New South Wales police have fined an American social media personality and issued two traffic infringement notices for alleged negligent driving after a swarm of ebike riders converged on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in peak-hour traffic on Tuesday.

A group of about 40 people riding ebikes and motorcycles travelled along the bridge’s main deck, where cycling is prohibited. The group then turned around and rode through the city’s CBD and Haymarket.

At the time, police said the so-called ride-out was “incredibly irresponsible, stupid and downright dangerous”.

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“This had potential for people to be injured and killed,” NSW police assistant commissioner David Driver said on Wednesday. Police said they did not immediately pursue the riders out of safety concerns but instead located the group at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair near Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, where they dispersed.

On Saturday police said they had issued the US social media influencer known as Sur Ronster, 26, with two traffic infringement notices for negligent driving (with no death or previous bodily harm), with a penalty of $562 and three demerit points each, in relation to the bridge ride-out. They added that inquiries were continuing.

Ronster has more than 3.4m followers on the platform and more than 1.2m on Instagram.

The Guardian has emailed Ronster for comment.

The content creator spoke with the Sydney Morning Herald this week after the incident spread rapidly on news sites and social media, saying he regretted giving “bike life” a bad reputation.

“I’ll probably take responsibility. That was one of the safest ride-outs I’ve ever seen,” he told the Herald. “I’m coming here as a guest, so I’m going to come here respecting the rules and standards of Sydney. So when I decided to do a meet and greet it did not involve a ride-out, it was just to say hi to people under the bridge.

“I’m unfamiliar with the city, it was my fault we ended up on the bridge and I had two choices: either the group completes the entirety of the bridge and turns around and does it all the way back, which is a crime. Or we turn around, basically, before we’re on the bridge. And I made the decision at the time to turn around.”

The spate of ebikes on streets across the country has prompted growing calls for regulation. The federal health minister, Mark Butler, said on Friday that illegal ebikes were a “total menace on the road”.

“Kids have done stupid things on bikes ever since the penny-farthing [but] the injuries that are coming into our hospital emergency departments are absolutely devastating,” Butler said. “We’ve got to make sure we stop these things coming into the country [and] police are given the powers to crack down, to take them away, to crush them, to destroy them.”

NSW recorded 226 injuries related to ebikes in 2024. But, in the first seven months of 2025, that figure surged to 233 injuries plus four deaths.