Speaker 1: Santa Monica is your typical California beach town. It's seaside
Speaker 1: boardwalks are lined with palm trees, fringed by milky sand,
Speaker 1: always packed with people. If you wander along the beach path,
Speaker 1: you end up at the world famous pier, which has
Speaker 1: started shows like Baywatch and movies like Forrest Gump. The
Speaker 1: pier is full of food stands, fishermen, tourists and street performers,
Speaker 1: guys like Davey Peterson. I'm a street performer on the
Speaker 1: Santa Monica Pier in California. I sing and dance. I
Speaker 1: do hip hop, pop rock and Latin musy. Baby, how
Speaker 1: was I? That's so? Davey's got this dramatic act. He's
Speaker 1: out there shirtless and oiled up and a gladiator style
Speaker 1: skirt and a mask of zoro hat, dancing, kicking and
Speaker 1: singing like he's in a karaoke bar. He's been dancing
Speaker 1: on the pier for years now and says a new
Speaker 1: crowd has encroached on his turf lately, people writing electric scooters.
Speaker 1: I was performing for a group of people, maybe several dozen,
Speaker 1: when I was hit from behind by a bird scooter.
Speaker 1: Santa Monica became ground zero for the electric scooter sharing
Speaker 1: boom last September when a startup called Bird began spreading
Speaker 1: the vehicles all around town. And as I was lying
Speaker 1: there on the deck, I looked up and I saw
Speaker 1: a young man with a scruffy beard looking down at
Speaker 1: me from a Bird scooter. And he looked down at
Speaker 1: me and he said, what the f dude, and then
Speaker 1: he took off. So it was a hit and run.
Speaker 1: It was only the next morning the davy realized how
Speaker 1: badly he'd been hurt. So I went to the emergency
Speaker 1: room at u C l A, where I found out
Speaker 1: that had a broken arm and that my right bicep
Speaker 1: had actually been severed from my lower arm. I had
Speaker 1: to have my biceps surgically reattached to my lower arm,
Speaker 1: and that's a major surgery that takes at least a
Speaker 1: year and a half to two years to completely recover from. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Joshua brusting in for Bradstone and Olivia Cavill, and
Speaker 1: this week on Decrypted, we're exploring the unintended consequences of
Speaker 1: a sudden rise of scooterter sharing services scoota. Startups like Bird, Lime, Scutin,
Speaker 1: Spin have arrived in over a hundred cities around the world.
Speaker 1: While some people think scooters could usher in a whole
Speaker 1: new era of urban transport, others view them as a danger.
Speaker 1: Patients with scuota related injuries have been streaming into emergency departments,
Speaker 1: with everything from gravel rash to concussions. These injuries are
Speaker 1: obviously unintended, and although some might argue they were foreseeable
Speaker 1: with scooters, the question now becomes are these things as
Speaker 1: safe they should be and who bears responsibility for the
Speaker 1: accents that do happen stay with us. Starting late last year,
Speaker 1: scooters appeared virtually overnight in dozens of cities around the US.
Speaker 1: Many people love jumping on a scooter and cruising to
Speaker 1: their next destination, or just scruising around for as little
Speaker 1: as a couple of bucks. Then they could leave the
Speaker 1: scooter wherever they liked, ready for the next rider to
Speaker 1: pick up. Here was a service that was an immediate
Speaker 1: hit with consumers. It was also one that should have
Speaker 1: appealed to city officials in search of ways to reduce
Speaker 1: car use, or at least that's what the invistas who
Speaker 1: poured hundreds of millions of dollars into them saw the
Speaker 1: first two scooter sharing companies, Bird and Lime, said they
Speaker 1: were shocked by the unexpected and instantaneous public enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: their product. They were also taken aback by how polarizing
Speaker 1: they became. Scooter companies have drawn criticism as law breakers
Speaker 1: because they often failed to run their plans by city officials.
Speaker 1: People who didn't use the scooters saw them as an
Speaker 1: eyesore in a nuisance, and within months, sensational stories about
Speaker 1: grizzly scooter injuries were hitting the headlines. Safety issues were
Speaker 1: driving a major backlash from city governments in Santa Monica
Speaker 1: and elsewhere. Officials rushed to set up permit programs and
Speaker 1: begin quizzing applicants about their plans for public safety. Scooter
Speaker 1: companies have always said they're doing their best. They've suggested
Speaker 1: people wear helmets and even given away helmets for free,
Speaker 1: but their biggest message on safety is that scooters aren't
Speaker 1: actually the problem carsa and reshaping the streets to make
Speaker 1: them safer as a job for the city governments themselves.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of scooter injuries have been reported in the United States.
Speaker 1: Getting a total headcount is nearly impossible, though, because no
Speaker 1: one's compiling firm statistics. I've heard stories about elderly pedestrians
Speaker 1: being knocked unconscious on footpaths, teenagers with severe facial burns,
Speaker 1: writers with no helmet flying head first over handlebars, and
Speaker 1: in some cases, even death. This morning, we are waiting
Speaker 1: to learn the identity of a twenty one year old
Speaker 1: killed in a crash in Cleveland over the weekend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was hit downtown writing an electric scooter. A man
Speaker 1: riding an electric scooter is dead after being hit by
Speaker 1: an Suvly is a sad first for Dallas. A writer
Speaker 1: of the new electric scooters died after falling. It happened
Speaker 1: over the weekend. I spoke to a physician in Atlanta
Speaker 1: who recently treated a patient with a traumatic brain injury
Speaker 1: who was unconscious for days after an accident. Another doctor
Speaker 1: said that more than a hundred patients have wound up
Speaker 1: in one emergency department in Los Angeles from scooter related injuries,
Speaker 1: with some learning and intensive care for weeks. Wally Gurabi,
Speaker 1: an emergency room doctor at one of u c l
Speaker 1: A's medical centers in Santa Monica, told me the most
Speaker 1: common scooter injuries are usually to the face. Just think
Speaker 1: about you know your face, landing on the asphalt, danting
Speaker 1: your face and tattooing your face with all sorts of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, lacerations that will take a plastic surgeon to
Speaker 1: work for hours and try to clean your face and
Speaker 1: get the dirt off your face so you don't tattoo
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life, he said. He says
Speaker 1: a lot of orthopedic injuries that happen when people stretch
Speaker 1: out their arms while trying to break their fall. You
Speaker 1: start by breaking your wrist as one, then transmit the
Speaker 1: force to the elbow and then transmitting all the way
Speaker 1: to the shoulder along the ribs, breaking the ribs, the
Speaker 1: ribs sponsoring your lung. After we started looking into scooter injuries,
Speaker 1: people came out of the woodwork willing to share their
Speaker 1: personal stories. We heard from Daria Kent in California, Victor
Speaker 1: San Andreas and New York and pay to Flex and
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I took the scooter out of the car
Speaker 1: and I was scooling down the hill going home and
Speaker 1: the breaks launch on their own. As about that time,
Speaker 1: my scooter power kicked in, took off at full speed
Speaker 1: and I fell off the scooter and he had a
Speaker 1: big smile on his face just went to kind of
Speaker 1: a look of terror, and then he just smashed right
Speaker 1: into the front of my bike. I don't remember anything
Speaker 1: up to the point where I was flying in the air. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: my helmet didn't protect my chin and it was severely bruised, swollen, numb,
Speaker 1: and purple for several weeks. I think the only thing
Speaker 1: keeping my teeth from shattering where my invisiligned braces. I
Speaker 1: gotta had a concussion because I hit my face and
Speaker 1: my right to nail came off. And I am now
Speaker 1: in six weeks of painful physical therapy so I'll be
Speaker 1: able to bend my leg as I'm learning to be
Speaker 1: able to walk again, and my left hand I have
Speaker 1: berminent damage my small finger. Um. I cannot make a
Speaker 1: fifth anymore. He landed on his forehead, and he was
Speaker 1: laying on the pavement, um with his forehead bleeding and
Speaker 1: and initially in a really unresponsive state, his eyes rolling
Speaker 1: around a bed and um and just not really moving
Speaker 1: his body, um um, just looking to be in a
Speaker 1: state of shock. It's pretty gruesome, but it's important to
Speaker 1: put these anecdotes into perspective. People have taken well over
Speaker 1: twenty million rides on Lime and Bird in less than
Speaker 1: a year. For context, in more than one thousand cyclists
Speaker 1: were killed in the United States, and there were almost
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy thousand cycling related injuries, according to
Speaker 1: the Centers for Diseased Control and Prevention. Interestingly, doctors told
Speaker 1: me that you're actually more prone to accidents riding a
Speaker 1: scooter than a bike. When you're peddling on a bike,
Speaker 1: your entire body is engaged, you're paying more attention to
Speaker 1: your speed and other hazards on the road. But on
Speaker 1: a scooter you kind of lulled into a sense of complacency,
Speaker 1: just relaxing, cruising along, pushing a button to accelerate. Then
Speaker 1: when you do hit something or knocked off the scooter,
Speaker 1: you fall unprepared, unengaged, and more often than not, unprotected
Speaker 1: because most people don't use helmets. When I've been on
Speaker 1: a scooter, I didn't have one around. But actually not
Speaker 1: wearing a helmet is by far the biggest safety issue,
Speaker 1: according to pretty much all the doctors I spoke to.
Speaker 1: You know, we can fix broken bones in the arm
Speaker 1: and shoulder, and we can stitch you clean you up. Wow.
Speaker 1: You know if you beat in your head, there's always
Speaker 1: some damage that you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: that that will be ferment. All scooter writers in California
Speaker 1: have been required to wear a helmet by law, but
Speaker 1: Bird recently convinced the state to change the rules. Governor
Speaker 1: Jerry Brown signed the bill last month that allows adults
Speaker 1: to cruise California streets on scooters without a helmet, just
Speaker 1: like the cannon bikes. It takes effect on January one. Okay,
Speaker 1: so scooters aren't as safe as they should be. I
Speaker 1: think that's actually something that pretty much everyone agrees on.
Speaker 1: The scooter companies say that a big part of the
Speaker 1: answer is for cities to create protected lanes and do
Speaker 1: other things to slow cars down. Bird didn't make anyone
Speaker 1: available for an interview, but they did send a statement
Speaker 1: in which a company spokesperson said, as Bird partners with cities,
Speaker 1: we are putting safety front and center of what we do.
Speaker 1: But Taylor Bennett, director of public Affairs at Lime, so
Speaker 1: the responsibility laid both with private companies and city officials,
Speaker 1: and so there's an onus on us, and there's a
Speaker 1: notice on cities to really make sure that we're putting
Speaker 1: safety first, and we are looking at our roadways in
Speaker 1: a way that considers these new mobility options. Urbanists have
Speaker 1: been talking about this for decades. American cities are fundamentally
Speaker 1: built for cars, so for now, scooter writers in many
Speaker 1: cases have to choose between sharing the road with cars,
Speaker 1: which is dangerous, or sharing the sidewalk with pedestrians, which
Speaker 1: is both dangerous and illegal. The scooter companies have been
Speaker 1: careful to limit their own legal responsibility. Both Bird and
Speaker 1: Lime have clauses and their user agreements steering riders into
Speaker 1: binding arbitration. They also have clauses prohibiting class actions, but
Speaker 1: the strength of those agreements is already being challenged by
Speaker 1: personal injury lawyers like Katherine Leara, who was based in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica. When I saw these scooters out on the
Speaker 1: street in front of our house, I immediately thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: these are dangerous and someone's going to be injured. Soon
Speaker 1: after that, Catherine put a page up on her website
Speaker 1: calling for scooter victims to get in touch, and she
Speaker 1: said the response was swift. The phone started ringing and
Speaker 1: they haven't stopped since then. Catherine says she's now receiving
Speaker 1: a call a day from a fresh scoot of a dim.
Speaker 1: She blames the companies, which she says is putting profit
Speaker 1: over public safety. Earlier this month, Catherine filed a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against burden Lyme on behalf of nine people who have
Speaker 1: been injured by scooters, one of them as Our Street
Speaker 1: performer Davy Peterson. Catherine said she plans to file at
Speaker 1: least a dozen more personal injury claims and coming months.
Speaker 1: I fully placed the blame on the scooter companies for
Speaker 1: the injuries that are happening. They dumped these scooters on
Speaker 1: the cities without first consulting with the cities and making
Speaker 1: sure the proper rules and regulations were in place um
Speaker 1: and so the cities were blindsided by these and had
Speaker 1: to scramble to educate the public about the rules that
Speaker 1: apply and come up with new rules that apply. And so,
Speaker 1: had they worked with the cities before they dropped these scooters,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these injuries would have been avoided.
Speaker 1: Cities are catching up to the scooter craze by launching
Speaker 1: silet programs. In August, Santa Monica launched a pilot that
Speaker 1: allows two thousand scooters from four companies, Bird, Lime, Lift
Speaker 1: and Jump. Portland Oregon also has a pilot program underway,
Speaker 1: and so does l A. To name just a few,
Speaker 1: scooter companies say they're writers will be safer as more
Speaker 1: scooters hit the streets and drivers get used to seeing
Speaker 1: them in the road. They also say education campaigns and
Speaker 1: better scooters will also improve safety. Taylor from Lime told
Speaker 1: me the company has just released its third generation scooter,
Speaker 1: trying to make them safer with every upgrade. Lime's latest
Speaker 1: model comes with bigger tires which are more durable to potholes,
Speaker 1: breaks on the back wheels not just the front, a
Speaker 1: sturdier frame, and jewel suspension. And Taylor also said they
Speaker 1: always advise riders to wear helmets. Our stances, you should
Speaker 1: always be wearing helmets. We just ordered a quarter million
Speaker 1: helmets and going to give those out at the local level,
Speaker 1: making sure folks have access to free helmets. Taylor told
Speaker 1: me that he knows helmets don't look cool and that
Speaker 1: they're kind of awkward to carry, so the company is
Speaker 1: investigating collapsible helmets as a future option. The scooter companies
Speaker 1: are also calling on local officials to make city infrastructure
Speaker 1: more scooter friendly. They want protected bike lanes and designated
Speaker 1: parking to protect both riders and pedestrians. I asked Taylor
Speaker 1: whether the company knew putting these scooters on the streets
Speaker 1: would inevitably result in some accidents. Yeah. I think when
Speaker 1: you roll out a new technology, there's going to be
Speaker 1: um some positives and some and some things that require
Speaker 1: some fixing and tweaking. And you know, this is brand new,
Speaker 1: like as quickly as it unfolded. It's it's our job
Speaker 1: to help address those and and that's you know, with
Speaker 1: our new scooter and all of the safety products, and
Speaker 1: that will continue to evolve and be enhanced. So I
Speaker 1: used to ride a push scooter to school when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid, but I have never been on
Speaker 1: an electric scooter. I know that you recently went to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Yeah. I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: you'll immediately notice from being on one is that that
Speaker 1: memory of being a kid and being on a scooter,
Speaker 1: and it's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm an adult man and I'm riding on a scooter.
Speaker 1: It felt a little bit silly, but it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Put me in like the moment, were you on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: were you on the road, how are you riding it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when I was there, I had read up on
Speaker 1: scooters with a a little bit and knew that you were
Speaker 1: not supposed to be on the sidewalk. So I grabbed
Speaker 1: the scooter. I went straight into the street and I
Speaker 1: took off. There was a bike lane on the street
Speaker 1: I was in, so that was fine. It starts off
Speaker 1: really quick. I was a little bit surprised by that.
Speaker 1: And then it took me like a half a block
Speaker 1: or a block, and then I felt like I was
Speaker 1: cruising around pretty comfortably. Then I cut onto a street
Speaker 1: that didn't have a bike line and it was pretty narrow,
Speaker 1: and then I got nervous. The cars seemed very close
Speaker 1: and you really feel exposed. Yeah. One of the things
Speaker 1: I'd be afraid of it was someone opening up a
Speaker 1: car door and just knocking me out. Yeah. Absolutely. Um
Speaker 1: And for me, like, I had a backpack on, so
Speaker 1: that was fine. But I think people who are carrying
Speaker 1: things might have trouble. Yeah. I feel like i'd struggle
Speaker 1: because I usually carry a handbag to work, and I
Speaker 1: was thinking if I was going to ride one on
Speaker 1: that kind of mile distance that I walk from the
Speaker 1: subway stop to the office, I don't know where i'd
Speaker 1: put my bag. Yeah, my my three year and a
Speaker 1: half year old daughter actually commutes to school on a scooter.
Speaker 1: It's not an electric scooter, but and she carries a bunny, obviously,
Speaker 1: and so we tie the bunny's arms around the handlebars,
Speaker 1: and that works for her. Maybe that would work for
Speaker 1: your bags. It's so cute. So we have scooters in
Speaker 1: over a hundred cities around the world, and for most
Speaker 1: of the people I talked to, they believe that scooters
Speaker 1: are here to stay and that they're going to be
Speaker 1: a permanent fixture in our cities. Do you do you
Speaker 1: actually think that they're going to change the way we move? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I do think that there is some something
Speaker 1: to this argument. In San Francisco, where I wrote on them,
Speaker 1: there's this this distance about half a mile too, maybe
Speaker 1: two miles. It's too long to walk, you don't want
Speaker 1: to get in a car, Trains not going to take
Speaker 1: you there, And having these scooters all over the place,
Speaker 1: at least downtown, you could just jump on one and
Speaker 1: ride there in five minutes or whatever. It felt good
Speaker 1: like this was actually a practical way to get around
Speaker 1: in a dense city center. So let me ask you,
Speaker 1: likes someone who hasn't been on a scooter and has
Speaker 1: just spent a while kind of really delving into how
Speaker 1: dangerous these things are, do you think that the fear
Speaker 1: of injury might keep you off of them. I think
Speaker 1: it was definitely a bad idea for me to talk
Speaker 1: to doctors about traumatic brain injuries where patients were unconscious
Speaker 1: for days before I even jumped on board a scooter.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of them. I think that they
Speaker 1: would be really fun to ride, but I'm also an
Speaker 1: overly cautious person, so I feel like, after all these interviews,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not going to get on board. So one
Speaker 1: less rider, one least writer, for sure. So let's get
Speaker 1: back to another scooter skeptic. David Peterson, the street performer
Speaker 1: who got hit on the Santa Monica Pier. He had
Speaker 1: a few ideas for measures his city should consider, and
Speaker 1: I think that the scooters should be required to have
Speaker 1: license plates. When I was lying there on the deck
Speaker 1: looking up at the person who hit me, there was
Speaker 1: no way to identify him once they took off. The
Speaker 1: scooters should also have to make a little noise, like
Speaker 1: a hum or something, so you can hear them coming.
Speaker 1: Davy's right that pedestrians will have to learn to look
Speaker 1: out for scooters as they zip by, but ultimately the
Speaker 1: decision to jump on board comes down to the writer.
Speaker 1: If people don't feel safe on scooters, that could be
Speaker 1: a big problem for the companies, no matter who is
Speaker 1: technically to blame. Would I get on any scooter again,
Speaker 1: or even suggest somebody else did, No way, not on
Speaker 1: a bet. I think I'll stick to skydiving. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this week's scripted Thanks for listening. Have you
Speaker 1: been in a scooter accident? We want to hear your story.
Speaker 1: You can email us at decrypted at Bloomberg dot net
Speaker 1: or I'm on Twitter at lib Carbo and I'm at
Speaker 1: Joshua Breustin. If you're a fan of the show, please
Speaker 1: take a moment to rate and review us. It helps
Speaker 1: new listeners find the show. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Peter Gadkari and Magnus Hendrickson. Our story editor was Anne Vandermy.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Brad Stone, Aki Ito, Emily Busso, and
Speaker 1: Liz Smith. Francisco Levi is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next week.