Why Safe Walkways Is Necessary

The Need For Safe Walkways

San Diego can be regarded as "Ground Zero" for the origin of the motorized scooter rental industry as the boardwalk of Mission Beach was the location where in 2017 Travis VanderZanden, who established Bird Rides Inc. tested out the use of motorized scooters with his friends.

It is also a prime example of the multiple safety problems the industry creates for the public because they have remained unresolved now for years. In 2021 alone the City of San Diego received over 28,000 complaints about the parking of rental scooters.

These problems are not hidden or secret, but manifestly obvious on a daily basis. Given the years-long, willful blindness shown by the City of San Diego to them: a year and a half of doing nothing followed by creating an ordinance to protect itself from liability but doing almost nothing effective to protect the safety of the public, San Diego is also a preeminent example of what happens in a city where an industry is inadequately regulated and compliance with those inadequate regulations is neither monitored nor enforced.

As a result it has been necessary, sadly, for members of the public to campaign for their City to address its primary responsibility of ensuring public safety. That then is the remit of Safe Walkways.