New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has issued a cease-and-desist order against 42 online retailers illegally selling “dangerous motorised vehicles” in the city, in a bid to clamp down on the use of illegal high-speed e-motorbikes and stand-up scooters.
According to the mayor’s office, the vehicles being marketed and shipped into the city “exceed legal limits for speed, weight, or other safety requirements and cannot lawfully be sold or operated on city streets”.
Under New York City law, it is illegal to sell or operate on public streets electric bikes with motors capable of a power output of more than 750 watts or an assisted speed of over 25mph.
Motorised stand-up scooters weighing more than 100 pounds or capable of traveling faster than 20mph are also banned, as are seated mopeds that do not have a valid Vehicle Identification Number.
The crackdown on these illegal machines comes a week after a 17-year-old illegal e-biker was killed in a collision involving an SUV driver in Lower Manhattan (notably, the statement released by the mayor’s office only referred to the “illegal device” and not the motor vehicle involved).
In May, a cyclist and the rider of an illegal electric scooter both died following a reported head-on collision on a segregated bike lane on Queensboro Bridge, a tragedy which led to a wider discussion about the regulation of electric bikes and scooters in the city, sparking this week’s move.
According to the mayor’s office, illegal machines now account for over half of all rider fatalities involving e-bikes and stand-up scooters in New York.
Between 2017 and 2025, 45 fatalities involved illegal e-bikes capable of providing a pedal assist of over 25mph, accounting for 54 per cent of all e-bike rider deaths during that period. During the same eight-year period, 14 road deaths involved stand-up scooters not restricted to the 20mph limit.
The new cease-and-desist order will see retailers that continue selling illegal e-bikes or e-scooters face a civil penalty of up to $2,000 (around £1,500) for each sale. If any person is caught riding an illegal machine, it may be seized by police and destroyed.
“Every family deserves to know that when their loved ones leave home, they will make it back safely,” Mamdani said in a statement announcing the new measures.
“That promise becomes harder to keep when companies profit from knowingly selling illegal, high-speed vehicles that have no place in our city.
“Since 2017, more than 45 people have been killed while riding illegal e-bikes, including the young New Yorker whose life was cut short last week, and more than 14 people have died while riding illegal stand-up scooters, including the horrific incident at the Queensboro Bridge earlier this year.
“These are not unavoidable tragedies, they are preventable losses. Today, we’re putting online retailers on notice: if you continue selling dangerous, illegal devices into New York City, you will be held accountable. We will use every tool available to make our streets safer for everyone who walks, bikes, drives, or rides.”
Mike Flynn, New York’s department of transport commissioner, added: “Two of the biggest factors of the severity of a traffic crash are the speed and weight of a vehicle, which is why the proliferation of faster, heavier illegal e-mobility devices is such an alarming trend on our streets.
“While legal e-mobility remains a great option to get around the city, faster illegal e-bikes and scooters are dangerous for everyone who shares our streets, including riders.
“These online retailers have allowed New Yorkers to purchase products that are illegal to sell or operate on city streets – and that must come to an end.”
New York’s 15mph/25kph speed limit on electric bikes and scooters is the same as the cut-off speed of a street legal electric bike or scooter in the UK and Europe. However, nationally most class 1 and 2 micromobility vehicles in the US have a 20mph assistance cap, but they are still legal to use in New York, putting the onus on the user to keep to the 15mph limit.
New York City also has its own distinct Class 3 micromobility category, which allows for the use of a throttled e-bike or scooter capable of 25mph speeds (still limited to 15mph when riding it). These are classed as motor vehicles in the rest of New York State.
Illegally modified electric bikes and scooters are certainly not a rarity in the UK and beyond – but some have argued that the extra layer of confusion and ambiguousness in New York has led to even more rule-breaking, putting law-abiding cyclists, scooter riders, and pedestrians in added danger.
25 thoughts on “New York mayor Zohran Mamdani issues cease-and-desist order to online retailers selling high-speed illegal e-bikes”
Not sure if I’m missing something but presumably this extends to those selling modification kits too, not just vehicles that are already illegal out of the box?
@mitsky most of those are probably bought online, so that will be tough to do anything about.
@andystow The whole initiative is aimed at online retailers though, isn’t it, so no harder to police those selling illegal conversion kits than those selling complete bikes, one would have thought.
@Rendel Harris oops, missed that. I wonder how comprehensive the list of 42 is. It’s still going to be really hard to enforce.
@andystow I’m only guessing but I’m assuming they can’t monitor every courier bringing bicycles into New York as if they were a customs operation, so maybe they will run a “secret shopper” operation where they will attempt to order from these online retailers and see if they agree to shipping to NY.
It’s targeted action against specific retailers – they may well only be selling complete machines, rather than conversion kits. Of course that wouldn’t prevent them coming back later and using further orders against those selling kits.
If I’m reading this correctly, the clamp down is because of the number of fatalities and not because of the illegal nature of the bikes, per se.
Does this mean that an absence of fatalities would have lead to the clamp down not happening?
Or, more pertinently, what level of clamp down is being applied because of the fatality rate involving motor vehicles?
@belugabob
That would make cents.
At the end of the day, road rules (highway code, red lights etc) only came in because of KSIs due to drivers of motor vehicles… 100 years ago?
As the government has said, they have no intention of making more onerous rules/requirements for pedal-cyclists given the increase in safety would be negligible.
is that the UK Government?
Id prefer it if they focussed on making things better, rather than not making things worse.
But, back to the New York story – robust enforcement earlier would have been easier than it is now.
@belugabob – arguably, it’s easier to enforce when the e-bikes are everywhere as they don’t even have to go looking for them, but can just wait at any junction.
It still strikes me as perverse that e-motorbikes are smaller, lighter and less powerful than even the smallest cars and yet there’s a lot more people angry about the injuries/deaths caused by them even though car drivers causes a lot more misery.
That’s a little like waiting until grey squirrels have bred and migrated extensively, before attempting to cull them 😉
Yes, regardless of the issues surrounding e-motos, the outrage regarding them, from the authorities is massively disproportionate, compared to the apathy that surrounds motor vehicle injuries
@belugabob – I think that’s bordering on squirrel racism. No matter how many grey squirrels you cull, the remaining ones can’t switch to being red, can they?
With e-motorbike users, when you catch and penalise a load of them, the remaining ones might decide that it’s not worth the risk and become model, law-abiding citizens.
Think of it more along the lines on not letting the greys in, so that the reds aren’t out competed.
It’s better to discourage the behaviour, before it has become established.
Yeah, it always takes a while for the law to catch up with new technologies and it’s not necessarily predictable which ones will become popular and be a big problem.
Personally, I’m hoping that new laws are drafted to cover the use of perv glasses (e.g. the Meta ones) in public as they are bound to be used abusively.
@hawkinspeter the laws are there – and have been for some time – it’s the enforcement that is tardy.
@mitsky A somewhat pedantic point of minor interest (but when has that stopped me?) but traffic rules and even traffic lights predate the widespread use of the motor car; the first traffic light in the world was installed outside the Houses of Parliament in 1868 (unfortunately, being gas powered, it exploded shortly afterwards and injured a policeman). Driving on the left was mandated by Act of Parliament in 1835. Horse-drawn traffic was actually considerably more dangerous than motor traffic, with an average of 150 people per year being killed in London in the Victorian era in traffic incidents; last year 98 people died in traffic incidents with a population more than twice the size (the numbers may of course be somewhat skewed by the fact that modern medicine can save victims in ways undreamt of back then).
@Rendel Harris indeed, but there have been a few other changes also eg. the protection of children. Sandboys are no longer employed, I thought? And thus not run over drunk in the streets. (But I may have missed a change when BJ was mayor?)
About time. Doh!
High speed e-bikes are a menace. They should be banned / or should be road registered only and banned from bike tracks and pavements.
@GravelIsNothingNew – The high speed e-bikes (i.e. e-motorbikes) are already banned for road use which is why the word “illegal” appears so many times in TFA.
Not a legal if there’s no enforcement on them. All of us see food-couriers pulling away from lights without pedaling, continuing down the road with not a pedal rotation in sight. A random 1 hour enforcement, in every town centre take away area, twice a week would stop it. No point in it going on for longer than an hour because couriers just phone each other and stop going out.
Making the retailers also liable for them seems a really good idea. How they make punishment stick will be the interesting bit.
@Homebaker – personally, I don’t mind the illegal e-bikes as I see it as harm reduction compared to them driving cars and of course they reduce congestion and pollution.
However, lots of people do rage against them and the solution is enforcement. Random traffic stops would work as would patrolling food delivery places.
I’m not convinced that extending legislation to the retailers is workable when the police don’t seem to enforce the current road rules. (There’s also lots of loopholes that retailers/purchasers could exploit)
Well in this case there’s no need for any police involvement at all – it’s being pursued as a civil action.
Will he act against the Samar group in Williamsburg which uses it’s political clout to get cycle lanes removed – even though they voted for him?
@60somethingcyclist Satmar, and they mainly didn’t vote for him it seems: estimates are that in the Williamsburg areas dominated by the Satmar group Mamdani got around 30% of the vote with rival Cuomo getting around 65%. Mamdani was endorsed by one faction of the Satmar but three other leaders of the same faction came out against him.
Thanks. I’d heard that there was a split in the community. Well in that case let’s hope that he does do something about their opposition to cyclists. All for safe cycling measures, but not just because one group doesn’t like cyclists.