‘Force cars to drive slower so scooters can be safe’
Lime boss tells Matthew Field that motorists are to blame for road deaths – not his for-hire machines
The war for the roads between drivers and cyclists has gone on for as long as anyone can remember. But now, there is a third mode of transport vying for space on Britain’s already congested streets.
Electric scooters began first as a trickle, but soon became a flood. E-scooters in bright colours and with punchy names straight out of Silicon Valley swarmed European cities shortly before the pandemic.
In the UK, the rising tide of scooters was slowed by arcane rules that effectively banned their use on public roads. But after initial trials starting in 2020, rented e-scooters hired through smartphone apps have begun popping up in cities across the country.
A backlash has followed, with some pedestrians complaining the scooters are antisocial and clog up pavements when left lying around.
Fears have also been raised about their safety, with 12 fatalities in the year to June 2022. Last June, a 71-year-old grandmother became the first pedestrian killed by an e-scooter in the UK when she was hit by a rider.
Most deaths have been scooter users involved in road accidents, however.
An analysis by the Department for Transport found that scooter users were about three times more likely to get hurt compared to cyclists – with 13 “casualties” every million miles.
Wayne Ting, chief executive of Lime, the world’s largest e-scooter and e-bicycle rental company, argues that it is not his transport that is to blame.
Ting, a former Uber executive and Obama adviser, says: “We know how to make riders safer and it is not by blaming modes of transport that are not creating serious accidents.
“The question is, what is actually causing these accidents?”
For Ting, the answer is clear: cars. The solution? Make drivers go slower. “We know how to improve safety – you slow down cars. In London, where they slowed the average car to 20mph, they saw accidents go down.
“One accident is too many,” he adds, “but some people say we should ban scooters or e-bikes. Imagine if a person gets hit by a car and people say we should ban walking?”
A 2009 study for Transport for London, carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, estimated road casualties fell 40pc when speeds were cut to 20mph.
Cutting speed limits below 30mph has proved controversial, however.
Despite Ting’s calls, the UK has so far sided with cars and taken a more risk-averse approach than European neighbours to the emergence of e-scooters on its streets.
The only road-legal scooters are ones hired from an app such as Lime or its rivals, including German-founded Tier and French start-up Dott. Speed limits are capped at 15.5mph.
The same is not true for most privately bought scooters, which can go much faster. Private e-scooters are still banned from public roads and pavements – although that does not stop some anti-social users clogging up walkways with scooters.
A government-backed study into e-scooters in the UK, published in December, found widespread examples of anti-social scooter use.
More than one in five scooter riders reported using them on the pavement, which is illegal, while 44pc of pedestrians reported having their path blocked by a badly parked scooter.
Lime has tried to mitigate this annoyance, albeit with mixed success. When riders stop, they are asked to take a photo on Lime’s app to ensure the bike is left responsibly. Users can be fined for leaving their bicycles or scooters in awkward spots or no-parking zones, from £2 to as much as £20.
The Government began allowing trials of e-scooters in certain cities in mid-2020, during the pandemic. It has since extended the experiment, although legislation on scooters remains in limbo. The Transport Bill, which is expected to include tweaks to free up scooter use, has been delayed multiple times and is now not expected until the next session in Parliament.
‘We had 1.5m unique riders in the UK last year. People are already using this as public transport’
After almost being snuffed out by the pandemic – when rides on its app fell close to zero – Ting insists Lime has emerged stronger.
Ting says: “We had 1.5m unique riders in the UK [last year]. People are already using this as public transport.” Lime also offers other transport options and its app-hired e-bikes have been on Britain’s streets longer than its scooters. These bicycles have arguably been more popular, given the familiarity of riding them compared to a scooter.
The recent waves of industrial action by the RMT helped boost Lime, with a 43pc increase in the total number of rides on its vehicles during January’s first week of strikes. Many people predicted that scooter companies would go the same way as the bubble of “dockless” bicycle companies that previously flooded the streets.
These regular bikes, put together cheaply in China, became a common sight on the pavements but many ultimately ended up in landfill. The companies behind them largely went bust or retreated from global expansion.
Ting says Lime has invested in building its own scooters and bicycles – most rivals simply ship them in from China – and claims its models are more hardy, last longer and need replacing less often. This is important as the company tries to burnish its green credentials and promote its scooters as a clean alternative to driving.
Ting joined Lime from Uber in 2018, advancing to chief executive two years later. He says he switched from cars for two-wheelers in an effort to “do my part” in the climate crisis. He says Lime’s “mission” is to cut carbon emissions in transport: “We are here to get folks out of cars and on to scooters.”
However, a mission is worthless if a company cannot survive. During the boom in venture capital funding prior to rising interest rates, Lime raised $1.5bn (£1.25bn) and Bird, its main rival, raised close to $1bn before going public.
That era of free venture money has come to a grinding halt, forcing many companies to consolidate and merge. Meanwhile, shares in Bird have fallen 97pc since it listed. At one stage valued at $2.5bn, it is now worth just $55m.
Ting says Lime is now profitable. It had adjusted earnings of $15m in 2022, and was also profitable on an unadjusted basis. Its app processed $466m worth of bookings and was used for 120m journeys, an increase of 20pc.
Ting says the future is bright for Lime, which is targeting a float of its own. “The question for a long time about micro mobility is, can this industry be sustainable?” Ting says. “Lime answered that definitively.”
If he is correct, then – love or hate them – scooters are here to stay.