Renegade riders on electric two-wheelers, dirt bikes, and motor scooters are becoming an increasing problem in major cities throughout the United States, most recently on a busy New York road this week where a teenage mob of mask-wearing riders disrupted traffic and violently attacked a car.
Video of the violent mob of “teenage terrorists” on electric and dirt bikes from Wednesday has emerged and gone viral on social media.
The lawless scene took place on Richmond Avenue in Bulls Head with “footage captured by one of the culprits themselves showing roughly a dozen maniacs swarming a white Honda CR-V,” was how the New York Post described the incident.
Assailants kicked and punched the vehicle at a red light as other motorists watched in shock from their cars.
When the light turned green, the CR-V driver ran over a blue bike that a rider had apparently employed to block the car’s progress, though its owner wasn’t impacted by the car.
As the group then sped after the car the person behind the camera exaggerated, “Yo! Hanky got hit!”
No arrests were made at the scene. However, New York Police Department (NYPD) Assistant Chief John Buttacavoli warned the attackers they would not avoid the consequences.
“We know who you are, and you will be getting a knock on your door very soon,” he said at a news conference Thursday accompanied by Borough President Vito Fossella and Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon.
“They descend upon drivers who are just going about their business . . . They’re jackals, they’re teenage terrorists,” McMahon said.
Locals have told news outlets they’ve had their fill of the swarms of teens recklessly weaving their motorized two wheelers in and out of traffic and tormenting drivers. The problem has “exploded out of control over the past year,” the Post reported.
Buttacavoli said police have confiscated “numerous” bikes this year.
Republican Staten Island Assemblyman Mike Reilly blamed lenient crime policies coming from the state legislators and the governor’s office that enable the teenage scofflaws.
“This violent behavior has gotten out of hand because of the laws that came out of Albany over the last several years,” Reilly told the Post, specifically citing the “Raise the Age,” which lifted the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18.
The statute was signed into law in 2017 by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Reilly also cited the 2020 repeal of “a 175-year-old state law that made it illegal for two or more people to wear masks while congregating in public,” the Post reported.
“These kids riding the bikes are wearing masks so they can’t be identified,” he said.
Reilly announced Thursday that he is going to introduce new legislation next year to tackle the underage behavior. It would parents make civilly responsible for minors caught engaging in “reckless and dangerous riding of e-bikes, mopeds, ATV and other covered motorized vehicles,” he said in a social media post.
In Los Angeles, America’s second largest city, Angelinos have suffered similar problems. Riders, many of them teenagers, are on bike paths and streets everywhere, piloting high-speed electric bikes and electric scooters while ignoring traffic laws, wearing no safety protection and even looking at their smart phones as they do.
Experienced motorcyclists, such as those who have been trained by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation or other approved riding courses – one way to get a motorcycle endorsement on a California driver’s license — know that no helmet and protective clothing and riding distracted by a phone is a recipe for disaster, sometimes a fatal one.
Electric bike crashes and injuries, for example, have been increasing at a rapid pace across California, and many of those getting hurt are children 14 years old or younger, according to a new study by researchers at UC San Diego reported in July by the Los Angeles Times.
“E-bike riders were involved in at least 4,035 collisions in California from 2018 to 2024. Although the number of collisions involving traditional bicycles remained relatively stable during the seven-year period, collisions involving e-bikes increased dramatically,” the Times reported.
“The study found that 15.8% of riders injured on e-bikes were in that 14-or-younger age group. Among riders injured on traditional bicycles, 10.2% were 14 or younger,” the Times also reported.
Law enforcement officials say parents sometimes buy what are really considered electric motorcycles for their children assuming they are like e-bikes, but they are not; they are capable of high speeds and have licensing requirements.
For the electric bikes, California regulates the two-wheelers by their speed capacity. So-called “Class 3” e-bikes, which can reach speeds of more than 28 miles an hour and have proliferated on California streets, require a driver’s license as they are considered motorcycles.
Also in Los Angeles, gangs of sometimes one hundred unlicensed low-riding motor scooters take over main routes like Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, the armada roaring through red lights and other traffic controls in a jaunt to the Pacific Ocean.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. He is also an avid motorcyclist, who even with decades of experience, has still taken advanced motorcycle safety training which he credits with sparing him certain injury or death on many rides. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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