I'm not handicapped by my lacking French. :D

The reason you don't feel as threatened by cars as you are by bikes is (without knowing you in person) twofold:

1. As societies, being collectively used to cars and accepting things we'd never accept in any other context when things relate to cars. Search the webs for "motonormativity" if you want the slightly more academic take on this. Since you were a kid, you were probably taught how to "co-"inhabit the road with cars. I put the quotes there because in most places, it's really cars who inhabit, and everyone else who's accepted onto the road, provided they don't impede on drivers' comfort.

2. Infrastructure is built in most places to more or less cleanly segregate pedestrians from cars. There's nothing stopping us from doing the same for bikes and pedestrians, but in most places we don't. Even though inside cities bikes can and do often move faster than cars, and therefore have a higher speed differential wrt pedestrians, their infrastructure is often woefully inadequate to deal with this. Here in southern france they even often put bikes explicitly on the sidewalk, which comes down to a "no biking" policy. Even where bike lanes are put in place, they're often ill-conceived. It turns out, the bike/pedestrian interaction in traffic is not at all the same as the car/pedestrian interaction. The Netherlands and other places have decades of experience in this by now, yet somehow this knowledge is not actively pulled by hesitant local authorities.

I was already quite interested in all of this but recently I also read "Movement" by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet [1] and I loved it. If you're wondering why certain things in cities suck so hard, IMHO it's a good start.

[1]: https://islandpress.org/books/movement

edit: had swapped "cars" and "bikes" in one sentence, that made no sense. :D

But how much of that is rooted in some kind of motonormativity where one as a pedestrian just "accepts" all the drawbacks of car infrastructure (like not being allowed to cross a street where you want), but then ignoring how cyclists often are forced to share space with pedestrians etc? Aka, you don't get into the conflicts with cars at all, because you're trained to allow the car most of the space and act subservient to them. (But I do think your feelings are off, most stats would show cars are the big offenders, but still, feelings are important and everyone should feel safe in the city)

To me, many of the pedestrian <=> cyclist conflicts are due to bad infrastructure and a prioritization of cars, having cyclists and pedestrians forced to share or accept bad solutions.

Street lights are for the benefits of cars. To me they should all be just pedestrian crossings where cars have to yield. Pedestrians should be top on the totem pole, and should be able to walk in the city as they please. Having to wait to cross is just a way to increase the throughput of cars, forcing you to press the "begging button". And here's some of the issue as well. If it was only cyclists and pedestrians, we wouldn't need red lights. But how it's built today doesn't take into account that cyclists can pass safely through an intersection if it weren't for the cars. So it feels almost like an affront to you when you have to stop due to the infrastructure being tailored for someone else.

I never bomb through a red light myself, as I said, I prioritize pedestrians above cyclists, but I do understand why it's happening. More ticketing or "enforcement" won't help, as it doesn't solve the underlying issue:

Cities are prioritizing cars, when it should prioritize humans.

Operative word is "felt"

200 people are injured by cars in NYC every single day.