Wednesday’s Headlines: Just the Facts Edition

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, so today’s headlines newsletter will be entirely devoted to the facts.

Transport Workers Union International President John Samuelsen, who has started railing on e-bikes to drum up opposition to a proposed horse carriage ban, claimed on X on Tuesday that, “In 2026 Manhattan has suffered four deaths from collisions involving e-bikes, with another 169 people injured and maimed.”

The facts: E-bike riders have not killed any pedestrians in Manhattan in 2026, but six e-bike riders have themselves died in crashes, according to DOT. Of those six, four were struck and killed by the driver of another vehicle; the other two “lost control of their e-bikes,” per DOT. We’re not sure where Samuelsen got the 169 figure — the actual number of traffic injuries for e-bike, moped and scooter riders is many times higher.

Another tweet in need of inspection: New York Post editorial board member Michael Benjamin, in his own defense of horse carriages, claimed that, “18 riders of e-bikes, e-scooters and mopeds, plus 7 pedestrians were killed in crashes in early-to-mid 2026.”

Facts: Eighteen e-bike, stand-up scooter and moped riders died in traffic crashes in the first half of 2026 — either at the hands of a car driver or from losing control of their devices, DOT said.

The “seven pedestrians” figure, meanwhile, appears to be a 2024 stat cited in a column by Nicole Gelinas that appeared in The Post in May. Gelinas’s piece said that, “In 2024, the last year for which full data are available, seven pedestrians were killed in crashes with either a bicyclist or a motorized two-wheeler.”

But just one of those seven pedestrians was killed by a person on an e-bike; four were killed by moped riders, one by an e-scooter rider and one by someone on a motorcycle. Also, the stat comes from a report that DOT released before the end of 2024, so it’s missing at least a month-and-a-half of that year’s data.

DOT does not appear to have put out an official accounting of vehicles involved in pedestrian deaths in the years since, but a quick Streetsblog analysis of the 40 people killed walking in New York City this year through June 11 (the latest available data) found not one died in crashes involved motorized two-wheeled vehicles of any sort.

E-bike/scooter/moped deaths, meanwhile, increased in the first half of 2026 compared to 2025, but were still down 45 percent compared to the first half of 2023.

Car or truck drivers continue to be responsible for the vast, vast majority of traffic deaths.

So there you have it — just the facts.

In other news:

• Citi Bike monthly ridership hit an all-time high in June. (NY Times)
• The Times got wind of Mayor Mamdani’s plans to cut bureaucratic rules on the ballot this November, which Streetsblog has covered not once, but twice.
• One of which got some ink on the restaurant industry site Eater.
• Killer trash hauler Action Carting dumped the MTA’s recycling in the trash. (Gothamist, Daily News)
• The Brooklyn Greenway Initiative’s Navy Cemetery botanic garden is New York City’s first internationally accredited botanic garden. (Brooklyn Eagle)
• There will be service changes this weekend on the West Side IRT as the MTA makes signal upgrades in Manhattan. (amNY)
• The MTA ends up carrying a lot of the city’s water during major rainstorms. (amNY)
• Dangerous rainstorms are becoming a lot more common. (New York City Policy Forum)
• More storms like this:

• Meet Wheely, the “luxury taxi company” fighting TLC data-sharing requirements. (WSJ)
• Delivery behemoth Wonder received a $9-billion valuation. (Restaurant Business Online)
• DOT will add a traffic signal at Kent Avenue and S. 10th Street. (Williamsburg 365)