NYC's toxic ebike culture almost killed 4 people; let's talk about it.

hey everybody how's it going I hope you're having a lovely day today I would like to give a rant on freedom and what is necessary to maintain freedom in a particular area there is some level of accountability and responsibility that is necessary in order to maintain certain freedoms what do I mean about this today I'm going to be ranting about a near fatal e-bike accident that happened on the Manhattan Bridge in New York City I typically tended to take the Williamsburg Bridge not the Manhattan Bridge the Manhattan Bridge was a little too narrow for for my liking especially since it was to a two-way I just didn't particularly like that that path but it it this is an accident that happened on the Manhattan Bridge bike path I'm not going to show you photos some people have actually messaged me photos I'm not showing you that because I'll just be honest with you it's disgusting it's near needless to say it was a near fatal e-bike accident involving about three or four people and I'm also going to discuss some of the comments that I've seen on many news articles around the internet involving this particular e-bike accident for those of you who are not aware when I lived in New York City I used an e-bike to get around it was my chosen transportation of choice some videos here I have like the 360 camera some videos here are on my normal camera and over here I actually gave Rich from Rich rebuilds and stevon a tour of Midtown Manhattan when they visited the store two years ago on an e-bike I had an e-bike that could fit three to four people on it and I gave them a tour it was a lot of fun I enjoyed building my e-bike and I enjoyed it as a means of transportation some of you may be wondering why don't you just drive a car in New York City that doesn't work if you have a town of 3 000 people A Car Works a city of 50 000 people A Car Works a city like Austin with 800 000 people sometimes you're gonna curse because there's traffic but a car works when you have space the size of Knoxville Tennessee and you fit 8.5 million people into that place cars cease to work it will take you one to two hours to show up someplace that I can get to on an e-bike in 15 to 25 minutes I don't want to waste hours of my time in a vehicle cursing because of the traffic nor do I want to spend 500 to 2 000 a month on parking when I don't have to it makes no sense car infrastructure not just bikes is a great Channel lots and I'll link to it down below he goes over in much better detail than I do car infrastructure doesn't scale and regardless of whether you agree or disagree on that point drive through Manhattan and see it doesn't work when it comes to the public transportation system I took the public transit system from 2001 through 2018 and it it it sucks to be clear like can it actually get you around the city yes is it better than the public transportation and 99 of America yes does that mean it's good no again in the summer it's 98 Degrees and you're sitting there for 30 minutes sweating your ass off waiting for a train to come that you're going to be packed in like this with a bunch of people that train may not actually show up because some crazy person jumped on the tracks five stops before and they have to wait for an ambulance crew and everybody to get them off the tracks there are the L train that would only go to Lorimer shuttle bus to Myrtle Wyckoff and shuttle bus to Broadway Junction then shuttle bus to Canarsie it sucked needless to say at some point in my life around the time that I turned 30 I said you know what I'm tired of this horrible experience and I built my electric bike I think an electric bike is a great way to get around they really are they're very small so you don't have to worry about parking they can get in and out around traffic so when car traffic comes to a complete standstill I can just go la la la la and go in between all of you which makes it very convenient and it's it's much easier to store than a car because it takes up less space so instead of having to pay 1500 to 2 000 for parking I can simply walk the bike into my store I can lock it to will do a stop sign somewhere it's much easier and I've gone over in many of my videos how much I love my electric bicycle and I've shown you it on normal videos I've shown it to you with the 360 camera so you can kind of get an idea of how I ride I even cook Rich rebuilds for a ride on it along with stevon who are two genuinely upstanding gentlemen for some reason my browser is destroying this video but if it was loading properly it would be a 360 video where you could see the entire panoramic view so that's myself in the helmet that is Rich rebuilds over here and that is stavon over there it was it was a fun experience they're cool people I love my electric bike the only thing that kept me in New York for the past 45 years I was there was the fact that I did not have to deal with car traffic or the train to get around it genuinely improved my quality of life it made me happier I enjoyed being above ground for trips I enjoyed that I wasn't sitting in a sardine can underground and a thing that looked some rotting 100 year old tunnel stuff like this with 100 other people that were highly stressed it genuinely made me happier and I think that if anybody in New York City is looking for a better way to get around I strongly suggest they look into an electric bike because I believe it will make them happy today what I'd like to discuss is a near fatal e-bike accident that seems to have occurred on the Manhattan Bridge I'm not going to share photos some people have shared photos with me we're not going to go there because this looks absolutely horrible I I don't I don't want to get into that just trust me when I say this looked like it was near fatal and there are many comments in many of these news articles that I want to go over but more importantly the general concept when it comes to freedom in general what is necessary to keep freedom in a hobby in a geographic location with any sort of group Act activity where other people may be harmed and also how can you keep that activity legal for as long as humanly possible many people have said why don't you get a motorcycle and the reason I don't get a motorcycle is because if I want a motorcycle I have to get a gas one they are much bigger than an e-bike they again it's not like I can take my motorcycle and bring it up you know up a set of stairs or something like an electric bike and I want it's it's less efficient when it comes to just again miles per gallon on a motorcycle versus my Watt hours per mile with my electric bicycle I was getting somewhere around 22 Watt hours per mile on average with my electric bike which is really really good and it's also considerably cheaper than it was to actually get a gas motorcycle so I really like my e-bike I can't register that thing I can't get license plate for it I yeah like that there was no methodology there's one way to go which is trying to register an experimental vehicle which is essentially uh if anybody was able to actually get through and do that by all means you are better at at navigating New York City bureaucracy than I am needless to say I'm not exactly the best at navigating New York state and city bureaucracy so I just wasn't going to try to do that again the first time I tried I completely failed I was never able to really get uh any any progress on registering this I would have wanted to use that electric bike legally the problem is that I I did not have a means to do so and there is now a large debate going on about electric bikes in New York City and a lot of people that want them to be banned they want them to be properly enforced by the NYPD because the NYPD essentially does virtually no enforcement of these things my what I would do is if I saw a cop car I would essentially start pedaling really fast and pretend that I was pedaling and Trust the fact that when it came to the wattage limits on e-bikes that the NYPD was not carrying around a multimeter so you know it's one of these things like what are they gonna how are they gonna tell this is 700 watts versus 3000 or anything like that but it was Paramount to me was to not ride like a complete Nutter jackass and a lot of the comments I'm going to read you I think are stemming from the fact that people rode these things like complete jackasses so a few things that I wanted to go over here as a motorcyclist F these people not on a bike path but witnessed a crash involving one of these in Manhattan that shook me for a bit since many of them don't even wear a helmet this guy who ran a red light and teemoed a taxi hit his head directly on the pavement and was literally squirting blood out his head he wasn't dead yet but I wouldn't be surprised if he died shortly thereafter or at least was left with permanent brain damage I can guarantee that he was not insured as well which will make the situation fun for the cab owner now I understand where his his aggravation is coming from the red light thing is true and one of the things that you'll notice if you watch all of my videos is that there tend to be two type of people riding bikes in New York City the first are people who are riding them for recreation or to get to work and the second are people who are essentially paid based on how fast they ride and when it comes to anything where there's a financial incentive there is sometimes a financial incentive to you know if I blow that red light I may get an extra tip or hey if I blow 30 red lights I may be able to get three more deliveries an hour which brings my salary from twelve dollars an hour to thirty dollars an hour and stuff like that can really add up when you look at the people who are driving like lunatics it's not often the recreational users at least from what I've noticed and what you can see in all of my videos if you want to watch them it's the people that are doing doordash GrubHub and seamless they're the people that are going through a red light and just pretending it's not there back in the day it was easy to tell what these were because they were typically an arrow 7 or an arrow 9 that was all wrapped up so you couldn't actually read the part that said Arrow 7 or rr9 they used to have these would look like pizza oven mitts or something like that that they would have on each of the handlebars so in the winter when it was nine degrees their hands wouldn't freeze and they would drive like lunatics when I go to a red light I usually stop and if there is nobody there I will do this brakes there is nobody here and then I will go through what you'll notice with a lot of the delivery drivers and this is really bad is they won't even look they'll just go sometimes I've seen many of them do this and you've caught me in some of these videos I wish I saved time stamps for stuff like this because I know it has actually happened that I've ranted about in the bike video where somebody will see that there is oncoming traffic and say you know what I don't even care I'm gonna play a game of chicken with the car I'm gonna Force the car to smash his break so he doesn't hit me this was a thing and I saw this as late as 2022 where you would have delivery drivers that were actually going into the red light knowing there was a car there going anyway because they were playing a game of chicken and that creates an environment where people say you know what I'm not going to be mad at the delivery drivers I'm not going to be mad at the individual that made a bad decision so many of you have made a bad decision and every single one of you making these bad decisions is on an electric bicycle so I'm gonna be mad at the electric bicycle there's two concepts at Play Here There is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law I'm not going to say that I've always listened to the letter of the law every single day of my life and honestly most of you haven't either there are good books on this that go over all the laws that you probably break every day without even noticing it and the reason that you probably get along just fine is because you listen to the spirit of the law the idea is that led to the creation of that law otherwise known as common sense and when people cannot practice Common Sense we go from having a small number of general laws to tens of thousands of miserable laws that go over every single little specific aspect of life that law says you cannot go through a red light why because somebody may be Crossing that you will hit so don't go through it don't be like a deer don't play chicken with oncoming traffic in other vehicles if you're not going to listen to the letter of the law listen to the spirit of the law that at least would encourage you to you know is there anybody there before you go through it people are not mad at e-bikes because they go through red lights this is New York City cabs go through red lights pedestrians go through red lights normal cyclists go through red lights everybody goes through red lights in New York City the thing that they're mad at you for is because the more neurons on the Arrow 7s and arrow nines are going through red lights when there is actual oncoming traffic and playing chicken with them and that is where it goes too far this is what results in bad legislation and more importantly this is what results in heavy-handed regulation that takes something that would actually be good for the city and ruins it for everybody I completely sympathize with everybody who is sick and tired of this and I really would implore the people that are the GrubHub in the doer Dash and the delivery drivers to actually treat the red light even if you're knocking a red light dare I say it treat it like a stop sign can you stop playing a game of chicken with the car that has happened enough times and it really again you're not going to save a lot of time anybody who's watched my videos when I actually try to catch up to the GrubHub people you will notice that if you have a bicycle of sufficient wattage you will actually catch up to them Paul used to mention this all the time there was a guy who would Blaze by the red lights but his bike was really slow so he would go through the red lights but he would drive slow Paul would stop at the red light but then once the red light was green he would just go at a normal speed and he would essentially catch up to the person that almost got themselves killed over and over again you're you're doing a disservice to everybody you are causing the entire world to despise electric bikes and the city that more than any city in the United States drastically needs an improvement to its transit system that is Affordable being able to get an electric bike for a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars and being able to get around the city way faster than you can by train or car is is very freeing it's it's something that's going to improve the mood of everybody in that City and when you act like that you ruin it for everyone now on this uh getting onto the profession thing absolutely sick and tired of hearing this excuse that delivery workers must use mopeds to do their job 10 to 15 years ago they did their job at the bicycle F these [ __ ] I hear where you're coming from I really do man at the same time 15 years ago most people were getting their food delivered by calling a restaurant and then paying for it in cash like 99 of the people at the recording studio I worked at from 2007 to 2009 were calling a restaurant and then handing cash to a delivery driver nowadays you have GrubHub GrubHub doordash all these other crap they're taking like 15 to 30 percent off of each order making matters worse some of these systems like I forget if it was GrubHub or seamless one of these systems they actually don't settle the money when you first start out with them until the end of the month so you have to have enough operating Capital to actually be able to pay everybody without receiving the money for up to a full month it's very similar like opening a new account on eBay or Amazon back in the day when they would hold your money into you were a verified seller and you can back then 15 years ago you could get an apartment for 950 in Brooklyn you could go to bed style or Bushwick and for 700 to 900 bucks get an apartment good luck finding a one or two bedroom apartment in bed or Bushwick for 900 dollars today the world is a lot more expensive and because the world is a lot more expensive and because there are way way more people now in the pot trying to get a piece of all this money from all these restaurants on these orders that are like 15 to 25 a piece they are nickel and diming and as a result of this the delivery drivers are realizing you know my apartment used to be 950. now it's like 1700. I used to be able to keep a lot of the order now like GrubHub wants this piece they want this fee this fee that fee and the other you really have to deliver things a lot faster in order to stay competitive if these restaurants don't do everything they can to get as much out the door as quickly as humanly possible to customers they will end up in one of these videos where I walk down the block with my camera and almost every single restaurant in store on that block is gone for lease and dead and they don't want that to happen to them so what do they do well I'm just going to do this one you know it's a red line I'm just gonna do it once and then once I do it once yeah I didn't die let me try it again oh you know that's a car coming close maybe they'll stop oh oh wait wow they actually stopped for me that works let me try that again oh wow they stopped for me again oh this is pretty nice and then they see at the end of maybe a day of doing that you know they're about 18 ahead than they were the last time you know that kind of adds up when you're broken working 30 days a month again it's not right I'm not excusing it I'm not saying that they should be let off the hook for it nor am I saying that I sympathize with it I'm just saying that when you ask why are things differently now than they were 15 years ago why the requirements different why are the pressures people are under different take a look at the expenses take a look at how much more difficult it is to have a business in that City take a look at all the pressure they are under and if those businesses don't meet the standard they need to meet they end up in one of these videos I hear you and to be clear I am not letting the delivery drivers off the hook the people that play chicken with cars I don't care what your job is unless you are an ambulance that is unacceptable you do not play chicken with cars when you are a bicycle at the same time there's a reason that 15 years ago they did not need motorized assistance to make a living when I would be in the film Center building and I called Pizza Plus and I asked for a sausage Stromboli they would deliver the Sasha Stromboli I gave them cash they got to keep 100 of that they had none of this nonsense to deal with no marketing commission delivery commission processing fee and having to wait 15 to 30 days for it to enter their bank account it entered their bank account immediately honestly probably their pocket the way that place is from but on all seriousness great Stromboli and at the end of the day it was a business model that gave you a little bit of leeway when the fees become higher when the cost of rent for that location is so high that you are very close to being in my dead City neighborhood walkthroughs playlist and when your employees are paying damn near double the rent they were 15 years ago there's a lot of pressure on everybody in that organization to get everything done as fast as possible and at the end of the day if that means mounting a 3000 watt motor rule bike and going through a red light so be it that is the choice that many of them are making it's not the right choice but you gotta understand some of the driving factors moving on I've walked on The Pedestrian side of the Manhattan Bridge hundreds of times and I can maybe count on two hands the number of times someone on a regular bike or e-bike hasn't gone Sailing by me at 20 miles per hour they need to put speed bumps on both sides as well as some sort of pedestrian only gates in The Pedestrian side this is another thing that pisses me off about people that were riding these electric bikes The Pedestrian pathway for the Manhattan Bridge is very very close to the bike path for the Manhattan Bridge so to use The Pedestrian path rather than the bike path when they're very close to one another in my opinion is a complete dick move especially if you're on a motorized bicycle where you don't even have to Pedal so it's not like you have an energy cost it's not like well I started on this block I have less pedaling to do to get over there it and further if you're on The Pedestrian path that is a very thin pathway if anybody here has walked to Manhattan Bridge the The Pedestrian path and my again I could be remembering it wrong but I do I recall it being narrower or seeming narrower than the Williamsburg Bridge pedestrian path you all you got to do is go like a block with two blocks this way and you're able to use the bike path which is much more convenient again if you are putting pedestrians in danger you have to keep in mind every time you put a pedestrian in danger every time you make a pedestrian feel unsafe on your electric bicycle what you are doing is you are creating one more person that says that should be illegal I want the police to confiscate your bike and you are part of the problem and I hate the fact that this continues to occur again when I rode my electric bike I would actually stop for pedestrians I know this sounds crazy there are a lot of people on no bikes and motorized bikes that go through red lights and do not stop a pedestrians they believe that it is a game of chicken and that the pedestrian's job is to stop it creates a culture of people who despise people who ride bikes you're cultivating a culture of people who are going to make what you are doing illegal what I think people need to do be the type of electric cyclist that makes people say oh I like those people yeah he actually stopped at a red light oh yeah he actually rides like a normal person I joke a lot about the fact that my bike goes 19.999 miles per hour because the speed limit in New York City at the time was 20 miles an hour and since I no longer live there I am I feel comfortable saying that that bike could hit 50 miles an hour like I it was very well geared I worked on it for a very long time it's field weakening enabled and it had like the the controller could do over 3000 watts and it was heatsinked like if I wanted to I could do 50 miles an hour on that bicycle do I go 50 miles an hour on a pedestrian walkway no I do not because if I go 50 miles an hour on a pedestrian walkway those pedestrians are going to think that I'm a piece of [ __ ] and they're going to tell all their friends about these garbage electric bikes and all their friends are going to call their legislators and say you must do something about this and then you're going to wind up with [ __ ] like this the reason that my bike was geared the way it was the reason that I had over 3000 watts of power available no reason that I fine-tuned my PID Loop the way that I did is that my 0 to 25 was fast enough that I could ride in the street with cars and simultaneously never cause a car to be inconvenienced by me so if I was at the front of the road and the light just turned green I can get started I can go and nobody behind me is going to be honking or mad or trying to get around me because I was fast enough I would use the amount of power that I put into that bike only when necessary I was not using the fact that that bike had that much power so that I could go 50 miles an hour in a pedestrian walkway because that's a dick thing to do with hour comes responsibility with 3000 Watts a very well tuned PID Loop and quality gearing I'm not using that so that I can send my bike at 70 miles an hour into a pedestrian I'm using that power responsibly so that I can get where I need to go in a very safe fashion without endangering or aggravating other people use that power responsibly don't use that power in a way that is going to cause other people to hate you or to be aggravated at you and honestly if you really feel like going 50 miles an hour down the road find some abandoned warehouse Road or something in the middle of nowhere when it's sunny don't do the [ __ ] on a pedestrian walkway on a [ __ ] bridge at night when you're gonna kill somebody listen I'm not saying that you should go 50 miles an hour anywhere in New York City on a normal Road what I'm gonna say is that if you really feel the need to do that there are places where you can do that where nobody will see and nobody will care because nobody's there do it there not on the Manhattan [ __ ] Bridge pedestrian path and this is this is one of the other things essentially people have said well why are the police not enforcing this the police couldn't force it and then you get to this so the NYPD has a very um there are certain things that I've said behind closed doors I'm just not going to put on YouTube because I'm going to have my channel deleted needless to say there's a certain attitude that flows through the NYPD that um again I'm going to get in trouble if I say it I'll just leave you this like I'm not gonna put my blinkers on why would I have to put a siren on or my blinkers on when I can simply try to murder the person that is on the the motorized scooter um the the NYPD is probably not the group that should be enforcing this because they they do again they do [ __ ] like this and I really think that it is important again as people who like electric bikes if you're the type of person that reads and participates in the endless beer Forum if you enjoy building these things you enjoy riding them it is on all of you to act in a manner where people are actually sympathetic when something like this happens rather than saying good I hate those people I think a big part of why we lose a lot of the freedoms that we do are because of the way that people act I love electric bikes I really do and I genuinely believe that that is the path forward for a place like New York City to have a sustainable transit system the MTA bleeds money driving in New York City is four rich people most of you are not going to pay 1500 for parking in Midtown Manhattan and in a lot in some areas that's that that's almost what it costs nowadays uh because again you gotta pay for parking in Midtown even in downtown area it's going to be like 700 bucks a month you got to pay for parking near your house if even if you're living like the end of Brooklyn that's gonna be like four or six hundred dollars it's expensive uh driving in minute and don't even get me started on the insurance rates my insurance dropped by like 80 percent when I registered my car in New Hampshire versus New York driving in New York is is essentially for the wealthy and again at the end of the day the amount of traffic it just doesn't fit the transit system I'll just be honest with you it actually depresses me I I feel bad when I spend an hour or two hours in that system I started my business doing house call repairs I traveled all around New York City from 2008 through 2011 or 12-ish when I got the store so that was about three three and a half years of me essentially spending my entire day three to four hours a day in the transit system I've been on virtually every line to every stop I've dealt with every single like the L train at Laura Murr needs a shuttle bus to marital Wyckoff between the shuttle bus the Broadway Junction which needs a shadow boss to this I've dealt with every this F train is not making this stop so you have to walk from Gravesend all the way over from Gravesend over the end train to get a train that actually works to get out of there every single thing that could not work I've dealt with I truly believe that electric bicycles are the best way to get around I really do but in order for them to actually survive and not be legislated out of existence people who ride them need to actually convince people that that they are worth having that freedom because the more reports I see of stuff like this like again why are you going 45 to 55 miles an hour if there's other people there like I've joked and gone fast on my bike I've joke I've gone fast on my bike over the bridge you know what I do before I do that oh there's nobody there I have my light on and my high Beamon and I can confirm that nobody is there I will go fast for 10 seconds I don't do this on The Pedestrian walkway and I definitely don't do that on The Pedestrian walkway when there's people there why would you do that and when it comes to a red light again if you go up to a red light and you do this and there's literally nobody there I'm not going to give you [ __ ] if you go through it but at the same time if there's people there let the people go the fastest way to lose your freedom is to cause everybody around you to advocate for your freedom to be taken away because they hate you and what I'm finding from a lot of the delivery drivers in the video online with how a lot of the delivery drivers are behaving they are behaving in a manner that is going to get e-bikes completely banned from New York City and enforced and again when NYPD enforces this [ __ ] this is how they're going to do it this is how they are going to do it there is a I again I I was not a fan with how some of the protests went in 2020 in June as a business owner but I understand why people have problems with the NYPD sometimes it is warranted sometimes they do stuff like this which is not cool turn your sirens on before you try to murder somebody on their scooter this stuff kind of makes me sad because I I see how this is going to end this is going to end with electric bikes being legislated out of existence and completely banned when they are in my opinion the future of Transportation car infrastructure doesn't scale in cities and it doesn't work work you need to have a lower population density or you wind up with something like Houston which again not just bikes goes into very well it's a complete another [ __ ] and like you can it sucks that the reason that we lose our freedoms are because people act like complete Nutter [ __ ] and I get why the delivery drivers are again these are people that want to make a living it is a prisoner's dilemma in order for me to make 21 an hour instead of 12 an hour I need to be willing to run you over and just take the risk that nobody's going to see me and that you're going to stop over and over and over and over and over again and I think that this type of stuff is honestly only going to get worse as costs of living go up as cause for an apartment go up as more and more people decide that they want as much of the pie as humanly possible there is a societal cost to this people stop behaving in a civilized manner when they are incentivized to because they are being nickel and dimed out of existence with an increasing cost of living any business model that encourages large tech companies to take more and more of a pie that they didn't before not excusing the delivery driver still a dick but I think you're going to see more of this I think this is going to get worse do you see apartment costs in New York City going down do you see any of these tech companies decide that they are going to take less money from the restaurants do you think suddenly overnight that a lot of these people who are the delivery drivers are just going to feel a sense of community responsibility to portray to others that they are responsibly taking part in the hobby of having an e-bike I'm very pessimistic about that and it makes me really sad because again if you watch any of the videos I've done on my channel sometimes sometimes yeah yeah I may do something that you think oh wow I can't believe you did this on the bike but in all with all all joking aside I am very serious about the safety of those around me I'm not going out of my way to try and kill people I'm not trying to ride into a pedestrian at 50 miles an hour if somebody is jaywalking and they are not supposed to be there I will maneuver around them or I will have my my hands on the brakes ready to go I test my brakes before and after every single ride I try to ride in a manner that would cause the people around me to go you know what I want to get one of those it's kind of cool versus wow that's really unsafe I hate you people and if you want to maintain your freedom you have to as well I don't live in New York City anymore so I don't have any skin in this game this is a rant from a principal perspective act in a way that encourages you to retain your freedom if you don't we lose it that's it for today and as always I hope you learned something I'll see you on the next video bye

Channel: Louis Rossmann

Views: 286,212

Keywords: ebikes, NYC, New York City, New York, NY, ebike, crash, moped, scooter

Id: nrtLWilSoNI

Length: 28min 29sec (1709 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023