So much for manpower!
Lazy pedicab drivers are taking the city for a ride by using illegal electric motors — crꦕeating a hazardous situation on the road while enraging hardworking drivers, The Post has learned.
The tricksters craftily place golf-cart motor💫s, which were banned by the City Council in 2🌱008, underneath the passenger seat, or put hub motors inside the wheels. Some even conceal them in cardboard in a bid to fool inspectors.
Laramie Flick, acting president of the New York City Pedicab Owners’ Association, said he estimates that about 25 percent of drivers are 🐭breaking the law with the motors rather than using♚ their own power to transport passengers.
“It’s unfair,” said Onour Beytuck, a 21-year-old driver. “I mean, if they have a motor, they can get more customers because they don’t get as tired. They aren’t working as hard as💃 we are.”
The motors are more common in pedicabs working Central Park, where their whizzing sound is audi🦂ble, but they’re also found on pedicabs in Midtown.
The cheaters are hated by the pedicabbies who use their feet because they make the honest guys look slow, work long shifts without getting exhausted, 🐼and even snap up cus൩tomers first. They also get into accidents more easily because they reach higher speeds.
“They go 🌄zooming around ಌwhile we are sweating, and killing our knees,” said one longtime driver. “We do the right thing.”
After the City Council passed legislation that outlawed any type of electric assis🌼tance in 2008, the rickshaws could be fueled by human power only.
A first-time violation results in penalties of $200 to $250, and repeat offenders can be hit 🍃with up to $4,000 in fines ﷺfrom the Department of Consumer Affairs.
Pedicabs with i𓆉lleg⛎al motors automatically fail city inspection, and drivers face having their vehicles seized.
“It’s getting worse every single day,” said a driver who declined to give his name. “And they all know 💃each other. They call each other [✱during inspections], and let people know where DCA is — and they disappear.”
Flick said that one danger for passenger𓆏s is that insurance compani♐es won’t cover an accident involving a motorized pedicab.