Group Rallies For Registration of E-Bikes at City Hall

A group of about 100 people gathered outside City Hall in Lower Manhattan on April 16 to advocate for the passage of Priscilla’s Law, a City Council bill that would mandate DMV registration for e-bikes and other e-vehicles.

The rally, hosted by the Electric Vehicle Safety Alliance (EVSA), led by Janet Schroeder, featured speakers who had been hit by e-vehicles and hospitalized in recent years. A couple of lawmakers showed up to support the cause, as well.

The legislation is named after Priscilla Loke, a 69-year-old woman who was hit and killed by an e-bike in Chinatown in 2023.

“This bill would require every bicycle with electric assist, electric scooter, and other legal motorized vehicle that is not otherwise required to be registered with the DMV,” the summary of Priscilla’s Law—otherwise known as Intro 802-2026—notes. Currently, its lone Manhattan sponsor is City Council Member Virginia Maloney, who represents the East Side.

The renewed push for the passage of the bill, which has been around for multiple City Council sessions, comes hot on the heels of Mayor Zohran Mamdani reversing an NYPD practice that involved the issuance of criminal penalties for cyclists and e-bikers who commit low-level traffic offenses; some bikers were outraged by the enforcement policy.

Groups such as EVSA believe that creating traffic penalties or liability for individual e-vehicle riders—or delivery workers—was a necessary form of “accountability,” a term used by many speakers at the rally. They also believe that the true number of e-bike accidents is higher than reported, and don’t trust the figures put out by the NYC Department of Transportation.

Critics of Priscilla’s Law, which include transit advocates—such as Open Plans and Transportation Alternatives—and organizations that represent delivery workers, argue that the law could place misdirected cost or criminal burdens on a food delivery workforce that is largely composed of immigrants—or deter sustainable bike usage.

Instead, they’ve said that algorithms that underpin the corporate delivery industry are pushing their workers to meet delivery goals by incentivizing fast driving.

Notably, EVSA agrees that changes to these algorithms could result in fewer accidents, and organization leadership expressed ire with delivery app companies at the rally.

EVSA also made a point of saying that they have nothing against immigrants at the April 16 rally, and some of their speakers were themselves bike riders, although unsurprisingly none appeared to be fans of e-bikes or those who piloted them. “Many immigrant pedestrians have been killed by e-vehicles,” Schroeder said at one point, mentioning Loke herself.

One rally speaker who said that she was hit by a “heavy” e-vehicle in Central Park, Roberta Simon, described waking up in the hospital four days later. She said that Priscilla’s Law should be “the most basic and least controversial bill” in City Council.

Leslie Boghossian Murphy, a candidate running in the April 28 special election for City Council’s District 3—which covers the Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood—also spoke in favor of the bill.

“I am a bike rider. My daughter is a bike rider,” she said. “This law is not anti-bike. It’s about accountability and it’s about transparency.”

Laura Dunn, a candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District, told Straus News that she frequently exercised with a regular bike on the Upper West Side. She called the fact that e-vehicles and e-bikes aren’t registered a “crime,” and said there should be “crime victim compensation” for people struck by e-bike riders.

Dunn added that she thought that the speed and weight of e-bikes could be contributing greatly to how dangerous e-bikes accidents are, and suggested that she’d use her role in the Congress to look into these characteristics.

She also wants liability for delivery app companies, as well. “You’re gonna have slower riders. It’s just common sense,” she said.