PIA LEGAL ANALYSIS
By Lauren G. Pachman, Esq.
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INSURANCE AND ELECTRIC SCOOTERS
NEW METHODS OF TRANSportation are popping up all over to solve problems most of us didn’t realize we had. Need to travel a few blocks, but there’s no applicable bus route? Want to get some fresh air, but the route is a little too long to comfortably walk? You may be the perfect potential customer for a company that rents dockless electric scooters by the minute to people in cities around the country. With electric scooters, we are at the very beginning of a phenomenon that is taking off fast—and for which questions of regulation, liability and insurance are unclear.
10 | June 2019
WHAT IS AN ELECTRIC SCOOTER? Electric scooters are boards that come equipped with two wheels, a floorboard, handlebars, and an electric motor. Scooter companies have begun to drop their products—sometimes unannounced—into cities all over the country, and the scooters are rapidly gaining in popularity. Part of the appeal of these scooters is, no doubt, the “dockless” feature. Because they don’t need to be docked, a rider doesn’t need to return the scooter to a specific place. Users just download an app to their smartphones, and the app will use the customer’s location to identify the nearest available scooter.
Users unlock the nearest scooter using the app. They ride the scooter to their destination and then leave it there. WHAT ARE THE RULES OF THE ROAD? Many cities don’t regulate these “vehicles” because they don’t qualify as motor vehicles (typically identified as having four wheels) or bicycles, leaving the companies in a regulatory purgatory, and leaving users fending for themselves when it comes to following the rules—or even knowing what rules, if any, need to be followed.1 1 https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/researchand-analysis/blogs/stateline/2018/11/13/ electric-scooters-have-been-burned-buried-and-
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