Peru Bans Two-Up Motorbikes as Hitmen Turn Speed Into Terror

In Peru, a motorbike has become a symbol of modern fear: fast, cheap, and deadly. Now, in emergency zones, the government is banning two riders per motorcycle, hoping to disrupt the hitman routine—one drives, the other shoots.

The Murder Method That Fits In Traffic

In Lima, where a commute can swallow hours and every street corner has its own rhythm, a motorcycle is supposed to mean efficiency: weaving through congestion, getting home before dark, making delivery routes pay. But over the past year, the same vehicle has become the preferred tool of contract killers—quick to approach, quick to fire, quick to disappear. The pattern is grimly simple: one person drives, the other shoots, and the city’s chaos becomes cover.

That is the logic behind Peru’s newest restriction in areas under emergency measures against criminality: in those zones, two people may not travel on the same motorcycle. The policy aims directly at the method that authorities say has spread across the country’s most visible killings and extortion campaigns. President José Jerí put the government’s view bluntly after meeting with transport unions, groups that have been particularly shaken by a surge in hitman attacks and extortion. “We know statistically that motorcycles are the tools used by those wretches,” he said, in remarks cited by EFE.

In Peru’s public conversation, the language around this violence has become almost colloquial, like a dark joke that no longer feels like a joke. The expression “they’ll send you the motorbike” has circulated for years as shorthand for a hired killing—an everyday phrase that reveals how deeply the threat has seeped into social imagination. When a society turns murder into a common idiom, it is not because people are indifferent. It is because fear has become routine, and routine is the most dangerous kind of normalization.

From High-Profile Killings To Dynamite At Doorsteps

The government’s ban is not born from theory. It is born from repetition. Over the last year, EFE reported, numerous crimes followed the same two-person motorcycle script, including the attack on presidential candidate Rafael Belaúnde, the killing of a diplomat from the Embassy of Indonesia outside his home in Lima, the murder of cumbia singer Paul Flores, and several journalists slain in the same manner. Each case adds a layer to a national feeling that no one is fully protected—not public figures, not artists, not reporters, not ordinary people returning home.

The motorcycle has also become the delivery system for threats that are meant to be seen, not hidden. For months, criminals riding motorbikes have left grenades or dynamite cartridges accompanied by extortion messages at schools, businesses, and even public institutions, according to the reporting. This is violence as communication—designed to spread panic and extract money, designed to make the state look slow, and the criminals look omnipresent.

Behind these episodes lies a broader surge in organized crime, as evidenced by the numbers. Peru recorded 2,250 homicides in 2025, compared with 1,139 in 2019, a climb that traces a steady escalation rather than a sudden spike. And early 2026 is already carrying its own warning signs. Sinadef, the national death registration system, registered 88 homicides so far this year, as cited by EFE—a figure that the report notes is not dramatically higher than the 118 traffic deaths recorded in the first 20 days of the year. The comparison is chilling because it places murder in the same statistical neighborhood as accidents: both are killing Peruvians at a pace that feels ordinary on paper and devastating in real life.

More than half of those early 2026 homicides occurred in Lima and the neighboring port province of Callao, areas under an emergency declaration since October, according to EFE. That detail matters. It suggests that emergency powers alone do not automatically restore safety, and it hints at why the government is now reaching for more targeted restrictions—attempting to interfere with the logistics of violence, not only punish its aftermath.

A Fine, A Backlash, And The Risk Of Punishing The Innocent

The two-up motorcycle ban is not entirely new. It was introduced in Lima and Callao in October, alongside the emergency decree announced by Jerí, and it has now been reinforced with sharper penalties. Starting Wednesday, violating the rule will trigger a fine of 660 soles—about $196—and 50 points on a driver’s record. Repeat offenses will incur a 1,320-sol fine and could result in license revocation, according to the report.

The government’s message is clear: inconvenience is preferable to bloodshed. Yet the policy’s critics argue that inconvenience is not evenly distributed. Motorcycles are not luxury vehicles in Peru; for many families, they are a survival tool, a way to cut commuting costs, a way to work, a way to move through a city that often punishes the poor with distance and time. In practice, many couples ride together because it is cheaper, safer at night, and more realistic than paying for multiple rides across sprawling neighborhoods.

That is why the rule has sparked backlash among riders who feel they are being treated as suspects for simply existing on two wheels. The president of the Peru Motorcyclists Community, Dani Mendoza, warned in local media that if a consensus is not reached at a meeting scheduled with the executive branch on Tuesday, the group will launch a national strike, according to EFE. The threat of a strike underscores a familiar Latin American dilemma: when the state tries to respond quickly to insecurity, it can end up placing the weight of its response on working people who are already stretched thin.

One motorcyclist, Ronnie Pretel, who rides daily with his partner, told EFE that the ban is a “populist measure” that discriminates against riders and will harm them in ordinary life when they are doing nothing wrong. His complaint carries a broader warning: if public safety policies feel like punishment for the law-abiding, they can erode cooperation and legitimacy—two things the state cannot afford to lose in the fight against organized crime.

There is also a sobering regional precedent. The report notes that similar restrictions have been tried in other countries, including Ecuador, without reducing homicide figures linked to organized crime. That does not automatically mean Peru’s policy will fail, but it does force a harder question: is the government disrupting a key tool of violence, or simply shifting the criminals’ tactics while making life harder for commuters and workers?

In the end, Peru’s ban reads like a country trying to outmaneuver criminals who have turned speed into strategy. It is an attempt to slow the hitman down—to make the two-person motorcycle less useful as a weapon. But the moral test will be whether the state can strike at killers without turning the working rider into collateral damage. Peru is not only battling gangs; it is battling the feeling that public space belongs to fear. And that is the most expensive theft of all.

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