San Francisco based e-scooters and bicycle company, Lime faces another customer’s death this month. A Lime rider was killed today by an SUV in Washington D.C.’s DuPont area.
According to video footage recorded by the region’s fire department, the victim was an adult male. The video showed rescue workers pulling the man from the undercarriage of the SUV.
This is the second death caused by Lime in September.
The first death was of a 24 year old man from Dallas Texas, who fell from his Lime scooter.
The cause of death was blunt force to the head due to the fall.
Scooter riders are at a high risk of road accidents because riding scooters on pavements and sidewalks are illegal. Therefore, scooters have to be ridden on main roads where SUVs, trucks, cars, and motorbikes are driven.
Because of the affluence of money, love for trucks and SUVs and general road rage, scooter riders have to be constantly aware of their surroundings.
As e-scooters and e-bicycles become more and more popular, city after city is banning their use on sidewalks. The reason behind this decision is that they could injure pedestrians or cause severe accidents with roadside vendors.
A solution to this issue is to build special lanes just for e-scooter and e-bicycle users. Both e-scooter companies and their investors are strongly proposing for this plan to be put into action as soon as possible.
Lime’s Los Angeles based rival Bird has announced publicly that it is willing to fund safer groundwork for scooter riders and cyclists.
Another small but significant solution could be making helmets mandatory for cyclists and scooter riders. Since most fatal bike accidents are caused by severe injuries to the head, helmets could mitigate that massively.
Read Also: BMW introduced First Riderless Motorbike
But the State of California is against this rule apparently.
On 19th September, Governor of California, Jerry Brown signed a bill that, as of January 1st, 2019, electric scooter users won’t have to wear a helmet to ride them.
E-scooters and bicycle rides are at an all-time high
Despite such horrible incidents, just two days ago, Lime hit 11.5 million rides after just 14 months of it coming into existence.
E-scooters have rapidly and steadily growing in popularity, as more and more people are becoming health conscious and environment conscious.
Lime is spreading its operations to other cities as well. Lime is currently operating in more than 100 cities in both the US and Europe.
In June the streets of Paris were introduced to its line of scooters. It is looking to launch in 50 additional cities.
Lime’s number 1 competitor Bird, has now registered more than 10 million rides. So essentially there is no stopping to e-scooters in the coming future.
Due to their massive popularity, stricter safety rules need to be put in place to avoid such incidents in the future.
The problem is that Lime, Bird and others have chosen to offer an unsafe scooter design. 580,000 kids were injured and hospitalized between 2000-2011 when foot powered “stick-on-a-board” kick scooters were introduced. The same thing is happening again. Other designs are available (check MuvingUSA in Atlanta for instance) but the ones offered by Lime, Bird etc. are cheap.
The thing is MuvingUSA is only operating in Atlanta at the moment, while Lime and Bird are spreading their operation across the US like wildfire. So currently these two companies have the monopoly on the e-scooter market