Lawmakers are expected on Wednesday to discuss a raft of proposals to regulate the use of electric bikes and scooters, after a series of fatal crashes.
Page A5From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 30 September 2026
New York City marks more than two dozen e-bike and scooter deaths with a meeting to discuss it.
As it ran on the front
More than two dozen people got on an e-bike or a scooter in New York City this year and were killed in the crash. That is the number in the paper this morning, stated the way papers state a body count: plainly, as a fact that has already happened, past tense, done. The same paper calls it a "growing safety crisis," which is one way to say it, and a way to say it after the fact.
Officials, the reporting says, are "moving to address" the crisis. Moving. Not moved. The distinction is not small; it is the entire distance between the two stories the paper ran on the same morning. One is the toll. The other is what the toll produced, and what it produced, after more than two dozen deaths, is a discussion.…
…(cont) On Wednesday, lawmakers are expected to sit down and talk about a raft of proposals to regulate electric bikes and scooters. Not a vote. Not a rule signed into effect. A discussion, scheduled for after the fact, the same way the safety crisis was named for after the fact. The order of operations is the story: the crashes come first, then the count, then the crisis gets its name, then the meeting gets its date. Nowhere in that order does a rule arrive before a death.
This is not a fast-moving story slowed by circumstance. This is the pace at which the discussion arrived: after the toll passed two dozen, not before it started. What changed is that the number got large enough for two stories in one morning's paper.
A raft of proposals is not a law. A discussion is not a rule. The distance between Wednesday's meeting and an actual regulation, signed and enforced, is where the next death gets counted — not against the old number, against a new one, the one that starts counting again the day after the discussion adjourns. The paper will report that number too, eventually, plainly, past tense, done. Whether the meeting produces anything to stop it from growing is the only thing this story was ever actually about.
“They call it a crisis once the number gets big enough to print, then they schedule a meeting to talk about it. A meeting isn't a law, and the count doesn't pause while people talk. The next death gets counted before the vote does.”
“Look, you can't just slap regulations on an entire industry overnight, that's reckless — did I say reckless, I meant hasty. Discussing a raft of proposals on a Wednesday shows real urgency, it's basically the fastest a city government can move, technically.”
The receipts
More than two dozen people have died in crashes involving electric bikes and scooters in New York City this year. Officials are moving to address a growing safety crisis.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.