Lime Scooters have landed in Auckland and Christchurch, but their high speeds and lack of helmets have raised fears that they could be an accident waiting to happen.
COMMENT
Has there been any start-up in New Zealand history that has received more free publicity than Lime e-Scooters?
Sure, loads of the publicity is bad, but then again, is there anyone in this country who doesn't know the company's name and business model? And that's despite the fact that the scooters are only in two cities. It's incredible.
Now hold on to your hat, Lime is looking to put the squeeze on in Dunedin and Queenstown and, as we heard yesterday, Wellington, with the council already torn as to whether they should let them in or not.
Personally, I'd say this to those cities. In the immortal words of Shane Jones, taihoa on that.
Let Auckland and Christchurch iron out the wrinkles. And there are plenty of wrinkles that need to be ironed out.
Where can you ride, how fast should you ride, and can we put safety equipment on the scooters? Should they be parked in designated areas? And most importantly, who's going to pay for all this?
I've been thinking that Lime must be loving New Zealand. It's a Californian company that launched in 2017 and their scooters are found in 80 cities across the world. But it's only New Zealand where we have ACC meaning any liability for injury from Lime e-scooters is absent.
They've had all this publicity which hasn't cost them a cent.
And I presume that all the safety measures that may be suggested in the future will be worn by councils.
Yesterday a friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook of a sign that's popped up in an inner city street. It's a big orange thing paid for by the council that says, "Scoot safe. E-scooters are cool. Be a cool e-scooterist." It's on the pavement so it's been stuck down and it's rugged because people walk all over it every day.
How many footpaths are these signs sprouting up on? There could be thousands of them.
I'm picking these are pretty expensive signs. And ratepayers are paying for them.
How many footpaths are these signs sprouting up on?
If we decide that there are areas that the scooters should be banned from I presume we'll need to put all sorts of signage all over the shop as well.
What is Lime contributing to it? Sweet F-All.
As we learned during talkback in its very first day in New Zealand, Lime paid the princely sum of $136 to the Christchurch City Council for the three-month permit to operate. Not per scooter either. That's $136 for 400 scooters. There'll be 700 on Christchurch streets within the month.
So far in New Zealand, Lime has been given permission to mine our city-owned streets for cash for nothing. Not only have we handed them a blank cheque we've also started paying heavily for the safety measures and liability the company has caused.
So my message is. Throw Lime out at the end of the trial. Then if we want them back let's make sure the council and ACC clips the ticket of every ride and Lime pays a more realistic price for the right to operate.
