The Epidemic of Electric Scooters
A form of transportational convenience or a dangerous nuisance?
By Emma Smisek
Many people are willing to sacrifice their dignity in exchange for the luxury of cruising along on an electric, more dangerous version of a children's toy at 15 miles per hour without having to exert any physical effort. Why wouldn’t they? After all, according to Consumer Reports, electric scooters have only resulted in 8 deaths and about 1,500 injuries since they were introduced in 2017.
This new transportation fad was intended to alleviate traffic congestion, but has arguably done the opposite—roads are still full and now have an additional vehicular nuisance. Electric scooters, or e-scooters, can be very convenient when one is pressed for time, but unfortunately many people who ride them abandon basic principles of societal decency. Traffic laws, they feel, don’t apply to them; and, despite explicit instructions not to do so, riding them on sidewalks has become commonplace. Similar to some careless bicyclists, they will ride on the sidewalk or the street depending on which one is most convenient to them at the time. E-scooters, however, are often too quiet for pedestrians to hear them. And they are too small for many cars to see them.
To be fair, when there are no bike lanes it is unclear as to where riders are supposed to be, and they likely feel unsafe riding amongst cars, but I often encounter them narrowly zipping passed me on sidewalks when there is very clearly a bike lane three feet away. Cities worry about “accommodating” e-scooters, but this shouldn’t mean that the rest of us—cars and pedestrians—are suddenly responsible for staying out of the way. This only puts pedestrians, car drivers, and e-scooter riders themselves in danger.
In dumping a collective total of over 4,000 of them in the Twin Cities, e-scooter companies Bird, Lime, Lyft, and others have done something quite ingenious with micromobility. They have successfully turned any public space—curbs, sidewalks, shrubbery—into potential outlets for private retail. Unfortunately, this has encouraged carelessness on the part of consumers. Although there are “docking stations,” in most cases e-scooters are thrown wherever—blocking doorways, turning sidewalks into obstacle courses, and cluttering cities with a new form of litter. The accessibility issues for those with mobility impairments, low vision, or other disabilities created by e-scooters have not gone unnoticed. Recently, a lawsuit was filed by a disability rights advocate against the Bird and Lime companies and the city of Minneapolis for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit claims that Minneapolis and the e-scooter companies have exercised negligence and disregard for safety and accessibility.
E-scooters are more than an unsightly annoyance, and cities would probably be better off without them. Of course, banning them completely is not necessarily the best solution, but can e-scooter companies and the cities that indulge them at least cut back on the number? Can we do away with this concept of “dockless” transportation and make docking stations mandatory? Can there be at least some enforcement of the rules of riding them?
If none of this is possible, we still have everyday heroes in cities across the country who throw e-scooters into rivers or dumpsters or set them on fire. These may not be long-term or legal solutions, but at least some individuals are taking initiative.