Why is Mamdani protecting deadly-reckless e-bike – Latest News
How many New Yorkers should get killed or significantly injured by rampaging e-bike riders earlier than the political class stops protecting them?
A gaggle of e-bike victims, backed by Staten Island City Councilman Frank Morano and centrist coverage outfit NYC Common Sense, is suing the town over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s insane resolution to finish prison enforcement towards e-bikes and their riders.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch launched that crackdown final 12 months to stem the rising tide of lethal e-bike lawlessness, explaining the need in these pages: “When it comes to traffic safety, compliance is not optional” — nevertheless it successfully is optionally available except scofflaws get prison summonses, as a result of the penalty for not exhibiting up in site visitors court docket is shedding your license, however e-bikes don’t require licenses.
Mamdani ignored that actuality in March when he ordered the NYPD to back off, claiming it was about equity, as a result of different motorists don’t face prison summons for site visitors violations.
What about equity for the victims?
E-bikes are a severe menace, as a current NYU-Langone research reveals. 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 practically 7% of all trauma admissions.
One‑third of e-bike crash sufferers (largely the pedestrians) suffered traumatic mind accidents.
But killed or maimed by avenue crime don’t rely as victims for progressives and Democratic Socialists; their sympathies are reserved for the perps who are suffering for breaking the law.
Indeed, far-left City Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-B’klyn) defined the progs’ true gripe with prison 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 unlawful immigrants doing supply work; prison costs render them prime candidates for deportation — as they need to.
It’s one factor for the town to defend people who’ve damaged the law to return right here however carried out nothing else incorrect, completely one other to guard them again after they’re breaking fundamental public-safety legal guidelines.
And crazier nonetheless to defend an whole class of perps simply to coddle the unlawful immigrants amongst them.
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If progs truly cared about public security however needed to defend illegals, there’s an simple different: Require licensing for e-bikes, in order that riders have actual cause to obey the principles of the highway.
Or assist 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 each the Legislature and the City Council as a result of . . . why?
Well, the anti-car fanatics at plugged-in foyer Transportation Alternatives don’t prefer it, as a result of they privilege every part above cars.
Plus, TA acquired a ton of donations from Amazon, Uber, Lyft and different firms that rent e-bike deliverymen quickly after Priscilla’s Law was launched: The outfit’s pristine popularity on left then helped kill the invoice that threatened the corporations’ egocentric curiosity.
As it occurs, Mamdani employed a number of prime TA officers for his administration; they doubtless suggested him to order Tisch to stop 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.
