Last week, two people died and a third was seriously injured in a fire sparked by the lithium-ion battery from an e-bike in a NYCHA housing development in East Harlem.
It’s only the latest fatal fire sourced to e-bikes. According to the Fire Department, in 2021 there were 106 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries, which injured 79 people and killed 4. From Jan. 1 to Aug. 1, 2022 there were 120 fires, injuring 62 people and killing two — on pace to double the number of battery-caused fires compared to 2021.
It’s past time for the FDNY, and government as a whole, to act.
NYPD officers remove a burnt e-bike from NYCHA’s Jackie Robinson Houses last Wednesday, after a 5-year-old girl and her father’s girlfriend were killed in a fire. (Anna Gratzer)
Two new technologies have brought us to this point, and changed the landscape of work in New York City: e-bikes and smartphones. They both work on lithium-ion batteries, but they have something else in common: delivery workers use their phones to get gig jobs on their e-bikes delivering for companies like GrubHub and DoorDash, or quick-delivery grocery services like Gorillas and Gopuff.
Los Deliveristas Unidos, a NYC-based app-workers nonprofit, estimates there were 65,000 app-based delivery workers in September 2021. Their e-bikes were once illegal and subject to seizure by police — but were widely used. Albany finally legalized them in April 2020, but did not implement safety standards. Reviewing the City Council hearing testimony from June 2020 on local legalization of e-bikes and scooters, I’m dismayed that there was not one reference to fire safety.
It’s another example of how, when new technologies and business models emerge, the government is too often many steps behind. We must figure out the ripple effects — the externalities — that come with these new products more quickly. (Don’t get me started on micro-fulfillment centers!)
Because the bikes cost thousands of dollars, they are prone to theft. That’s why most workers store them in their homes, and often recharge the batteries overnight. But because many bikes are designed only for recreational purposes, not full-shift daily use, and because there are no industry or government standards for these products — some come from major manufacturers, while many others are knockoffs — the batteries can over-charge and become hazardous. (Smartphones have software that controls the pace of battery charging and usually stop the charging when they reach 100%.)
What can we do? Here are a few ideas I will bring to an industry working group meeting I’m convening as chair of the Council’s Oversight and Investigations committee:
E-bikes are here to stay, and have become an important component of life in the city. Government’s first responsibility is always to protect public safety; we must educate consumers, write new rules and enforce established ones, and demand accountability from bike and battery manufacturers and apps that require e-bikes for their workers.
Just as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire’s deaths more than a century ago spurred safety reforms, we need today’s tragedies to do so, too.
Brewer represents the Upper West Side in the City Council.
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News