Cyclist Arrested After Crash with Electric ‘One-wheel’-Style Unicycle

Update, July 3, 11:52 a.m.: NYPD provided additional details of the incident on Thursday. The cyclist and unicyclist were traveling in the same direction when they collided, a spokeperson said.

A Manhattan woman is in custody at NYPD’s Central Park Precinct on Wednesday after cops accused her of fleeing the scene of a collision that left the rider of an electric unicycle in critical condition on Monday.

NYPD provided few details of the crash between between 30-year-old cyclist Carolyn Backus, who is charged with fleeing the scene of a crash causing serious injury, and the unnamed 40-year-old electric vehicle user.

Cops accused Backus, of Harlem, of striking the 40-year-old man at around 4:30 p.m. on Central Park’s West Drive near 60th Street. A post made on Reddit on the night of the crash described a similar collision between a bike and one-wheel — however, there was a key difference: the anonymous poster, who said they were the cyclist in question, said they were hit, not the other way around.

“I heard this horrific zooming noise in my ear and I was suddenly thrown backwards off my bike,” the Reddit user, whose account has since been deleted, wrote on Monday night. The user also claimed that the man on the one-wheel was going “incredibly fast and not wearing a helmet,” and that they’d stayed on the scene at least until the ambulance arrived.

“It was very, very scary but I came away totally fine, just shocked and a bruised tailbone,” the person wrote. “The guy on the one wheel [sic] however did not seem so lucky … Please, please be careful out there. Honestly I think it would’ve been safer for me to just ride on Columbus [Avenue].”

A rep for the police department told local news site ILoveTheUpperWestSide that Backus turned herself in hours after NYPD circulated her photo and news of the incident earlier on Wednesday. She was not likely to be released on before the end of the day, police told Streetsblog.

EMS transported the critically injured one-wheeler to New York-Presbyterian with serious injuries. 

As of Thursday morning, it’s still unclear what kind of one-wheeled electric vehicle was involved in the crash, as the NYPD and other news reports have described it non-specifically as an ‘electric unicycle.’ This class of e-vehicles includes ones made by Onewheel, and others made by INMOTION that can reach speeds of over 40 mph, which makes them technically illegal to operate in New York City.