Two men were killed Thursday in a head-on collision between an electric scooter and a bicycle on the Queensboro Bridge, according to the NYPD, raising concerns about speeding and illegal micromobility vehicles on the bridge.
Police responded to a 911 call just after 8 a.m., reporting the crash in the bridge’s bike lane, authorities said. A preliminary investigation found that a 39-year-old man operating a motorized stand-up scooter was traveling westbound when he struck a 35-year-old man riding a bicycle eastbound, police said.
EMS rushed both men to NewYork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, according to police. The NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad is investigating.
“It’s not safe, but I believe it’s people’s behavior,” said Eliza Dos Santos, an Astoria resident who was biking across the bridge Thursday morning on her way to work at Memorial Sloan Kettering. “They need to stay in their lane. They rush too much.”
Lukas Pac, 44, of Maspeth, described the bridge path as chaotic, especially near the Manhattan entrance.
“It sucks. It’s just really bad,” Pac said. “The riders on the electric scooters, they fly.”
He added that poor lighting can make conditions more dangerous early in the morning and at night.
“Especially when it’s dark, this part of the bridge early in the morning or late at night, pitch black,” he said. “You can’t see them coming.”
Rafael Herrera, 53, of Jackson Heights, said he hopes police step up enforcement on the bridge.
“People without control, without rules, it’s chaos,” Herrera said.
Transportation Alternatives, a street safety advocacy group, said the scooter involved in the crash was an illegal vehicle capable of traveling up to 53 mph.
The group urged the City Council to pass Intro 244, known as the “Ride Safe, Ride Right” bill, which would ban the sale of e-bikes and e-scooters capable of exceeding 20 mph.
“Crashes like these are entirely preventable,” Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas said in a statement. “Scooters that travel this quickly have no place in our bike lanes.”
The fatal collision comes a year after the Queensboro Bridge’s newly separated pedestrian and cyclist paths officially opened. The redesign, the result of years of advocacy by street safety activists, converted the bridge’s north outer roadway, previously an 11-foot lane shared by pedestrians and cyclists, into a bike-only path.
This story is developing and may be updated.
