Mayor Adams just invoked a law named for my son, killed by a reckless driver, to justify his latest political ploy: the absurd prioritization of lower speed limits for people riding e-bikes.
In 2013, a reckless driver hit and killed my son, Sammy. I dedicated much of the next 10 years of my life to fighting alongside hundreds of Families for Safe Streets members for Sammy’s Law — a landmark piece of legislation that would finally allow New York City to lower its speed limit to 20 miles per hour on most streets.
Last year, Sammy’s Law was passed and signed by the governor — a victory a decade in the making. But over the past 12 months, we’ve seen the Adams administration do far too little to implement its new powers.
We’ve been told time and time again by the administration that it can only lower speed limits where the data warrants it. Somehow, a New Yorker being struck and killed nearly every day by a motor vehicle, and 35 cyclists and pedestrians injured by car drivers every single day, is not enough to warrant a citywide lowering of speed limits for car drivers.
More than half of London’s roads have a 20-mph speed limit, and the city reports 36 percent fewer deaths overall, and 75 percent fewer children killed specifically. Why can’t that be done here?
In a year, the Adams administration has lowered speeds on fewer than 1 percent of New York City streets and has seemed to be beset by procedural hurdles when it comes to implementing slow, safe speeds — until this week.
On Wednesday, Mayor Adams announced his intention to mandate a citywide 15 mph speed limit — not for cars, just for e-bikes — claiming he has authorization to do so under the legislation named for my son.
But Sammy’s Law has never been intended to be used in this way, and it was written to apply first-and-foremost to the vehicles that are killing hundreds and injuring tens of thousands of New Yorkers every year: cars and trucks.
At Families for Safe Streets, we do support efforts to set safe speeds for e-bikes. We are survivors of traffic violence and are family members of loved ones lost to traffic violence, so we understand the fears we all carry in navigating the streets of New York City. We share the pain of anyone injured or killed on our streets, no matter the cause.
But any attempt to regulate e-bike speeds should start at the store. When someone is buying an e-bike — which regularly doesn't come with a speedometer — the e-bike's speed should be automatically limited for safety. There is no reason that police should chase around people on e-bikes, when our government could simply ensure that the bikes themselves cannot go any faster by design.
Citi Bike already caps the e-bike speed, and many countries and jurisdictions have point-of-sale speed limit caps which have proven to be effective at managing e-bike speeds. Mayor Adams also should help pass legislation that would hold the app companies accountable for pressuring workers to meet quotas that encourage them to ride unsafely.
Most important, Mayor Adams needs to implement Sammy’s Law for what it was intended. Instead, he is forcing families like mine to beg and plead, on a street-by-street basis, for safer speed limits when it comes to the most statistically dangerous vehicles.
That will take decades and countless people will die as a result. We will not stand for it.
I cannot stomach the idea that Sammy’s Law has only been applied to a handful of miles of streets when it comes to slowing down the thing that is killing and injuring over 99 percent of people — disproportionately seniors and children — while the mayor, in one fell swoop, is attempting to apply it to thousands of miles of streets for e-bikes alone. The priorities are totally unjustifiable and outrageous.
This political game is beyond disrespectful to me, my family, and every member of Families for Safe Streets who fought for Sammy’s Law in the first place.
I am disgusted to hear that my son’s name is being used this way — and all of us in Families for Safe Streets will not be quiet about the administration warping the intent behind a decade of our work.
