Two Dead After Illegal Scooter Rider And Cyclist Crash On Queensboro Bridge

Two people died in a head-on crash on the Queensboro Bridge bike lane between the rider of an illegal e-scooter with a top speed of 50 miles per hour and a cyclist, underscoring the need for enforcement against illegal, super-fast micromobility vehicles.

According to the NYPD, the 39-year-old rider of the illegal scooter was headed up hill from Queens at around 8:30 a.m. on Thursday when he struck the 35-year-old cyclist head on as the cyclist was traveling downhill into Queens. Both men were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian where they died. (The NYPD has not released the victims’ names.)

Pictures posted to Reddit after the crash show a carbon-fiber Factor road bike cracked in half and the illegal scooter in the debris:

One witness who pulled up to the crash just after it happened described the gory scene.

“I can’t believe they both died,” said Kurt Freyer, who commutes over the Queensboro Bridge by bike four times a week. “They were both wearing helmets the scooter rider had a full-face moto-style helmet on. His eyes were open but he didn’t seem conscious. He had a backpack on so he was kind of propped up. He clearly had a broken arm. The cyclist, was being tended to by a doctor who was a passerby, and there was a nurse there checking the scooter guy’s vitals.”

Freyer described a harrowing scene as a crowd of almost 100 witnesses watched as the men were tended to.

“As far as I could tell the nurse was saying that the scooter guy had a pulse but it was very shallow. His eyes were open but he was unconscious and he had no signs of life at all. The cyclist, there was a pool of blood underneath him and the doctor was covering his face with a towel. The cyclist had a pretty deep wound to his leg but it wasn’t bleeding so I took that as a bad sign as well,” he said.

The Blade GT II scooter is one of many high-speed devices that are illegal to operate on city streets or bike lanes, but it is easy to order one online and have it delivered to an city address.

“Zero to 53 in 3.9 seconds,” states the website for the $1,700 Blade scooter, made by Teverun.

The proliferation of illegal e-motos — long documented by street safety advocates as a problem — is fueling outrage against all forms of micromobility, including legal and safe bikes and electric bikes. This is the second recent death involving an illegal high-speed electric bike or scooter. Last year, the rider of an illegal e-moto hit and killed a pedestrian getting off a bus on the Flushing Avenue greenway.

“I commute Monday to Thursday. Not only that but I have friends who are cyclists we all are aware of it. I have said specifically someone is going to get really badly hurt. The stand up high-powered scooters are very quiet and can go very fast. For the last three years they have been a daily occurrence where I get passed by them,” said Freyer.

Deceptive marketing, a complicated classification system, and heavy-handed legislative proposals have led many New Yorkers to, knowingly or unknowingly, order illegal vehicles to use for their commutes.

New York City currently has a 15-mile-per-hour e-bike speed limit, though e-bikes can be sold legally even if they cap out at 25 miles an hour. Stand-up scooters also have a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit. Legal mopeds, motorcycles, and cars can easily exceed 25 mph, though are also bound by city speed limits. Additionally, mopeds and cars must to be registered with the DMV and are not allowed in the bike lane.

Street safety advocates have been criticizing city officials for failing to fully grasp the dangers of e-motos and illegal stand-up scooters for years, including in 2023 when a horrific crash on the Manhattan Bridge revealed the dangers of allowing high-speed motorized vehicles on the city’s narrow bridge paths.

This is a developing story, we will update it as information becomes available.