NEW YORK — The City issued cease-and-desist orders to 42 online retailers, demanding they stop selling illegal high-speed e-bikes, stand-up scooters and other motorized devices to customers across the City.
Retailers that continue selling prohibited devices after receiving a cease-and-desist order may face civil penalties of up to $2,000 for each illegal sale.
Illegal devices found operating on City streets may also be impounded.
The enforcement action follows a deadly Upper West Side crash last Thursday morning involving a 49-year-old woman riding a stand-up e-scooter.
The crash came days after several other fatal e-bike and scooter crashes across the City, including the deaths of 17-year-old Gabriel Nacato near City Hall, 20-year-old Ajpop Walter in Dyker Heights, and 45-year-old Melba Jordan in Crown Heights.
"Every family deserves to know that when their loved ones leave home, they will make it back safely," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. "That promise becomes harder to keep when companies profit from knowingly selling illegal, high-speed vehicles that have no place in our city."
The City Council said Tuesday it would launch a comprehensive reviewof existing laws governing e-bikes and e-scooters.
The 17 proposed bills include measures that would require food delivery platforms such as Uber Eats and Grubhub to verify that mopeds used by delivery workers are properly registered, restrict the sale of higher-speed e-bikes, and create incentives for riders to exchange illegal e-bikes for legal models.
The review comes as e-bike crashes have increased 31.7 percent this year compared with the same period last year, according to NYPD data.
The data shows more than 500 e-bike collisions and nearly 800 stand-up scooter collisions reported so far this year.
Between 2017 and 2025, 45 rider fatalities involved illegal e-bikes capable of traveling faster than 25 miles per hour, accounting for 54 percent of all e-bike rider deaths during that period.
"Two of the biggest factors of the severity of a traffic crash are the speed and weight of a vehicle, which is why the proliferation of faster, heavier illegal e-mobility devices is such an alarming trend on our streets," Mike Flynn, NYC Department of Transportation commissioner, said.
Under New York City law, the following devices cannot be sold or operated on public streets:
Flynn said DOT will continue redesigning streets with safety measures aimed at reducing crashes.
Recent projects include improvements along Tremont and Bailey avenues in the Bronx, McGuinness Boulevard and the area surrounding Wingate Park in Brooklyn, 31st Avenue and 31st Street in Queens, and Sixth and Ninth avenues in Manhattan.
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