Plenty of hard work is being done to ensure safety with state’s e-scooters

Safety around e-scooters remains the priority, writes Tom Cooper

WE have seen e-scooters take off in popularity in Hobart, with almost 65,000 trips completed in the first four weeks into a 12-month trial.

For those who love statistics, the total distance travelled by our 270-plus e-scooters in service was almost 128,000km, or an average of 1.98km per trip and an average length of time of almost 15 minutes a trip. Our riders rated us 4.43 out of five stars.

We’ve seen them explode in popularity, initially with the holiday season and warm weather bringing locals and visitors alike out to popular areas such as Salamanca and the waterfront, and then for Hobartians looking to commute to and from home and work and leisure, visit the shops and go about their daily life.

We want to assure you that we are taking your comments on board and doing the best we can to constantly improve our education, enforcement and engagement program to ensure riders ride safely.

Beam has the best-shared e-mobility safety record in Australia, and we are committed to continuing this.

With the tiny minority of trips that result in incidents, we investigate them all and work closely with the police to enforce safe riding, to ensure that the actions of a few don’t ruin a good experience for others. Every e-scooter requires a safe rider, and riders need to take responsibility for their actions. We are working hard to hold them to account.

Rest assured, safety is our priority.

From an enforcement point of view, before each ride starts riders have to check in, as well as lodge their credit/debit card and details — every e-scooter has its own QR code, which means every e-scooter can be tracked and monitored 24/7, with us knowing who the registered rider is at each moment. This assists us and the police with tracking down riders not doing the right thing. It also assists our local marshals, who we employ to know where each e-scooter is at all times so they can clean it, swap new batteries, relocate it to a proper parking location if it is incorrectly parked, pick up e-scooters that have fallen over, and assist riders with their queries.

They work around the clock to ensure this happens.

People doing the wrong thing will have an immediate and permanent ban.

We also make our purple Tasmanian Beam fleet as safe as possible and are constantly adding new features to improve the experience. For example, we have indicators, mobile phone and cup holders, a warning bell, a double kick

stand for anti-tipping, triple brakes and Bluetooth-locked helmet. When riders finish their ride, we ask them to take a photo so we know it is parked safely, and reward this with credits for future rides.

We also reward parking in a designated safe area with credits. Our experience with introducing e-scooters (and we have them in cities and large towns all around Australia and New Zealand) is that education is the key. Like any new form of transport when it is first introduced, there will be teething problems.

To assist with educating, we have implemented:

A DIGITAL “ride kind” media campaign featuring instructions on how to park and ride safely in Hobart.

FIVE minutes of free ride time for completing an in-app Beam safety quiz featuring education of Tasmania’s state legislation.

10 BEAM safety ambassadors to patrol hightraffic areas daily, promoting safe riding and parking.

THE introduction of “half Beam” mode for new riders, featuring reduced acceleration for novice riders’ early trips.

A THREE-STRIKES policy — in force across Beam’s other Australian markets — involving the re-education of offending riders, with a rider’s access to the Beam app suspended on the third strike. The policy covers offences such as helmet compliance, riding dangerously and bad parking.

In addition, we hold Beam safe academies (more will happen when Covid allows us to), which are free — in fact, we give credits for attending — and give participants the chance to be briefed on the rules and how their e-scooters work, with a training course to test out their skills.

Our state-of-the-art GPS navigation system controlling each e-scooter is constantly updated with “no ride” and “slow” zones, automatically adjusting the speed of each vehicle. It is called geo-fencing and it is an important tool in keeping e-scooters out of certain locations.

In addition, every rider has to acknowledge the riding rules before being allowed to start the ride.

Since the trial started, many new areas and footpaths have been geo-fenced so e-scooters cannot ride on those locations, or they have been made slow zones. The e-scooter simply loses power and stops, requiring riders to dismount.

We will continue to do this in response to identified hot spots.

We are excited about the demand for micro-mobility, but also how the local community has embraced the e-scooters.

We will continue to work collaboratively with the council and with the local community. We ask for your patience and constructive feedback and support for the trial to continue.

Tom Cooper is Beam general manager Australia.