Reckless e-bikers are a menace heres how the NYPD is cracking down

Every New Yorker understands how frightening it is to jump out of the way as an e-bike drives on the sidewalk, or to pull their kids back as one barrels through a busy crosswalk.Over the past few years, e-bikes have become commonplace in communities across our city.These motorized vehicles are convenient, but they are also fast, heavy and can be extremely dangerous.What’s more, the rapid proliferation of e-bikes has not been met with any meaningful governance of their safe use — until now.Operating any vehicle, including an e-bike, on a city street comes with certain responsibilities.Chief among them is following the very basic rules of the road — and when it comes to traffic safety, compliance is not optional.So to increase safety on our roadways, the New York City Police Department is stepping up enforcement on 14 high-traffic, high-volume e-bike corridors throughout the city, including Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan.Officers are focusing on peak morning and evening hours, and targeting serious e-bike traffic violations such as reckless driving, wrong-way riding, disobeying red-light signals, disobeying traffic control devices and failure to stop at stop signs.And to make our enforcement more effective, these especially dangerous violations are now issued as criminal court summonses, or “c-summonses.” Previously, such infractions were eligible for traffic court summonses, or “b-summonses” — but a loophole in the system rendered those tickets essentially worthless.When vehicle drivers fail to respond to a traffic summons, their licenses can be suspended.

But e-bikes do not require any license, so their operators can simply ignore a traffic summons with virtually no meaningful repercussions.Now, we’re closing that loophole by issuing c-summonses —the only real option available under the law to hold reckless e-bike operators accountable.As always, we are open to working with lawmakers on effective alternatives....