A morning commute turned fatal on the Queensboro Bridge Thursday when a head-on collision between an illegal high-speed electric scooter and a bicycle killed both riders, shocking New Yorkers and reigniting calls for stricter enforcement of fast-moving micromobility devices on city bike paths.
Francis Delball, 39, was riding a Blade GT II electric scooter uphill from Queens at around 8:30 a.m. when he collided head-on with Dmytro Stechenko, 35, who was cycling downhill into Queens.
Both men were transported to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where they died from their injuries. The NYPD has not officially released the names, though a police source identified the two victims.
The Blade GT II, manufactured by Teverun and priced at around $1,700, is marketed with the boast of going zero to 53 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds.
It is among a growing category of stand-up electric scooters that are illegal to operate on New York City streets and bike lanes but remain easy to purchase and have delivered to any city address.
Witness Kurt Freyer arrived at the scene moments after impact. Freyer commutes over the Queensboro Bridge four days a week and said he had long feared something like this would happen.
“I have said specifically someone is going to get really badly hurt,” Freyer said. “The stand-up high-powered scooters are very quiet and can go very fast. For the last three years they have been a daily occurrence where I get passed by them.”
Freyer described a scene that drew nearly 100 onlookers. A passing doctor attended to Stechenko while a nurse checked on Delball. Photos shared to Reddit showed Stechenko’s carbon-fiber Factor road bike snapped completely in half from the force of the collision. Both men had been wearing helmets, with Delball wearing a full-face motorcycle-style helmet.
“I can’t believe they both died,” Freyer said.
New York City sets a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit for both e-bikes and stand-up scooters used on bike lanes and paths. Legal mopeds and motorcycles must be registered with the DMV and are prohibited from bike lanes entirely.
Despite those rules, enforcement has remained inconsistent, and high-speed electric scooters continue to appear regularly on the city’s bridges and greenways.
City Hall spokesman Jeremy Edwards said the Mamdani administration would push forward on efforts to remove these vehicles.
“This terrible tragedy is a grim reminder that illegal, high-speed micro-mobility devices are dangerous and have no place on our roadways or bike paths,” Edwards said.
Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, pointed to pending legislation as a necessary next step.
“The City Council must move forward with the Ride Safe, Ride Right bill to prevent the sale of the most dangerous micromobility devices,” Furnas said. “The data is clear: anything faster than 20 mph is especially deadly.”
This is the second high-profile death in recent memory tied to illegal high-speed electric vehicles on city paths. Last year, an illegal e-moto rider struck and killed a pedestrian stepping off a bus on the Flushing Avenue greenway.
The investigation into Thursday’s crash remains ongoing.
