Riders thrown by Lime glitch
Lime has admitted that a glitch is causing an unknown number of e-scooters in its New Zealand fleet to randomly brake midride, sending riders flying.
It happened to Auckland’s Chris St Bruno, whose resulting ‘‘excruciating’’ injuries required three days in hospital and 10 weeks off work. The barista was on his first ever Lime trip near his house in late November when he started noticing problems. ‘‘The wheels locked a couple times very briefly ... but I managed to stay on.’’ But despite the 49-year-old’s best efforts to control the scooter, the glitch struck again, sending him flying through the air and on to a footpath. ‘‘Then ... it happened again but worse; the scooter stopped and I kept going.’’
He landed on his right shoulder, breaking his collarbone in multiple places.
‘‘I don’t cry often but I did that day. It was excruciating,’’ he said.
Surgery was debated but was decided against because treatment for the type of fracture, a comminuted fracture to the outer clavicle, is controversial. ‘‘My accident alone has cost the country thousands of dollars. Hospital stay, ACC payments and now physiotherapy.’’
St Bruno was critical of Lime’s safety standards, and condemned the multibilliondollar company for allowing scooters on the streets that were capable of inflicting such serious injuries on people. He said communication around the glitch was non-existent. ‘‘If I had been warned this was occurring I would never have ridden the damned scooter.’’
The glitch also happened to Stuff journalist John Anthony while he was travelling down a cycle way in the city at about 30kmh.
He luckily escaped without injury but pointed out that apparently the same fault had affected hundreds, if not thousands, of Lime scooters overseas. Most notably, Switzerland’s fleet in the cities of Basel and Zurich. In the wake of a number of accidents in Switzerland, Lime emailed all of its users in the country, explaining it was investigating whether the malfunction was due to a software update fault, which potentially inadvertently engages the anti-theft immobilisation system mid-ride.
Lime’s public relations team said it recently became aware of the wheel-locking glitch affecting certain scooters in New Zealand.
Spokeswoman Kate Cullen said the ‘‘operational issue’’ was under investigation. ‘‘The affected scooters have been removed from circulation.’’
However, Cullen didn’t rule out the possibility of the glitch happening again.
‘‘If a rider encounters a similar issue they are to report the scooter on the app and the issue will be investigated.’’