American Online Personality Penalized After Large-Scale E-Bike Ride on Iconic Australian Bridge
NSW police have issued a fine against an US-based online influencer and handed out two traffic infringement notices for alleged negligent driving after a large group of electric bicycle users converged on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during peak-hour traffic on Tuesday.
The Incident: An Illegal Gathering
A group of approximately 40 people riding e-bikes and motorcycles travelled along the bridge’s main deck, where cycling is prohibited. The riders then turned around and traveled through the city’s CBD and a nearby district.
"There was potential for serious injury or fatalities," remarked NSW police assistant commissioner David Driver on Wednesday.
Law enforcement said they did not chase right away the group out of concerns for public safety but instead located the assembly at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair near the city gardens, at which point they broke up.
Fines Imposed for Influencer
On Saturday, police stated they had served the American online personality known as the influencer, twenty-six, with two traffic infringement notices for careless operation (with no death or previous bodily harm), carrying a fine of over five hundred dollars and penalty points each, connected to the bridge ride-out. They added that inquiries were continuing.
The personality is said to have over 3.4m followers on one platform and over 1.2 million on the social media app.
Influencer's Comments
The content creator spoke with a local publication recently after the incident spread rapidly on digital platforms, saying he was sorry for giving "the biking community" a negative image.
"I’ll probably take responsibility. That was one of the safest gatherings I have witnessed," he said. "I am a visitor here, and I intend to abide by the rules and standards of Sydney. When I decided to do a meet and greet it did not involve a ride-out, it was just to greet people under the bridge."
"I did not know the area well, it was my fault we found ourselves on the bridge and I had a decision to make: whether the group rides the full length of the bridge and comes back, which is a crime. Or we turn around, basically, before entering the bridge. I chose at the time to go back."
National Debate on E-Bike Regulation
The spate of electric bicycles on roads nationwide has sparked growing calls for stricter rules. A senior government official, Mark Butler, recently said that non-compliant electric bikes were a "complete hazard on the road."
"Kids have done reckless acts on bikes ever since the early bicycle [but] the injuries that are presenting at our hospital emergency departments are truly severe," the minister stated. "We’ve got to ensure we stop these things coming into the country [and] officers are given the authority to crack down, to confiscate them, to destroy them, to destroy them."
The state reported over two hundred injuries related to electric bikes in 2024. But, in the initial half of 2025, that figure surged to 233 injuries plus four fatalities.