An elderly man was fatally thrown off his e-scooter in a head-on collision with a bicyclist outside a Hilton hotel in Downtown Brooklyn on Monday, police said.
Thomas Bakas, 77, was riding his stand-up electric scooter in the bike lane on Schermerhorn Street near its intersection with Smith Street around 2:20 p.m. when he smashed into the bike rider heading in the opposite direction, authorities said. It’s unclear who was going with traffic.
The cyclist, 47, had been riding outside the designated bike lane and attempting to re-enter it by careening between two parked unoccupied cars when the pair collided, cops siad.
Thomas Bakas, 77, who was riding a stand-up electric scooter, was killed in a head-on crash with a bicyclist in downtown Brooklyn. Obtained by NY Post
The impact caused both men, who were not wearing helmets, to fall to the ground, police said.
Bakas, who lived just blocks from the scene, was taken to Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
“They tried very hard to revive him,” a witness said.
The bicyclist stayed at the scene and was neither hurt nor arrested, cops said.
“He looked a little shaken up,” the witness added. “He was fully cooperative with police.”
A photo showed a backpack left behind in the street at the taped-off crash scene outside the hotel.
The fatal crash comes about a month after City Council members pledged to unveil 17 bills combating dangerous e-bikes across the Big Apple.
Those measures range from banning certain e-bikes to tweaking commercial bicycle safety laws.
“Just as we all share the city, we all share the roads and the responsibility to use them responsibly,” Council Speaker Julie Menin said at the time.
“That’s why we at the City Council are launching a comprehensive legislative review of e-bike and e-scooter safety in September.
“We already, let’s be real, have existing laws in place to regulate the use of e-bikes, but it’s vital that they are enforced fully, properly, and effectively. And in light of the latest statistics, we believe that our city agencies can do a better job of ensuring that.”
The push for increased enforcement came months after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s March announcement that the NYPD would no longer issue criminal summonses to e-bikers and cyclists for traffic offenses, such as blowing stop signs or illegally zipping along city sidewalks.
City Hall officials said those violations would instead be handled with civil summonses just as motorists are for similar offenses.
Driving the wrong way would have been a criminal offense for bikers before Mamdani’s order.
More than 500 collisions involving e-bikes were reported through July – marking a 32% increase from the same point in 2025, according to the latest citywide data available.
Toward the end of that month, 17-year-old e-bike rider Gabriel Nacato died when he rammed into a moving SUV near City Hall, police said.
Nacato was pedaling northbound on Centre Street near the busy Chambers Street intersection just before 9 a.m. when he veered out of the bike lane and into the vehicular lane, authorities said.
He then slammed into the 2008 black Chevrolet Tahoe heading in the same direction, cops and law-enforcement sources said at the time.
Earlier in July, an Upper West Side jogger was left in a medically induced coma when an e-bike rider mowed her down from behind in Central Park.
The 43-year-old runner, identified only as Jean, needed emergency cranial surgery after the harrowing July 7 crash.
But the e-bike involved did not face any consequences, according to cops and the victim’s outraged niece, Brandi Wiltse.
“After this, the fact that there is no accountability, there’s no registration requirement, there’s no insurance,” Wiltse said at the time. “There should be laws in place.”
And in May, a motorized scooter rider and a bicyclist were both killed in a head-on morning rush crash on the Queensboro Bridge, police said.