Lime, Bird, Lyft: What the F*ck

There were decades of campaigns to get kids to wear helmets while riding bikes. Decades. 2018. 2017. 2015. 2010. 2000. 1990.

Then Bird/Lime/Uber/Lyft/whoever all came in and were like ELECTRIC SCOOTERS FOR EVERYONE NO HELMET NEEDED and just threw all of that progress in the trash?

I was out for a walk through downtown Austin, and I passed no-less-than 8 couldn’t-be-older-than-13-year-old children flying around on scooters without helmets. 2 of them quite literally could not even see over the handle bars.

Why are we accepting this? Why are we accepting Juul selling nicotine to children again?

If Lyft can launch a “We may ask you to provide a selfie to show you’re wearing a mask in a Lyft Pool” feature, Lime, Bird, Lyft, and all other scooter “providers” can support “Take a selfie to show you have a helmet and aren’t a child before the scooter unlocks”.

These companies may say that you have to be 18+ to use their services, and they may say that you need a helmet. But if no one actually does it, it’s easy to confirm that no one actually does it, and you’re just not collecting data, are those policies anything more than useless lip-service?

There is only one reason they haven’t addressed these issues, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader…