By: Darden Copeland
Have the birds flocked to your city? And I’m not talking about the ones with feathers—I’m referring to the newest trend in micro-mobility. Fleets of electric scooters have appeared on the sidewalks of many United States cities, and they have spurred a mixed-bag of negative reactions and legal implications.
Bird Rides, Inc., an electric scooter sharing platform, has plopped hundreds of its Bird scooters without warning in many of our nation’s cities.[1] The micro-mobility sharing platform operates by way of a smart phone app that allows users to locate available scooters within a nearby radius and ride them a short distance for a small fee.[2] Bird scooters are dockless, so riders can leave the scooters anywhere they please at the end of their ride.[3]
The 21stcentury has seen a multitude of advancements in mobility and transportation, and some local governments have welcomed the changes with open arms, while others have been a bit more resistant. For example, ridesharing apps Uber and Lyft have revolutionized the transportation industry by arriving in cities unannounced and saturating the market.[4] Taking a very similar approach, Bird hopes to do the same, but the scooter sharing company has received way more pushback than Uber and Lyft.[5] It’s not surprising that Bird is using the same tactic of appearing in cities unannounced not only because of the success of Uber and Lyft, but also because the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bird earned his wings as the former Chief Operating Officer of Lyft, and the former Vice President of Growth at Uber.[6]
Bird’s unusual flock of disapprovers can be linked to both the suddenness of the scooters’ arrival, and also the sheer abrasiveness of the scooter concept itself. Unlike Uber and Lyft, the next morning after Bird makes its unannounced delivery of hundreds of scooters, people notice them. If the scooters are not blocking sidewalks, they’re being ridden at relatively high speeds weaving through crowds of pedestrians, and sometimes breaking a host of local laws and ordinances.
Upon arrival of the scooters, some cities such as Richmond, Virginia, have decided to hastily come up with permitting systems and regulations, while others have taken the opposite approach of outlawing the scooters all-together. In Richmond, Mayor Levar Stoney pitched a one-year test program which would allow Bird to operate in the city after the company paid fees for each scooter. Less thrilled about the arrival of the Birds, Norfolk, Virginia city officials have been rounding up the scooters and impounding them for breaking city ordinances such as property abandonment on public land.[7] According to the City of Norfolk, Bird will have to pay more than $93,365 dollars before the city will release the scooters.[8] In San Francisco, California, city officials sent cease and desist orders to Bird claiming that the scooters were creating “a public nuisance on the city’s streets and sidewalks and endangering public health and safety.”[9] The city subsequently enacted an ordinance to require permits for Bird or any other micro-mobility platform seeking to inhabit its streets and sidewalks.[10] The City of Milwaukee even filed a civil action in court against Bird for public nuisance and consenting to the operation of unregistered motor vehicles.[11]
Cities’ disapproval of the scooters is not only rooted in the safety of pedestrians and riders, but also in liability.[12] With hundreds of scooters zipping down city streets, a rider could be injured by hitting a pothole or similar road obstruction that would normally not present an issue to passing cars and motorcycles. This hangs an uncertain cloud of liability over cities that host Bird scooters.[13] An even stickier issue arises when the scooter riders are the parties at fault for the injuries of others. Leaving no source of recovery or redress for injured parties, Bird scooter users are not required to carry any form of insurance.[14] With all of these issues in mind, it makes sense why many municipalities are dissatisfied with Bird for plopping the scooters in their region without any communication or planning. Will our nation’s cities continue to ruffle their feathers at new technology, or will they acquiesce to new trends in mobility?
[1]See City of Milwaukee v. Bird Rides Inc., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187996 No. 18-CV-1066-JPS, at *1 (E. Dist. Wis. Nov. 2, 2018).
[2]See Melia Robinson, A Startup in the West Coast Scooter Sharing Craze is Already Worth $1 Billion – Here’s What It’s Like to Ride a Bird Scooter, Business Insider, May 30, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/bird-electric-scooter-review-2018-4
[3]See id.
[4]See Tamara Kurtzman, Dockless Scooter Cos. Rewarded for Bad Behavior, Law 360, Sept. 14, 2018, https://advance.lexis.com/document/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=1e246981-95c3-414d-9fa6-9be1a5fc493d&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fanalytical-materials%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A5T88-6BV1-JW09-M1XJ-00000-00&pddocid=urn%3AcontentItem%3A5T88-6BV1-JW09-M1XJ-00000-00&pdcontentcomponentid=122100&pdteaserkey=sr0&pditab=allpods&ecomp=5pkLk&earg=sr0&prid=a685e3ba-a50e-48d0-8d8a-4acb78cee448.
[5]See, e.g. Laura Newberry, Fed-up Locals Are Setting Electric Scooters on Fire and Burying Them at Sea, L.A. Times, Aug. 10, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bird-scooter-vandalism-20180809-story.html.
[6]See Kurtzman, Dockless Scooter Cos. Rewarded for Bad Behavior, Law 360, Sept. 14, 2018.
[7]SeeNick Boykin, Norfolk Has 560 Bird Scooters Impounded, Company Owes Over 93k for Them,WTKR, November 13, 2018, https://wtkr.com/2018/11/13/norfolk-has-560-bird-scooters-impounded-company-owes-over-93k-for-them/.
[8]See id.
[9]Michele Satterlund, Sidewalks: The Next Mobility Frontier, Law 360, August 07, 2018, https://advance.lexis.com/document/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=a1a4148b-9271-4eaa-9e0b-96c1531c6d0a&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fanalytical-materials%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A5T05-8221-F8D9-M0R5-00000-00&pddocid=urn%3AcontentItem%3A5T05-8221-F8D9-M0R5-00000-00&pdcontentcomponentid=122100&pdteaserkey=sr2&pditab=allpods&ecomp=5pkLk&earg=sr2&prid=beb22f69-1df6-400a-a497-ce028d274004.
[10]Seeid.
[11]See Bird, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187996 No. 18-CV-1066-JPS at *4.
[12]See Kurtzman, Dockless Scooter Cos. Rewarded for Bad Behavior, Law 360, Sept. 14, 2018.
[13]See id.
[14]See id.
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