Stop e-bikes before they kill and maim again

As e-bikes kill and maim ever more innocents, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York lawmakers still refuse to crack down.

Last week’s City Council hearing was an epic fiasco, as members burned hours in mindless back-and-forth with city officials and then skipped out as the public got a chance at the mic — basically ignoring the regular New Yorkers who’d come out to testify to their serious personal harm.

Those stories are heartbreaking. 

As e-bikes kill and maim ever more innocents, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York lawmakers still refuse to crack down. Gregory P. Mango

An e-bike ran down Tonette Rivera of Brooklyn when she was 20 weeks pregnant; she spent two months in the hospital, gave birth prematurely and then saw her infant son spend three months in a neonatal ICU — and, on top of the medical horror, the calamity crushed her financially. 

An e-bike accident that left her right side permanently paralyzed ended the career of cellist Pamela Manasse — whom the mayor dodged when she raised the issue on his WNYC call-in last month. 

And beyond the 17,000-plus New Yorkers injured in e-bike collisions since 2019, per NYPD data, are the 133 killed. 

The first-ever death from a horse-drawn carriage instantly renewed calls to ban that whole industry, yet progressives (including the ones who run the Central Park Conservancy) won’t even call to ban e-bikes in the parks.

Instead, the pols duck and dodge.

The likes of City Councilman Shaun Abreu bemoan the corporate greed of Amazon, DoorDash etc. which apparently force drivers to run over little old ladies in order to deliver more quickly. . .  but never the bikers themselves.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks onstage at CultureCon 2026 in New York, on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. Getty Images

Why? Because so many e-bikers are illegal immigrants, who progressives have decided must never ever be jailed or imprisoned lest it make them too easy for the feds to detain and deport.

That’s why the mayor ordered the NYPD to back off e-bike enforcement back in March.

To be clear, it’s not just the sacred status of “the undocumented” that leaves the pols so afraid to act: The elitist anti-car lobby has convinced itself that e-bikes are a huge win for the cause, so it opposes any and all reasonable regulation.

Yet that’s the obvious answer: Have the state require licensing and insurance for e-bike drivers, while the state or city can mandate registration and license plates for the bikes themselves.

Set real penalties, jail and fines, for scofflaws — with firm NYPD enforcement.

Every day that this abdication on public safety continues, the risk increases of more tragedies like those that befell Tonnette Rivera and Pamela Manasse.  

It’s a citywide issue; it cuts across race and class and geography.

The big question: When will our mayor and the council progressives, who claim to fight for all New Yorkers, stop fighting against them?