Wednesday’s Headlines: Poorly Contextualized Data Alert Edition

On Tuesday, City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced a plan to hold a meeting eight weeks from now about e-bikes, in what she said will be a “comprehensive legislatice review” of nearly two dozen different proposals. She also called on the state to license and register e-bikes and their riders.

Click here to read more about Menin’s announcement. Wednesday’s headlines will focus more narrowly on a batch of NYPD stats Menin cited, but failed to contextualize:

A total of 134 people have died in e-bike-involved crashes across the city between 2019 through 2026, alongside 17,434 reported injuries, according to NYPD collision data. We talked a little bit about the data before — 560 collisions involving e-bikes, 795 involving stand-up e-scooters so far this year, so it’s up 28 percent.

Menin cited the above stats without mentioning that the majority of those deaths and injuries were people riding e-bikes, not people hit by people riding e-bikes. The 17,434 injuries over seven years may seem like a big number, but there are about 50,000 annual traffic injuries in New York City. Ditto this year’s “560 collisions involving e-bikes,” which add up to just .01 percent of the more than 48,000 total crashes in New York City in 2026 so far.

We asked the experts at the city Department of Transportation for further context, and they sent over the following: From 2017 to 2025, 54 percent of the people killed on e-bikes were riding vehicles that go over 25 miles per hour, while 52 percent of people killed on stand-up scooters were on vehicles that go over 20 mph, DOT said. And NYPD data shows that rider and pedestrian injuries from e-bike crashes, even though total collisions and stand up e-scooter injuries and deaths are up.

The prevalence of high-speed, often illegal, “e-motos” in fatal crashes shows the need to enforce existing laws to get those vehicles off the street, Mayor Mamdani said on Tuesday.

“My first focus, frankly, is that which is already illegal, how to ensure that no consumer is duped into believing that that is an appropriate way to be moving around the city, because it is hard for New Yorkers to keep up with what is legal or illegal if they’re able to buy it online,” the mayor told reporters at his own, unrelated event.

“Our work is how to insure that each of those New Yorker knows this is something that’s permitted, this is not, and the reason it’s not is because it’s not safe.”

In other news:

• Gothamist followed Streetsblog’s coverage of NYPD’s Summer Streets security theater.
• Ontario shut down all of its speed camerasm and speeding increased. (Bloomberg)
• Big surprise: Mayor Mamdani’s pied-a-terre tax letters may have exposed wealthy New Yorkers with second homes who illegally register their cars and file their income taxes outside of the city. (Fortune)
• Curbside EV charging is coming to gobble up more public space for drivers in Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and Bed-Stuy. (Brooklyn Eagle)
• The pro-car news outlet Upper East Site feasted on the chorus of NIMBYs at a recent Manhattan CB8 meeting about trash containerization.
• Billionaire and Mamdani foil Ken Griffin will build a new skyscraper on Park Avenue after all. (NY Post)
• NYPD arrested a man for murder … after pulling him over for turning without signaling. (Daily News)
• Some knucklehead thinks the solution to the horse carriage debate is to put cars back in the park. (Hell Gate)
• State Sen. Erik Bottcher wants cyclists to slow their roll. (West Side Rag)
• Cops are investigating a Brooklyn hit-and-run road rage incident involving a driver and a teen on a motorcycle. (PIX11)
• DOT wants the free WalkNYC app to give up its name, which is a city trademark. (The City Reporter)
• Police combed Staten Island for unregistered vehicles to ticket and tow. (S.I. Advance)
• A subway fire at Astor Place injured more than a dozen people. (NY Post, PIX11)
• And finally, City Council Member Gale Brewer and the Department of Sanitation unveiled the new sticker for shaming drivers who don’t move their cars for street cleaning: