While MInneapolis’ mayor Betsy Hodges has spent four years diffusing her efforts over a bewildering jumble of social-justice virtue-signals, the poor woman will never top the list of “Mayors with Bizarre Priorities” list while New York’s Bill DiBlasio is in office.
Hizzoner’s latest target? In a city with rising crime, infrastructure that’s crumbling faster than an Alka-Seltzer tablet in a glass of Seven-Up, and a financial situation that is rapidly decaying, DiBlasio is…
…confiscating electric bicycles – which are booming in popularity, especially among delivery riders for stores and restaurants; they are in fact the most efficient way of navigating the most street-space-starved city in America:
On Thursday, de Blasio announced the nation’s largest city would start fining restaurants in addition to operators, expanding and formalizing a style of broken-windows policing favored by the NYPD, which has confiscated 900 e-bikes this year. His justification? E-bikes are “just too dangerous,” the mayor said at a press conference.
How dangerous are they? Nearly 70 pedestrians (and 13 cyclists) have been killed by cars, trucks, and buses in New York City this year. No one has been killed by a bicycle. As for e-bikes in particular? The NYPD has no data on e-bike accidents or complaints. Nor does the city have any information about how the crackdown affects restaurants or riders. De Blasio was acting on instinct: The crackdown began when a local cyclist, Matthew Shefler, called into his radio show to complain.
Slower, more expensive deliveries; more congestion; yet another handicap for small business, even the ones that don’t get fined.
Betsy has some huge shoes to fill in the “bizarre priorities” deparatment.
Haven’t you heard about all the times those lithium batteries blow up, killing ten or twelve people in the conflagaration? Man, why don’t guys read the papers anymore?
Seriously, the nastiest things I can say about e-bikes are that (a) they allow people to pretend they’re active when they’re not and (b) I’d be really nervous about paying an extra two or three grand for the motors and batteries to wear out quickly.
Mitch, you’re not nearly cynical enough. Whom do e-bikes harm? Taxi cabs and their well-moneyed owners. deBlasio is playing to those who pay, and it’s not the citizens of NYC.
Sounds like 5th Amendment violations to me.
If the trend in NYC is to go e-bike I’d hold out for a “LiveWire” (Harley electric motorcycle). 74 HP and 0 – 60 MPH in ~ 4 seconds. It’d be fun to see De Blasio’s reaction to that on the city steets!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuhPZTrSmBw
“The NYPD has no data on e-bike accidents or complaints.” We don’t need no stinkin’ data.
One of the radio talkers had a MnDOT honcho on lecturing us yokels on not using our cell phones in the car ’cause it’s double secret dangerous according to the Insurance Industry lab tests. When a caller asked if there was data correlating actual car cell phone usage over the last 20 years (off the chart growth) with actual miles driven over the the last 20 years (also significant growth) with accidents per mile driven (down significantly) said honcho questioned why the caller denied (like a Holocaust denier!!) the Insurance Industry Science! that on their test track and in the lab, drivers on phones don’t react as quickly as they would if they weren’t on the phone. Radio talker of course clipped the caller as said radio station has numerous Insurance Industry advertisers as well as likes to feature state transport officials and the first rule of radio talkers is to make the host/station/guests/advertisers look good regardless the reality.
I’d almost be willing to lay real money on Nerd’s hypothesis being correct.
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Not to defend DeBlasio, but Mike Bloomberg banned ebikes in 2013. Current mayor is just going after employers of delivery workers that use them.