LOS ANGELES – Following the introduction of electric scooters to the Los Angeles area, lawsuits have been plentiful, with plaintiffs alleging that the scooter companies are to blame for damages caused, as well as alleging that the scooters incite civil unrest and more.
Gregory Rodriguez, a lawyer with Best, Best & Kreiger in Washington, D.C., understands the situation to be a difficult one with many nuances.
"This brings up an issue of whether there is a duty of the people who haven't agreed to the terms of use policy, and it comes down to this being such a new space that we're operating in," Rodriguez told the Northern California Record. "The easiest way to think about it is if you go through the elements of negligence."
Rodriguez explained that the question of negligence must be examined using the four elements of negligence: duty to protect the person who was hurt, in this case pedestrians; breach; cause; and harm. While some of these elements are easy to prove from the plaintiffs, others are more difficult, as the riders of the scooters are directly causing the incidents, rather than the companies.
"I think that it's going to be hard to show that the company had a duty to protect a non-rider," Rodriguez said. "Since it's such a new technology, there are no minimum safety standards for scooters right now. With cars, there are the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which essentially govern the safety that should be in vehicles and are administered by the United States Department of Transportation through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Right now, we don't know what our minimum safety requirements are for a scooter."
An aspect which will be important in the determination of these cases is whether or not the terms of use that are issued by the companies prohibit the actions which are causing the alleged injuries.
"It comes down to where the duty lies, whether it's just the riders or whether it also extends to pedestrians," Rodriguez said.
Additionally, Rodriguez explained that the well-funded nature of the companies being sued, Bird and Lime, also attracts litigation. The newness of the technology of electric scooters also brings into question the matter of safety in an area where the public has little idea of what those standards are for such new equipment.
"(The) public and private sector should be working together on a regulatory framework focused on safe operation to protect users of new mobility options and pedestrians and cyclists," Rodriguez said. "This is also why we will hopefully see more 'innovation' departments popping up in transportation agencies thinking through how we safely incorporate new transportation technologies into our transportation system."