D.C. is cracking down on unsafe electric scooter and bike riders amid an uptick in traffic fatalities across the city.
The Metropolitan Police Department kicked off a street-safety outreach program Friday to address “unsafe behaviors” on micromobility vehicles, one week after a fatal e-scooter crash killed a D.C. man who worked in city government. The city has seen a 62% increase in deadly traffic accidents this year compared to the same period in 2025, according to District data.
“One of the areas where we’ve seen increased injuries and fatalities are e-scooters and e-bicycles,” said Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll during a brief gaggle with reporters at the corner of Seventh and H Streets NW, where e-scooters and bikes were zipping by. “E-bikes and e-scooters go much faster than regular foot-powered scooters and bicycles, so the nature of the injuries that can occur is much more intense.”
The outreach program is a District-wide initiative but will focus on areas with high concentrations of e-scooters and e-bikes, including Navy Yard, Chinatown and the U-Street corridor, MPD said Friday.
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Outreach will continue through the end of the year, with officers handing out flyers warning riders to wear helmets, obey the rules of the road, avoid riding on the sidewalk in the Central Business District, and avoid using headphones while moving. Police will also remind people not to ride with more than one person on e-bikes and e-scooters.
There have been six fatalities this year involving the vehicles: four on e-bikes and two on e-scooters, MPD told The Washington Sun. Two other collisions, one involving an e-bike and one an e-scooter, resulted in “major crash response,” but the victims were not killed. MPD did not provide data for the total number of collisions involving e-bikes and scooters this year.
The new enforcement campaign comes amid broader concerns about the growing popularity of e-scooters and e-bikes in D.C. and beyond. While proponents say they offer people easy ways to get around, many jurisdictions have struggled with kids and teenagers driving recklessly on e-bikes and scooters that in some cases can travel up to 46 miles an hour.
D.C. has made recent efforts to crack down on kids and teenagers using e-scooters and e-bikes from shared rental companies like Lime and Veo, and last year the companies took the step of limiting speeds on the vehicles in areas where teens gathered.
The District averaged 45,000 daily rides on e-bikes and e-scooters in 2026 as of Sept. 30, according to the District Department of Transportation Ride Report database.
The most recent fatality occurred Oct. 9 on Capitol Hill, when two scooters crashed at the intersection of Eighth St. and Pennsylvania Ave. SE. One of the riders — later identified as Talib Shakir, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Returning Citizens Affairs — died at the scene. Neither rider was wearing a helmet, Carroll said, and police believe one of the scooters was traveling at high speed.
District law does not require adults to wear a helmet, but it’s strongly encouraged. People must be 18 to rent and ride e-bikes and scooters.
A 2022 study from the University of California, San Francisco, found that riders who didn’t wear a helmet were almost twice as likely to sustain a head injury if involved in an e-bike crash as those who did wear helmets.
Katie Van Dyck, a D.C. resident who said she witnessed the crash that killed Shakir, wrote on social media Friday that there should be more rules around the use of e-scooters and e-bikes.
“We need stronger helmet laws and stricter rules for e-scooter and e-bike operation. Bike share and scooter companies have a real responsibility to better police who uses their products. Free helmet programs should be more frequent and easier to access. Residents shouldn’t have to walk into a police station to get one. And we need more bike lanes that actually connect,” she wrote.
Some residents have called on the D.C. Council to impose more restrictions on e-scooters and e-bikes, including mandating that they be registered and that users have insurance. Carroll didn’t share specifics, but he told The Sun that new regulations are being considered.
“We are working with the mayor’s office and DDOT on regulations around these,” he said. “We are looking at that, if there are updates that need to be made.”
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