New York City Tragically Continues Crushing Motorcycles

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

Despite a change in leadership, New York City has continued to confiscate and destroy motorcycles officials have deemed illegal. Pioneered by ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio (formerly Warren Wilhelm Jr.), the practice has been continued by Eric Adams. In fact, the new mayor was so enthusiastic about the trend that the city held a press event where a bulldozer crushed over one-hundred bikes as he waved a checkered flag — effectively turning them all into garbage in a matter of seconds.

As a motorcycle enthusiast and recovering New Yorker myself, this story has been one your author has followed since the beginning as an excuse to professionally gripe about something personal. The city set out to confiscate dirt bikes and ATVs that are relatively common to see (and hear) zipping through traffic or cluttering sidewalks. De Blasio even made it one of his biggest traffic-enforcement initiatives in 2021, adding a bit of spectacle to the new vehicle bans. However, a cursory examination of the vehicles involved has shown a significant number of vehicles being destroyed are regular motorcycles that would have been legal under NYC law and all-electric scooters used by low-income commuters and restaurant delivery services.

But it’s the seemingly arbitrary nature of the confiscations and utter wastefulness of their destruction that has me grinding my teeth. Determinations of what makes a bike illegal are largely left up to individual NYPD officers who have been tasked to get as many two-wheeled conveyances off the street as possible. This has resulted in regular street bikes (basically anything that doesn’t look like an old-fashioned cruiser) and electric scooters getting caught up in the mix.

While de Blasio also hosted numerous press events where bikes were publicly crushed for the media, this appears to be Mayor Adams’ first rodeo. On Wednesday, he and the NYPD lined up roughly a gross of motorcycles to be destroyed for the sake of photographers. Adams pointed to dirt bikes and ATVs as being a dangerous nuisance, though anyone looking at the lineup of doomed vehicles would notice there were plenty of other completely legal designs lined up for the bulldozer’s treads.

During the event, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell stated that the city had seized over 2,000 vehicles citywide in 2022 so far — noting that this represented an 80-percent increase over the same timeframe in 2021.

City leadership has been attempting to link motorcycles to an increase in violent crime and robberies since 2020, often adding that the vehicles themselves are loud and driven recklessly. While the latter claims are indeed true (though not always), custom automobiles with exceptionally loud exhausts are also relatively common in NYC and can frequently be heard screaming through the night air.

Steps have likewise been taken to crack down on that issue. But two-wheeled transportation has arguably become the preferred scapegoat for everything that’s gone wrong over the last few years. That does not excuse the city from confiscating legal bikes and e-scooters. It also doesn’t explain why NYC would opt to crush these vehicles, instead of auctioning them off to make itself some money.

“The motorbikes are destroyed rather than resold or donated in order to prevent them from returning to our streets and not allow them to be operating again,” Adams said during the event. “So again, we want to thank all those who participated and assisted in the retrieving of these dirt bike [sic]. So we see this every year, it’s the first day of summer, the increases go up. That’s why we are using this day as a day of putting in place concrete actions to make sure that we get all of these illegal bikes and vehicles off our streets.”

Again, these were initiatives pioneered by Adams’ predecessor. But you don’t put on a spectacle like this and not try and take some of the credit. However, the current mayor has attempted to expand on those efforts by working with nearby cities and utilizing new camera technologies to locate more vehicles. He and the NYPD confirmed on Wednesday that this summer will include a crackdown assumed to dwarf the city’s previous confiscation efforts.

“We’re here at Erie Basin Auto Pound to send a very strong and very clear message to anyone who illegally operates an ATV, dirt bike, or other such vehicle on the streets of New York City. We will seize that bike and we will destroy it. We take this very seriously because driving these motor bikes on city streets, on sidewalks, or in parks, and within housing developments is dangerous. It’s reckless and it’s illegal. It puts everyone at risk. Other drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and not to mention the bike riders themselves,” Commissioner Sewell told the press.

“Our city will not tolerate this, and the NYPD will use every tool at our disposal to rid our neighborhoods of these hazards. It is the people living in these communities who are making the majority of complaints. They are telling us loud and clear to get these motorbikes out of our neighborhoods and keep them out. The NYPD got the message and that’s exactly what we’re doing today.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams waved a checkered flag to start a bulldozing event, where 100 illegal dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, confiscated by the New York City Police Department, were crushed pic.twitter.com/DuzKOnWwAN

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 22, 2022

[Image: @NYCMayor/Twitter]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Stuki Stuki on Jun 27, 2022

    It's America. In the Age of Incompetence. New York, even. The single most concentrated mass of nothing but illiteracy and incompetence, even by the non-standards currently prevailing in our worthless idiotopia. What do people expect? The retards can't build, literally, anything anymore. Not one single thing. Anything at all, too diffimecult for this garbage. So, stealing and destroying other people's stuff where it's at for the trash. Can't build boats competitively? Of course not! So, "we" steal Russians' boats instead. Can't compete at building even a balance bike? We'll just steal and destroy that which our in-every-single-manner-whatsoever-betters have built and/or acquired. Yeah! That's what we'll do! That's, after all, all we are capable of doing.

  • Tedward Tedward on Jun 28, 2022

    Nyc has always had an extremely hostile policy towards motorcycles. To the point where you just don't have any of the legal protections or rights that any other motorist would have on city streets. We're talking enforcement sweeps where bikes are impounded without any violations, and truly random vehicle stops without cause to hunt down any little thing. This is really bad when you consider the default state of nyc is that everyone has less rights here than anywhere else in the country (leaving out the 2a issue even). That being said, the mini bikes and atvs are hilariously illegal, and are widely bought specifically to opt out of obeying any regulations at all. I used to live literally on the same block that all of them park on, next to a pre covid cop bar btw, at a repair shop that stores and works on all of them. Just so we're all clear that nypd knows exactly where all of them are and where they leave from already, and has for over a decade.

  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
  • Dave Holzman A design award for the Prius?!!! Yes, the Prius is a great looking car, but the visibility is terrible from what I've read, notably Consumer Reports. Bad visibility is a dangerous, and very annoying design flaw.
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