MOTOR MOUTH
Rental e-scooters on the roads — and with disastrous results
The cockpit is neatly laid out and logical, with an eight-inch touch screen atop the centre stack that includes navigation — Costa Mouzouris
My first wife made me choose between her and my motorcycle. Now, we can argue until we’re blue in the face who was more insensitive, her in demanding that someone she professes to love give up that which he is most passionate about, or me for my callous response — “Um, hon, there are only 10 red Laverda RGS1000s in Canada, but there are about a million women of marrying age. I’m thinking the odds aren’t in your favour.”
Now, to be a fair, she came by her hatred of motorcycles honestly. On a summer vacation in some far-off tropical land that didn’t require a specific licence for any kind of motorized twowheeler, she rented some sort of Vespa scooter-like clone and took off in nothing more than bathing suit and sandals. I think you can guess the rest of the story: long hospital stay followed by much rehab and, finally, some long-term frailties she would never get over.
The cause of her trauma, I think, is fairly obvious to all: unknown road, unfamiliar vehicle, untrained rider reacting to an unforeseen stressor.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, news broke this week of what the Cleveland Plain Dealer called the first fatality in the burgeoning industry of e-scootering, a 21-year-old Ohio woman being fatally struck by a 19-year-old man in a Chevy Cruze. Now, never mind someone riding an uncocooned two-wheeler is always going to be at a disadvantage to a heavier and crumple-zone-equipped automobile. Or that the Plain Dealer reported said car driver might have been under the influence of alcohol.
The reason this matters so much is that south of the border — OK, mostly in California, but it is spreading like wildfire — there’s a scooter-sharing revolution happening. Realizing that we North Americans are far too lazy and fat to make bicycle-sharing anywhere near mainstream, some enterprising startups (Lime and Bird) — and a few established giants such as Uber — thought it might be a good idea to put an electric motor (they’re eco-friendly, don’t you know) into a small scooter — the kind you used to push with one leg when you were a kid — and turn anyone with a couple of bucks and a GPS-equipped phone loose in traffic.
Where on Earth is this not a bad — no, make that the worst ever — idea? The fact these scooters are incredibly underpowered does not mask the problem of lack of familiarity with the controls. Quite why someone would think that allowing untrained civilians loose on any kind of powered two-wheeler is beyond me. Anyone who thinks that simply limiting the power or removing internal combustion as the power source — all said scooters are eco-friendly electric, increasing their allure — is going to make scooters safe and userfriendly is simply deluded.
In pretty much every jurisdiction in North America — certainly here in the Great White Frozen North, and in most states as far as I can determine — no licence, registration or insurance is needed for the electrically powered two-wheelers. Oh, a helmet is mandated, but as Buzzfeed, Inside Edition and pretty much everyone who has covered this supposed scooter revolution has reported, finding anyone wearing any form of head protection is a rare feat. Factor in that none of these helmetless hooligans seem to be following basic rules of the road (or, according to Inside Edition, common decency) and you have a recipe for disaster. Indeed, according to reports from across the United States, it would seem the injuries resulting from this seemingly innocuous form of transportation are starting to clog up emergency wards.
What makes this worse is that the companies involved in this scooter revolution seem to be employing the same kind of scorched-earth policy that has made Uber the largest ride-sharing service in the world. According to buzzfeednews.com, there don’t seem to be any regulations covering their deployment, nor do the companies dumping these scooters on city sidewalks need approvals from the local government.
Buzzfeed claims the companies flood “cities with the vehicles overnight, unauthorized” creating “an army of rookie riders.” And, because they are charged remotely, the e-scooters, unlike shared bicycles here in Canada that are housed in small depots, can be left anywhere. As city planners and councillors around the States are finding out, users leave them scattered about on sidewalks and outside cafés pretty much willy-nilly.
Just to add a little fuel to this fire, the push behind these scooters seems relentless. According to qz.com, the payback from rentals can be as little as 20 days, and these profits are attracting some big money. Theverge. com says Uber recently invested in Lime as part of a US$335-million round of fundraising, valuing the scooter-sharing company at US$1.1-billion.
So, let’s see, we have chronically unstable, powered two-wheelers being ridden by untrained consumers, being fuelled by rapacious Silicon Valley startups. What could possibly go wrong?
Let’s hope to God that we Canadians can better regulate this commerce than have the Americans.