Proposals Threaten Pedestrian Safety

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San Diego City Council just considered proposals that threaten pedestrian safety. They were shelved but the danger that they will be pushed forward again remains.

In 2022 the City of San Diego decided to get into the scooters rental business. It created a new contract scheme for “shared mobility devices” (SMDs), mainly motorized scooters, and passed new regulations to govern the four operators it selected. The program started in August 2022 and shortly thereafter things started falling apart.

The City expelled one operator. Another, Lime, left, muttering about the safety requirements the City had to protect pedestrian safety. A third was acquired by Bird leaving just Bird to run the whole shebang.

Along the way lots of scooters were stolen and went to Tijuana, so that Bird decided that rather than offer its shiny new scooters with up to date safety technology it would instead offer skanky old scooters that were so unappealing even the thieves wouldn’t want them. Riders didn’t either.

By the Fall of 2023 the SMD program was collapsing, even though the City was bending over backwards to help the operators by slashing the fees they charged them and redirecting their contractors to help prevent thefts. Bird withdrew, leaving zero operators offering zero scooters and then in November 2023 Bird announced it was filing for bankruptcy (in order to “reorganise”).

It was then that a new member of Council, Kent Lee, of District 6, proposed that the City should reverse safety rules that protect pedestrians and keep kids and drunks off motorized scooters, the ones operators had found so pesky, because, by golly, San Diego really, really needs those scooters back.

Clearly CM Lee thinks that the pedestrians of San Diego have not been traumatised enough by reckless renters driving scooters on sidewalks. He has proposed that the safety regulation requiring scooters to be slowed if driven on sidewalks should be scrapped. Instead of being slowed he thinks the scooters should just give the rider an audible warning, one that, of course, they can ignore. If he gets his way San Diego will again have motorized scooters driven on sidewalks threatening injury and death to pedestrians, especially the elderly. Not that that’s much of an issue for his constituents in D6. The operators don’t put scooters there.

We were concerned that rolling back safety provisions would be regarded as an act of negligence or wilful misconduct and wrote to the City Attorney about it. Here’s a copy of our letter:

SW Letter to City Attorney_MC Changes_SMD Liability Dec 2023 Final

City Council considered Lee’s proposals in January. There was so much opposition to them from not only the public but also other Council Members, (some of whom are up for re-election), that CM Lee started looking worried. They were going to go down in flames, or be sent back to committee, so he withdrew them to “work on further with the City Attorney”.

That leaves him able to make modifications and bring them back to Council in time for Lime and other scooter companies to hit the beaches and downtown for the Summer.  They need to be scrapped.

So, this ain’t over yet by a long way, but it was satisfying to see some members of Council like Stephen Whitburn, (D3), Dr. Jenn Campbell, (D2), Marnie von Wilpert, (D5), and Raul Campillo, (D7), start to talk sense about motorized scooters and protecting the safety of pedestrians.

We’ll post something soon on the arguments we put to them that may have helped.