If you needed any more evidence that public safety is a complicated thing, look no further than e-scooters. New research suggests that making them go slower doesn’t necessarily make pedestrians safer.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) looked at two American cities, Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., to see how speed limits affect rider behavior. Whereas the speed limit for e-scooters in the Texas city is 20 mph (32 km/h), D.C.’s e-scooter speed limit is among the lowest in the nation at 10 mph (16 km/h).
Researchers looked at areas where no bike lanes were available, and found that riders in the nation’s capital were 44 percent more likely to ride on the sidewalk than those in Austin. And that was despite a law barring the use of e-scooters on sidewalks in Washington.
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Unfortunately, the data is more complicated than that. Although fewer Austin riders were seen on sidewalks – which is good for pedestrians, they were willing to ride much faster, which is bad. Texans were willing to ride as fast as 15 mph (24 km/h) or more on the sidewalk, whereas more than 80 percent of D.C. riders lowered their speed to less than 10 mph (16 km/h) when they were on a sidewalk.
Speed limits aside, riders in both cities overwhelmingly chose to ride in bike lanes when they were available. They only took to the sidewalk when they had to ride in the same lane as cars and SUVs.
Overall, riders mostly chose to take to the sidewalk near arterial and two-way roads when traffic was heavy. In fact, they were more likely to avoid the sidewalk on the weekend, when fewer cars are on the road.
“E-scooter users clearly take risk into account when choosing where to ride,” said Jessica Cicchino, IIHS’s VP of research. “The clear preference for bike lanes also gives communities another reason to focus on expanding their bicycle networks.”
So far, the best way to get e-scooters off the sidewalk appears to be to give them somewhere safe to ride. However, some cities are looking at technology that could cap an e-scooter’s speed on the sidewalk, which may help.
