Call them urban myth busters.
A team of Hunter College sociologists found that the e-bike riding delivery workers so feared by the public are far more safety conscious riders than their popular image suggests.
Associate Sociology Professor Mike Owen Benediktsson and Doctoral Lecturer Xuemeng Li discovered that deliveristas, as they are called, are much less likely than recreational micromobility riders to engage in a range of problematic and risky behaviors. They are less likely to run red lights, ride on the sidewalk, and ride without a helmet, and are much more likely to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks — contrary to the accounts of wild riding that dominate the media.
“Given the intense interest right now in the safety of micromobility and the expansion of the app-based delivery workforce in the city, we think the public will feel encouraged by these findings,” Benediktsson said. “People need real data, not scaremongering, to assess the effects of this huge and growing sector of our economy.”
Li noted that so-called reckless behaviors often relate to road design and traffic conditions.
“As more regulations on micromobility vehicle riders are being implemented, scientific examinations on the associations between riders’ behaviors and the conditions of bike lanes are urgently needed,” she said.
The findings come in a behavioral study conducted by a team of 56 volunteer observers, all Hunter graduate students, undergraduates, or professors. Benediktsson and Li trained the observers this past fall and then deployed them to more than 150 intersections across the city to systematically record the behavior of people riding e-bikes, mopeds, bicycles, scooters, and other devices. The study is available in a report, Micromobility in NYC 2025.
“New York City is in the midst of a micromobility revolution,” the authors write. “The number of lightweight, two-wheeled vehicles on city streets has multiplied in recent years, thanks to lithium battery technology, an expanded network of bike lanes, and a boom in the app-based restaurant delivery industry. The potential economic, environmental, and public health benefits of this moment are clear. In places where micromobility vehicles can be substituted for vehicles with internal combustion engines, they will cut transportation costs, relieve traffic congestion, and decrease harmful emissions. But other aspects of micromobility are still uncertain.”
Other key findings of the report include:
- Protected bike lanes make micromobility not just safer, but more predictable. When protected bike lanes are available, more than four-out-of-five micromobility vehicles will occupy these lanes, and almost no vehicles will travel on public sidewalks. Bike lanes help to “calm” micromobility traffic, encouraging more orderly behavior at intersections.
- Women are drastically underrepresented in micromobility, making up less than 10% of the more than 1,700 micromobility riders the rapporteurs saw, suggesting an entrenched gender gap in micromobility that city planners and policymakers should address.
- Delivery workers, who made up almost half of the riders seen by the observers, are overwhelmingly men of color, while non-commercial micromobility riders are disproportionately white and male. The results point toward divisions and inequities within the social landscape of micromobility that have implications for transportation planning, regulation, and enforcement.
“The city is undergoing a profound transformation in everyday mobility,” Benediktsson said. “Our hope is that this study will cut through the chaos and help make sense out of the changes occurring on city streets, many of which are positive.”
