Editorial: Scooters here to stay but need to be safer - New Zealand Herald

Opinion

Despite the relief of many older pedestrians at the suspension of Lime's licence to use Auckland footpaths, electric scooters are probably not going away. Some novelties arrive with an aura of the future and e-scooters are one of those.

They are the kind of personal transport that fit the prescription for more efficient, climate-friendly alternatives to private cars in cities such as Auckland that are being designed for higher density living and shorter distances to places of work, pleasure and public services.

Clearly Lime's online-hire vehicles are a work in progress that the Auckland Council was right to suspend the company's licence last Friday after incidents of the front wheels locking up and throwing their riders.

Lime reported 155 such incidents, 92 of them in Auckland over the five months its scooters have been available for hire in the city.

Yesterday Lime said it has engaged consultants who have located the fault in "firmware", that sends instructions to the scooters. It said the software had undergone a series of updates and the company was "confident in their efficacy".

The council's chief operator officer, Dean Kimpton, had yet to hear this from Lime, although it had heard from about 5000 Aucklanders by email over the weekend, the great majority supporting the scooters.

Whether the fault has been fixed or not, the San Francisco-based company should not have put them on the streets anywhere in the world with this sort of risk.

Zurich and Basel took the scooters off their streets last month for the same braking problem. Madrid banned them in December, not satisfied with the safety information given to users. Even in San Francisco they are under a temporary ban for illegal parking and adding to street congestion. There have been mechanical failures, including a battery catching fire and the baseboard breaking at high speed.

It looks like another case of a start-up rushing to get the first-mover's advantage in a newly created network service. Lime was not the only supplier wanting to put hire scooters on Auckland's streets for a six-month trial but a competitor decided to hold back and see how Lime fares.

With hindsight now, Auckland Transport chairman Lester Levy says its decision to give Lime a trial mobile trading licence should have been made by elected officials.

The elected council now has to resolve several issues besides the safety of users before Lime's trial finishes at the end of March.

It must also consider the safety of other users of the footpath, whether to seek legislation allowing scooters on cycleways and road cycle lanes, where they should be restricted to cycle lanes and banned from footpaths.

If they are allowed to remain on footpaths, they should be fitted with some sort of sound device that gives people warning a scooter is approaching from behind. Perhaps users could be given a selection of music (not too loud) that would play whenever they hire one.

The scooters have proved very popular and useful for short journeys. They are probably here to say and can surely can be made reasonably safe.