E-Bike Violence Victims Rally for Regulation, Vilify Lobbyists

Dozens of angry and frustrated victims of e-bike injuries and their allies stood on the steps of City Hall on Wednesday Sept. 29 to make their pained voices heard about the plague of lawbreaking e-bikes and other “micromobility” devices that have injured countless people in the city.

Organized by the Electric Vehicle Safety Alliance (EVSA), the rally called upon the New York City Council, which, following a series of widely reported e-bike related deaths, was holding a public hearing on the devices that day, to finally take their danger seriously.

Two Council Members joined the group, Phil Wong of Queens and Frank Morano, Staten Island as well Troy Olson, the legislative director for Inna Vernikov of Brooklyn. All three politicians are among the co-sponsors of the current iteration of Priscilla’s Law. Among the signs held by the those present were those with shocking photos of hospitalized e-bike victims; “Unregistered, Unaccountable, Unsafe”; “Regulation = Accountability”; “Mamdani and Flynn: Stop the E-Vehicle Chaos”; “We Are The Majority Vote Now!”; “STOP TransAlt Takeover of Our Streets”; and “TransAlt = Profits Over Safety”

The last two signs targets Transportation Alternatives, the multi-million dollar corporate-backed non-profit bike advocacy group that EVSA and others blame for helping create the unsafe street conditions the organization claims to oppose.

Mindful they were being targeted, Transportation Alternatives had set up an information booth in City Hall Park at the same time the EVSA was rallying. According to their most recent financial filings, Transportation Alternatives Inc. spent $5.1 million in 2025. Of that, 9.6% went to executive compensation, 48.3% to other salaries and wages.

True to their non-profit status, the organization claimed an annual net income loss of $869,741. Among the organization’s most generous donors: Amazon, Uber, Lyft and Verra Mobility, all companies highly incentivized to claim public space for their mobile delivery drivers.

Present at the rally itself was a reporter from StreetsblogNYC, the strident online e-bike and micromobility advocacy site funded by the non-profit organization OpenPlans. Backed and chaired by hedge fund swell Mark Gorton, the organization reported 2024 revenue of $3.3 million with a net income loss of $43,743. Of those monies, 18.5% went to executive compensation (Gorton himself is unpaid), with 46.9% going to other salaries and wages, including the staff of both StreetsBlog and their video-centered sister site, StreetFilms.

E-vehicle Violence Is a Public Health Crisis

“E-vehicle violence is a public health crisis and it’s only getting worse over time,” said Schroeder. ‘E.R. stats prove this. DOT stats for e-vehicle injuries are gravely inaccurate. Of 147 seriously maimed accidents, 8 have police reports. Police usually arrive after an ambulance takes away a victim and if the police are there, they often don’t report, they say the rider fled, it’s not a crime. I didn’t witness it.”

Schroeder elaborated her point by noting that the number of e-vehicle-related trauma cases that show up city Emergency Rooms, including over 600 at St. Barnabas and over 300 at Bellevue far exceed the DOT statistics. “So DOT, the map isn’t mapping. Start pulling ER stats if you want the accurate count of how bad it really is.”

Schroeder went on, as would numerous other speakers, to deride the City Council the excluding Priscilla’s Law–formally Intro. 802-2026—from the 23 bills it was scheduled to consider today under the Council’s Transportation Chair Shaun Abreu. In plain language Intro. 802 is a bill “Requiring that every bicycle with electric assist, electric scooter and other legal motorized vehicle be licensed and registered.”

In its former incarnation as Intro 606, back in 2024, it had the support of 31 Council Members, including Shaun Abreu. Yet Priscilla’s Law—so-named for Priscilla Loke, 69, a beloved pre-school teacher and pedestrian who was killed by a hit-and-run e-biker while walking to work in Chinatown in September 2023. Yet the bill never came up for vote at the City Council and Department of Transportation said it should be controlled by the State Department of Motor Vehicles, not a city agency.

This year, the bill has thirteen co-sponsors, with Shaun Abreu not among them. While there’s not always a direct correlation between a bill’s co-sponsors, its actual support and it’s final fate, if voted upon by the full council, Abreu’s absence is notable. In Manhattan, Virginia Maloney, who represents an East Side district, is the bill’s only initial co-sponsor.

According to city records, Uber NY PAC gave Abreu $259,418 for his 2025 re-election campaign. The registered address for Uber NY PAC is 2350 Kerner Boulevard, San Rafael, California—a beautiful drive north over the Golden Gate Bridge from Uber’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco.

Requests for comment from Abreu on how his relationship with Uber NY PAC might affect his role as Chair of the Council Transportation Committee were unanswered at press time.

Unspoken but widely acknowledged privately is that many elected officials are fearful of doing anything that would bring attention to labor force that includes a large percentage of migrants not legally allowed to work here.

The Victims Speak

Among the others speaking at the really were Tracy Tynan, who lives in the Gramercy Park area: “E-bikes need to be licensed. There needs to be insurance. If these rules work [elsewhere], why can’t they work here?”

Robert Polchinski, was hit while running in Hudson River Park, a notoriously dangerous place for bike accidents, and where e-bikes, while supposedly banned, are in fact common. Polchinski spent 20 days in the hospital—and months rehabbing.

Michael Gerbino also lives in the Gramercy area, and has been hit several times by bikes of various types. He now wanders the streets with his camera, photographing bikers breaking the law.

Julie Harvey suffered brain trauma and says she continues to suffer from it. She brandished photo of her bloody post-accident skull at the protest.

Another protestor, who was likewise holding a photo of her bloody head, called the Mandami administrations lack of enforcement “willful neglect.”

Christina Fontenali, a candidate for State Assembly from District 75 covering Hell’s Kitchen and Time Square, accused the Mamdani administration of not taking the situation seriously. “Look behind me, she said. “Look at these people who are maimed, who were killed.”