Lime takes three days to report accident to Auckland Council

A Lime scooter that snapped while being ridden on Westhaven Drive, causing a serious accident. Photo / Supplied

Lime scooters took three days to report an accident to Auckland Council, despite tough new reporting conditions that say it must report incidents within 48 hours.

Council's head of licensing and regulatory compliance, Craig Hobbs, said it became aware of the accident yesterday after an inquiry from the Herald and contacted Lime for details.

When Auckland Council extended Lime's trial period last month, it came with tougher safety and reporting conditions, including a requirement to report "serious safety incidents" anywhere in the world to officials within 48 hours.

A man suffered a serious injury after the Lime scooter he was riding snapped in two on Westhaven Drive in Auckland about 5pm last Friday.

A man who was out with his partner on the wooden walkway alongside Westhaven Drive saw the man lying on the ground being worked on by a woman jogger and a second woman.

"The man was lying on the ground in a recovery position and next to him was the broken scooter. He seemed to be semi-conscious and have an ankle injury. He was struggling to open his eyes," said the witness.

He said the frame of the scooter had snapped in two where the board meets the vertical pole for the handlebars and the guy had been pitched off.

A St John Ambulance spokeswoman said they attended an incident on Westhaven Drive and transported a person with a minor condition to Auckland Hospital.

A Lime scooter that snapped while being ridden on Westhaven Drive, causing a serious accident. Photo / Supplied

In an email to council, Lime said it had spoken to the rider who did not want any media attention.

"Our customer support team is also in contact with him. We are very sorry to hear he was injured."

Lime said in the email the scooter was checked at its warehouse in accordance with the seven-day maintenance and quality assurance programme.

The company was confident it had passed all safety and quality assurance testing at that time, including structural checks.

"This is a very rare occurrence and the only reported incident of this kind since we introduced our weekly maintenance retrieval system," the email said.

Hobbs said council expects Lime to let it know as soon they are alerted to incidents, "however we understand this incident wasn't reported by the user".

"There have been a number of situations where people have chosen to notify the media or talk about their experience on social media but have not notified the operator directly.

"We urge users to report any incidents to the operator as soon as they can, via the app or the operators feedback channels," Hobbs said.

The Herald is seeking comment from Lime about the time it took to report the incident.

Under new conditions, every scooter also has to undergo a mechanical inspection at least once a week.

The new measures, introduced after a temporary suspension of Lime's licence, were a response to a number of incidents in which people were injured when the front wheel of the scooter they were riding unexpectedly locked.

The wheel-locking malfunction led to 155 reported incidents - 92 of which were in Auckland, and of those 30 resulted in injury, Lime said.