The Chainlink

E-Bikes and E-Scooter Rentals Won’t Be Allowed in N.Y. Anytime Soon

Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have legalized both types of transport, angering supporters of the measure.

Electric-scooter rentals will not be coming to New York and the electric bicycles favored by New York City delivery workers will remain illegal after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday vetoed a bill that would have legalized both types of battery-powered transport.

The veto was a blow to several constituencies: scooter companies that operate in dozens of cities in the United States and abroad and see New York as a lucrative, untapped market; delivery workers who rely on an illegal form of transportation to earn a living; and those pressing for ways to ease congestion on New York City’s traffic-choked streets.

In rejecting the legislation, Mr. Cuomo cited safety measures he said that he had sought in his proposed 2019 budget but that had been “inexplicably omitted” from the bill that cleared both houses of the State Legislature by overwhelming margins.

“Failure to include these basic measures renders this legislation fatally flawed,” the governor said in his veto message. He specifically referred to the lack of a requirement that riders of the battery-powered conveyances wear helmets as one of his main objections.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/nyregion/Ebikes-scooters-Bill-ny...

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Permalink Reply by ketoguychicago on December 30, 2019 at 10:43pm

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/22/bicycle-helmet...

The auto industry went through their anti-seatbelt phase for a while too.  Certainly they have their limitations when facing a bridge abutment.  But since they're now mainstream, from what I gather, few people wearing either make an effort in the last seconds before impact to remove them.  Same/same for helmets.  The motorcycle folks have their staunch opposition to helmets too, and everybody's got dueling studies, both of our links included.

As we're sort of touching on, much of the anti-helmet campaigning is often a "point the finger at someone/something else" campaign (e.g.cars, SUVs, or politicians) in an effort to make changes with those spheres, but at the cost of the opportunity to promote helmets and safety elsewhere.

So, mandatory helmets? Sort of depends on our view of a free society.  Mandating them certainly isn't very laissez-faire, although nor is society has to pick up the hospital tab for an injured driver/cyclist/motorcyclist.  

Elsewhere there'd been a great cycling helmet that had a face/chin guard, but it wasn't rated for downhill/mountain biking or some such rating, so it was taken off the market which was unfortunate.  

Back to NY, the state veto wasn't to victim-blame, just to get the helmet thing in with the scooters.  Essentially, NY (the state) views eScooters like mopeds, like motorcycles.  Sort of the way Illinois views an e-car like a Tesla as a car, with no carve-out for registration or seatbelts.  

https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/register-moped

My hunch is if only the helmet thing had stayed in place (just as for motorcycles) the bill might have been signed, although as I'm reading elsewhere, there's actually a totally unrelated spat with one of the eScooter bill's sponsors that lead to some of the veto too, which is unfortunate.  

Permalink Reply by ad on January 2, 2020 at 5:21pm

Does this apply to all three class levels of e-bikes, and if so, what impact does that have on the City's bikeshare system since Citibike was I though already rolling out Class 1 e-bikes?     

Permalink Reply by ketoguychicago on January 2, 2020 at 6:53pm

That's what they were going for - to address all three classes of them anyhow and try to true-up the regs state-wide. From the bill itself: 

SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:  This legislation authorizes 
three classes of electric assist bicycles and electric scooters 
to operate in New York State, 
subject to local regulation. (more details in the bill)
Here's the NY Senate version of the bill
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s5294
Permalink Reply by ketoguychicago on January 2, 2020 at 10:24pm

Some additional information on the tremendous importance of bike helmets with respect to safety/injury from The New England Journal of Medicine:

 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198905253202101

Here's the crux of it for NY State:  A motorcycle in NY requires a helmet (right or wrong, it's understood that there's debate about the wisdom of that if we set aside the link above).  Just as a car with an electric motor still requires seatbelts (the Tesla example) a motorcycle rider still requires a helmet, even if the motorcycle motor is electric.  The vetoed bill would have dropped the requirements to register a slow-ebike version (think citi-bike state-wide) and would have dropped the requirement to have insurance as well, and the governor would have signed it if only the helmet thing was kept in. 

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