Mamdani’s E-Bike Rollback Puts Ideology Ahead Of Safety

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made a consequential choice about who should bear the risks on New York’s streets.

Since March 27, the NYPD has stopped issuing criminal-court summonses to cyclists and e-bike riders for low-level traffic offenses. Under the policy begun by former Mayor Eric Adams, a rider who ran a red light, ignored a stop sign, traveled against traffic, or disobeyed a traffic-control device could be ordered to appear in Criminal Court. Under Mamdani, riders once again receive ordinary Traffic Violations Bureau tickets.

That may sound like a technical change in paperwork. It is not.

The civil-ticket system has leverage over motorists because drivers have licenses, registrations, and plates. Their violations follow them. They can receive points, lose their licenses, and be identified as repeat offenders.

Legal e-bikes carry none of those identifiers. A rider may receive a fine, but there is no plate attached to the vehicle and often no operating license to suspend. Mamdani therefore eliminated the city’s strongest available consequence without first creating an equally credible system of identification and escalating penalties.

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He did so while New York was confronting growing micromobility risks. And he justified the decision primarily by emphasizing the burden enforcement places on riders rather than the safety and freedom of everyone sharing the streets.

That is the problem — and the larger lesson. Progressive officials increasingly treat enforcement itself as the central injustice. The interests of pedestrians, parents, seniors, responsible cyclists, and law-abiding drivers become secondary. Mamdani’s e-bike rollback is that governing instinct in miniature: consequences disappear today; the promised alternative arrives sometime tomorrow.

The timing could hardly be worse. By April 19, 13 people had died in crashes involving motorized two-wheelers, up from seven over the same period last year — an 86% increase. By July 26, the toll had reached 39, compared with 24 a year earlier — a 63% increase.

Those figures require care. They include riders killed in crashes, not simply pedestrians killed by riders, and they combine e-bikes with scooters, mopeds, motorcycles, and off-road devices.

They also do not prove that Mamdani caused this year’s increase, but they can certainly make it worse. Much of the early rise preceded or closely followed his policy. But they show that New York already had a visible safety problem when Mamdani chose to weaken deterrence.

The legal nuance matters, too. A traffic infraction is not a crime under New York law. A criminal-court summons routes the case through the Criminal Court, requires an appearance, and can result in a warrant if the recipient skips court. What he removed was the court-backed consequence the NYPD had been using for dangerous everyday violations.

Mamdani thinks that is equal treatment. Drivers usually receive civil tickets for comparable violations, he argues, so cyclists and delivery workers should receive the same.

But equal treatment requires equal accountability. Giving two people identical pieces of paper is not equality when one ticket is backed by a license, registration, plate, and driving record while the other is not.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the old civil-ticket system “virtually meaningless” for precisely that reason. Mamdani did not close the accountability gap. He changed the ticket’s color and declared the systems equal.

The latest data demand vigilance, not hysteria. Through July 26, reported e-bike rider injuries were up about 31% year over year, from 438 to 572. E-bike fatalities rose from six to nine. Stand-up scooter and motorcycle deaths also increased, while moped deaths declined. Overall traffic deaths were flat, and pedestrian deaths were down.

A 2026 study examined 914 bicycle- and scooter-injury patients. Roughly one-third suffered traumatic brain injuries, more than two-thirds were admitted, and about 30% required intensive care.

New York does not need indiscriminate punishment. It needs order: civil penalties for first-time minor offenses, reliable rider and vehicle identification, escalating consequences for repeat violations, targeted court enforcement for dangerous or chronic conduct, and aggressive seizures of illegal high-speed devices.

That enforcement should be paired with protected infrastructure, platform accountability, worker training, safeguards against discriminatory stops, and public data that separates e-bikes from mopeds, motorcycles, and scooters.

Compassion for delivery workers and traffic enforcement are not competing values. Compassion without accountability is indulgence — and ordinary New Yorkers absorb the cost.

Public safety is not an ideological inconvenience. It is the first duty of city government. Mamdani should start treating it that way.

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Santiago Vidal Calvo is a Cities policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.