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 traveling downhill into Queens head. Both men were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian where they died. (The NYPD has not released the victims’ names, but a police source ID’d the men as Francis Delball on the scooter and Dmytro Stechenko on the bike.)
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.
In the wake of the crash, City Hall spokesman Jeremy Edwards said the Mamdani administration would continue to fight illegal vehicles.
“This terrible tragedy is a grim reminder that illegal, high-speed micro-mobility devices, like the stand-up e-scooter involved in this incident, are dangerous and have no place on our roadways or bike paths,” Edwards said. “Every New Yorker deserves to feel safe, and the Mamdani Administration will continue working to remove these illegal devices from our streets and bring accountability to micromobility use.”
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 imposes a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit on e-bikes and stand-up scooters. However, e-bikes capable of moving up to 25 mph, and scooters capable of moving 20 mph, are still legal to operate. Legal mopeds, motorcycles, and cars can easily exceed 25 mph, though they 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.
And Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, reiterated that in a statement.
“Crashes like these are entirely preventable,” he said. “Scooters that travel this quickly have no place in our bike lanes. The City Council must move forward with the ‘Ride Safe, Ride Right’ bill to prevent the sale of the most dangerous micromobility devices. 20 mph is plenty for anything on New York City neighborhood streets, and certainly in our bike lanes. The data is clear: anything faster than 20 mph is especially deadly. 20 is plenty — no matter who you are or how you’re traveling. Speed kills.”
— with Gersh Kuntzman
Update: This story was updated to clarify the legal speed capacities of e-bikes and stand-up scooters. The former is limited to 25 mph and the latter to 20 mph. Legal speed capacities are distinct from speed limits. E-bikes and scooters must obey a 15 mph speed limit.
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