[memset]

This article makes the mistake of conflating “bicycles” and “e-bikes.” It does this to garner sympathy for its position that these laws are bad.

Expanding bicycle lanes is great. Bicycles are great and I’m a fan of reclaiming more land from car traffic for cyclists and pedestrians.

However many e-bikes - I don’t know what percentage - are just technically under the legal limit for being classified as motorcycles. That is not the intended use of the bike lanes. Similarly, Amazon now has motorized delivery vehicles driving through the bike lanes in the city. They are exactly the width of the lane. It’s great to prevent congestion on streets, and a clever piece of engineering, but again, not a bicycle, even though it has pedals.

If you’re driving a motorized vehicle then don’t ride in the bike lane! If you’re on a road then follow the laws and don’t run red lights!

[alecst]

They are giving court dates to (regular) cyclists, they are harsher on bikes than cars, and they are stopping cyclists at a higher rate than they stop drivers of cars.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/04/18/exclusive-cops-writin...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/05/02/policy-change-nypd-wi...

If the police don't care about the difference, why do you?

[addicted]

No, the question is are bicyclists killing and injuring pedestrians disproportionately than cars.

And the answer is no.

Every time a bike lane is installed on a street/avenue the safety rate for pedestrians increases dramatically.

[const_cast]

> If the police don't care about the difference, why do you?

Because the police are more often wrong than they are right. We shouldn't be modeling our laws over what's most convenient for police, that's just asking for abuse.

[tstrimple]

The police also didn't care to intervene in Uvalde. Should we not care as a result? I don't even know what this line of argument is. Some weird appeal to authority?

[sokoloff]

If an e-bike meets the legal standard for being a bike and using the bike lanes, that seems like the right place for them to be. If the law needs to change, we have processes to change the laws.

Same for the Amazon ones. They either are or aren't bikes/are or aren't eligible for the bike lanes.

"not the intended use of the bike lanes" doesn't have the same force and certainty of "not allowed to use the bike lanes by statute".

[aqme28]

I think you're confused about what this article is about. Which law are you pointing to when you say "its position that these laws are bad"?

Because you're talking about ebikes on bike lanes, but this article is entirely about court cases vs traffic tickets for red light violations. It mentions bike lanes only offhand as evidence of general trends.

[john-h-k]

It does provide reasoning for the asymmetry:

> “Since e-bikes do not require a license, drivers of e-bikes can simply ignore their traffic summons with no repercussions whatsoever, making any enforcement futile,” the police spokesperson said. However, the new requirement that cyclists appear in court, or face an arrest warrant if they fail to, creates “a strong incentive to show up in court.”

[lesuorac]

I really don't follow this reasoning through.

Sure, e-bikes don't require a license but they are still operated by a person. The cases that are all listed are people over 18 who absolutely have forms of ID that they can present to the officer to establish where to send a fine to and who to collect it from if it goes unpaid.

It's literally just as strong as the court requirement. Like if they guy doesn't show up to court who are you going to arrest!?

[hennell]

It's not hard to follow - traffic summons system relies on the summoned having a license. They don't track people down or chase them, they enforce by voiding the license. They have no process for people who are driving without a license - they can't void other ID.

So they're using a court summons, because that relies on ID, and is enforced by tracking people down. Whether it is 'just as strong' or not depends on if the person has a driving license. If you don't the traffic summons has no power over you.

[lesuorac]

> traffic summons system relies on the summoned having a license.

It doesn't.

It just relies on being able to identify somebody. Whether that's a school photo or a drivers license doesn't matter. In this situation, the bicyclists likely were carrying identification so the cop could reasonable assume who they were issuing a ticket to.

Automated enforcements typically use the license plate and mail the traffic ticket to the registered owner but we're talking about a scenario where a cop has stopped somebody and in those cases the ticket go straight to that person who may not be the registered owner of the vehicle.

> They don't track people down or chase them

They do.

You will get an arrest warrant (eventually) if you don't pay your traffic tickets.

And as stated in the article, cops did chase bicyclists.

> They have no process for people who are driving without a license

They do.

If they didn't nobody would get a drivers license... It's generally not criminal to drive without a license but additional (criminal) charges might apply depending on the situation.

[IAmBroom]

If I run a red light on a bicycle, how is a camera going to record evidence where to send the ticket? Or a cop on foot, for that matter?

You're presuming there's an office on the spot AND the cyclist stops. The penalties for a car driver to run are heavy and likely: license plate tracks to the owner, and the cop identifies (or "identifies") the owner in court. On a bike? "Be on the lookout for a blue bike, and a guy wearing a yellow windbreaker."

[lesuorac]

I'm making no assumptions.

The article clearly states there was an officer present that stopped the bicycles.

But to your actual question. There's a trivial response of where is the camera going to send a court summons to? The article is about bicycles being issued court summons instead of tickets. My claim is that you can literally just send the ticket wherever you gave the summons to and when they proceed not to pay the fine you send a future court summons (later backed by arrest warrant) and increased fines to wherever you would've send the original court summons to.

[john-h-k]

I can't speak for the accuracy of it, I just thought it would be useful to provide the context

[lnjoe]

Adults are not required to carry ID’s - at least in the US.

[lesuorac]

Depending on the state you are.

If you are stopped because of a traffic violation (crime) in New York state you need to be able to identify yourself - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes

[bombcar]

Isn’t a ticket just a summons to court that you have an option to do something else (pay the fine)?

And if you don’t, you lose your license.

But there is no licensing for bikes or e-bikes, so the leverage they have isn’t there.

[consp]

It's also misleading as there is a natural penalty asymmetry. The penalty for crossing though red and getting hit by a car is death for any cyclist and a likely accident but very survivable for a car.

Around here the fines are equal in money but you can lose your license to drive a murder machine. (Sarcasm)

It might be worse if the allowed speeds around intersections and cultural preference to speed though red are higher. And by allowed speeds I mean natural speed through traffic calming.

[john-h-k]

> The penalty for crossing though red and getting hit by a car is death for any cyclist and a likely accident but very survivable for a car.

But the legal penalty is nothing to do with what risks you took. You could have the view that the state should punish making mistakes that can kill your (in which case the bike penalty would be higher), but I (and I assume most) people wouldn't say this.

The reason the penalty exists is to disincentivise the action. If people were truly rational with all these risks, the problem wouldn't exist in the first place.

It would be incredibly odd to suggest, say, that burglars should have lower sentences if they risked their lives while doing the burglary.

[consp]

I phrased it wrongly. My bad.

The point should have been: if you drive a machine which can result in deadly harm to others you should be more responsible and thus the fine heavier (no longer being allowed to use such machine). Try killing someone with a bike. Not impossible but more a challenge than with a car.

[lesuorac]

> But there is no licensing for bikes or e-bikes, so the leverage they have isn’t there.

You can arrest people for failing to pay traffic fines.

[john-h-k]

Presumably doing it via the ticketing system is simpler - so why would they use the more controversial & more complex system to do it if the other works?

Of course its possible this is just being draconian or whatever, but if I were a betting man I'd wager they are doing this because it is in some way necessary

Necessary does not imply fair, or correct, or anything. Just that I would be surprised if they are doing it if the simpler alternative works

[lesuorac]

Well, necessary in the sense that just writing traffic traffics has clearly not gotten cyclists to stop hitting pedestrians.

[xattt]

It sounds like a general rant about chicken tax workarounds for personal mobility where those modes of transport reek of personal entitlement.

There are e-bikes (1) that are essentially electric Vespas with unusable pedals sticking out the sides. Depending on the jurisdiction, they may even be “technically” allowed on sidewalks because the wheel size would be under a certain diameter (~ <24”).

They are very intimidating to pedestrians, and there is usually no enforcement because there may be no by-law to enforce. Getting on one breaks a social contract about what it means to respect one another’s safety and comfort.

I want to see these folks try to pedal their “e-bikes” without busting up their ankles.

(1) https://emmo.ca/collections/electric-scooter-ebike

[radlad]

The article uses the term e-bike in the headline but it's not clear to me if the court summons are limited only to e-bikes or analog bikes as well?

[burnt-resistor]

Remember Casey Neistat's film about being ticketed for going around an obstacle in the bike lane? NYC uses the public as a for-profit revenue source and will extract it from the weakest people.

[Swenrekcah]

Certainly it is a much more serious offense to run a red light in a car than on any kind of bicycle (also electric bicycle, limited to some speed like 15mph or similar).

[radlad]

E-bikes in the US are limited to 28 mph in the highest class but can be deregulated. They're also closer to 75 lbs than 25.

Agree completely on regular bicycles though.

[Filligree]

The article points out that, no, running the light on a bicycle is a more serious offence. We can argue about whether it should be.

[Swenrekcah]

Regardless of the law, the physical reality of the world says it is more serious to run a red light in a car, due to speed and weight.

[AStonesThrow]

Are you proposing a Trolley Problem here?