Doug Clarke picked up on this item from Streetsblog:
Revealing statistic:
People riding bicycles — both conventional and electric — are responsible for a vanishing trace of pedestrian fatalities in NYC. Drivers who speed and fail to yield remain the biggest causes of death. Yet the Midtown North precinct, which only issued 37 speeding tickets in the month of February [PDF], confiscated 38 bikes on Wednesday. …
NYPD officers confiscated 247 electric-assist bikes in a 24-hour period on Wednesday, AMNY reports. E-bikes remain illegal under state law even though federal rules have permitted them for years.
The sting appears to be part of a citywide crackdown in the name of traffic safety.
One factor not considered is that people who switch from driving to cycling cause way fewer injuries and deaths than they would have caused while driving. Also, they should have included cycle-cycle and cycle-mv crashes. And, of course, there is a lot more to vision zero than issuing tickets. And NYC should change their silly bylaw which prohibits e-bikes.
NYPD cops are very sensitive people. They do actually try to respond to citizen complaints as much as possible; especially when that means they can target people who can’t put up much of a fight, like cyclists riding around on illegal bikes. If the choice is to get heat from locals complaining about electric bikes or from getting no heat from the owners of said illegal bikes, they’re going to go the route that gets them yelled at the least.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.