I kept following the blue dot on Find My Friends but it just didn’t make sense. My then 15-year old son was at the Mets game with his friends. The game was over and he was on his way back home but his route didn’t make sense for an Uber. It wasn’t the No. 7 train. So how was he getting home? On a Citi Bike e-bike. At top speed. Through three boroughs. Over two bridges. Without a helmet. Underage.
Citi Bike’s own terms of service say their riders must be 16 or older. But if you look in any bike lanes these days, you’ll know that just isn’t the reality. Lyft, which owns Citi Bike, has so far turned a blind eye to rampant use of e-bikes, mainly by boys much younger than 16. My son and all of his friends have been riding e-bikes for years. None of them wear helmets. Should they? Of course they should — I’ve bought him three different kinds. You try getting a teenage boy to do something that looks patently uncool.
The stats make clear that Lyft must take action before it’s too late. Here in New York, there have been more than 400 e-bike crashes year-to-date, a sharp 20% increase over this point last year. Nationwide, e-bike injuries surged 293% from 2019-2022.
Recent stories from across the country highlight the danger of young teens on e-bikes — even when multi-ton cars are not involved. In April, a 14-year-old died while riding with another teen on his e-bike in California. (Seeing young teens double up on one e-bike is an increasingly common sight in New York City too). In May, a 13-year-old in Seattle died after he crashed his e-bike into a cable fence. In November last year, a cyclist was sent to the hospital after a teenager on an electric Citi Bike slammed into them and destroyed their bike.
With all of these stories and stats, why has Lyft not even added the most basic safety measures to keep kids off of their electric bikes? With a smartphone, email address, and a payment method, any teen can unlock an e-bike in less than 60 seconds.
While the app has a few screens of safety tips (that you can swipe through with your eyes closed), there is no legitimate guardrail for verifying anyone is actually 16 years old before they rent an e-bike. The only way Lyft checks your age is by asking riders to self-input their birthday, just begging teens to invent a fake one to get going. This is bonkers, and a tragedy waiting to happen. And it’s entirely preventable.
Lyft operates bikeshare networks across the globe, and they require an ID scan to verify age in other markets. And other transportation companies like Lime (whose scooter programs in the Bronx and Queens are overseen, like Lyft, by NYC DOT) require riders to undergo ID verification and start with a slower speed. Lime also requires riders to be at least 18 years old, (which frankly should be the policy for Citi Bike e-bike riders too. Regular bikes make sense at 16).
But think beyond bikeshare. Lyft is the second largest rideshare provider in the U.S. I imagine that hundreds if not thousands of times a day, they verify the age of their drivers across the country. If they can use technology to keep riders in cars safe, why are they not using the same technology to keep teens on e-bikes safe?
If Lyft isn’t willing to do the right thing, then NYC’s DOT could force them to add age verification by amending their contract with the city. Mayor Adams recently led a valiant fight to lower the e-bike speed limit to 15 mph, which shows his commitment to safety. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t want to further protect kids who aren’t supposed to be on e-bikes to begin with. I know parents would really appreciate it.
The City Council could also mandate it. Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan recently wrote a letter to Lyft asking them to implement age verification, writing, “I hear from parents who are worried about their kids. This is a potential disaster just waiting to happen — and it’s entirely preventable.” Brannan is absolutely right.
Lyft is a good company. I know from firsthand experience that they typically operate with integrity — I saw it frequently in my time at Uber. But allowing teenagers — mostly boys with inherently terrible judgment — to illegally ride e-bikes is not integrity. It’s greed. Plain and simple. Lyft can do better than that. And if they can’t, the city needs to make them.
Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist and philanthropist.
