NYC’s deadly e-bike dangers have now even reached into our homes
Five members of the Adam-Maine family went to sleep in an apartment in The Bronx’s Patterson Houses on Oct. 27 — and only one survived the night. Three children and one adult perished in the city’s latest confirmed battery-fire inferno , bringing the year’s total fatalities to nine so far. This cause of death didn’t even exist back in 2019. But now that we know the uniquely deadly risks of lithium-ion batteries, it shouldn’t be hard for Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council to assure us: Nobody else must die. This family’s incineration fits a familiar narrative. One of the apartment’s residents was storing an e-bike in the apartment’s kitchen, blocking the single exit. The same thing happened in August, when an e-bike explosion in Brooklyn’s Albany Houses, another NYCHA complex, killed 18-year-old Caleb Matthews. And just last week, six people lost their lives in a Sunset Park house fire. The FDNY hasn’t determined the cause, but battery-powered micromobility devices were present at the scene. Since 2020, when New York state and city legalized e-bikes and e-scooters , lithium-ion battery deaths have claimed 44 lives — not counting the six souls in Sunset Park. Horrific e-bike
