Today I’m going to discuss a menace, a scourge, a clear and present danger. I’m not referring to COVID or Donald Trump’s Tuesday announcement that he’s running for President again. I’m talking about the epidemic of E-bikes and scooters on New York City streets, many of them ridden by rushing food delivery drivers. As of the end of August fifteen people had died in E-bike and scooter accidents, and undoubtedly countless more were injured.
An analysis by The City, a digital news platform, found that there were over 1,000 complaints about bikes, scooters and in-line skaters as of October 23rd, half of them coming from Manhattan. That’s a dramatic jump since 2019 when there were less than half as many complaints.
I’ll shortly address how to protect yourself from becoming a victim if you live in the city or plan to visit during the holidays. No, wait. I won’t. Because there’s no way to protect yourself short of being President of the United States traveling in a police motorcade through streets frozen of all traffic. And even then I’m not so sure. Some guy delivering pizza and going the wrong way down a one-way street could conceivably crash into The Beast, the Presidential armoured limousine, before anyone could do anything about it.
I grew up in New York City. I take pride in my street smarts. I smirk at tourists who stand haplessly on street corners obeying traffic signals and wait for the light to change. To true New Yorkers wait and go stop lights aren’t commands, they’re suggestions meant to be ignored. When Rudy Giuliani was mayor he tried to crack down on jaywalkers and there was an uproar. It was a premonition of his autocratic adjacent instincts and self-destructive impulses. No red-blooded New Yorker paid any attention. Crossing against the light and living to tell about it is a proud part of the average New Yorker’s cultural patrimony. The city would grind to a halt, nothing would ever get accomplished, if people waited for the light to change.
But even native New Yorkers are powerless against the threat from E-bikes. Let me attempt to explain why; though it I could I probably wouldn’t suffer several brushes with death on an average day. There are now dedicated bike lanes on many of the city’s avenues. They’re occupied by bicycles, both people’s private bikes and those belonging to the Citi bike bike-sharing program, as well as skateboards, unicycles, whatever traveling at a relatively safe rate of speed.
By a safe rate of speed I mean that they’re moving slow enough that you can conceivably jump out of the way and back onto the curb if you see one coming. But E-bikes travel in the same lanes at up to almost thirty miles an hour. They’re guided missiles. Well, you might ask, why don’t you politely wait on the curb for the light to change instead of being macho man and flirting with devastating physical injury or death by trying to cross a bike lane?
I’m glad you asked me that question. A few days ago I was crossing the street with friends as we saw an E-bike deliveryman approaching at a high rate of speed. We did what New Yorkers do in such a scenario. We started to panic and pray and assume whatever defensive position was available to us. But this guy did the unexpected. The bike lane signal turned yellow and then red – bike lanes have their own set of signals at certain intersections with a picture of a classic bicycle – and the driver actually obeyed. He slowed down and came to a halt.
His behavior was almost unprecedented. None of us, nor the other pedestrians waiting to cross the street, could believe it. We almost broke into applause. If there’d been more time we would have probably taken up a collection, gone into the nearest deli, and bought him a corned beef sandwich.
But here’s why you can’t protect yourself. Because these kamikazes can come at you from any direction. There’s no guarantee that if you’re peering down say, Third Avenue, a northbound boulevard, that an E-bike isn’t heading southbound, or eastbound or westbound at a high rate of speed. Or on the sidewalk for that matter. Sometimes they’re traveling in bike lanes. Sometimes they’re ducking in and out of car, truck ambulance, police car and fire engine traffic. Often, and by often I mean almost always, they’re approaching the final few feet to their delivery destination on the sidewalk.
A few weeks ago I was standing on my corner with a bunch of well-groomed older ladies about to cross the street and waiting politely for the light to change. The air was filled with their congeniality and small talk, when a guy riding his e-bike the wrong way almost crashed into them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the women didn’t discover skid marks on her skirt.
There’s a scene in the movie Animal House, at least in my mind’s eye, when the members of fraternity Delta Tau Chi are about to pull some dirty but entirely justifiable act of sabotage on the stuck-ups at snooty rival Omega Theta Pi at the Faber College homecoming parade. “Bluto,” played by John Belushi, assumes a catlike crouch and performs a 360-degree military style surveillance of the area. That’s what I feel I need to do to protect myself on an average New York City street these days.
But, I’m too self-conscious to risk looking like a fool. Besides, there’s absolutely no guarantee I’ll be any safer than if I just blithely cross the street without looking. Now I’m waiting for drones to enter the game. The only saving grace of the current situation is that the threat isn’t coming from above.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
