State moves to regulate electric scooters

Related: Thousands ride Dayton's electric scooters in the first weeks

E-scooters owned by companies such as Spin, Lime and Bird are rented out by the minute via smart-phone apps. They are available in Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and other Ohio cities.

HB295, which now heads to the Senate for consideration, would require scooter riders to yield to pedestrians and give an audible warning when passing a pedestrian.

It also exempts e-scooters from the legal definition of a vehicle and allow them to be operated on sidewalks, unlike bicycles.

Local communities would still be allowed to impose more stringent regulations on e-scooters.

Local scooter users mixed on changing rules

David Noaks, a Dayton resident who frequently uses the scooters, said the state should leave it completely up to each individual city.

“I think it should be up to the area to decide,” Noaks said. “It shouldn’t be so far reaching for other people to control statewide because that’s always an issue in my opinion, it’s too much overreach all the time. It should be up to people in a smaller area, not the whole state because that doesn’t represent everybody’s’s opinion in that area. … It’s convenient, it’s cheaper than an Uber, it’s fairly fast and it’s fun. … It makes me feel like a child again. Let’s you feel not so much like a soul crushing adult for a while, which is always nice.”

A couple Dayton residents that work downtown said they have some safety concerns that the new regulations could help.

“Anyone under 16, without a headlamp, going more than 15 mph is a dangerous thing,” said Tara Griffin. “They look fun, but I don’t think that’s for me.”

Daniel Carter works the early morning shift at the downtown Boston Stoker coffee shop and said he would be in favor of statewide scooter rules.

“I’ve already seen people riding them who probably shouldn’t be and it seems like the kind of thing that could probably cause accidents, Carter said. “Lots of people riding really, really early in the morning. I work at Boston Stoker so I’m there super early and I see the first people riding around. People will ride just like the center of the street and if there’s no light on it, I could see if you are driving a car that would be pretty dangerous.”

Just weeks after launching in Dayton on August 21, Spin decided to expand its Dayton fleet from about 100 to about 200 scooters because of high use, officials said. Every day, about 92 people in Dayton try out the e-scooters for the very first time, a company spokesperson said, and locally, the average trip is nearly two miles and takes about 9 minutes.

“They say it’s successful here for our market size and the ridership continues to go up,” said Brandon Policicchio, chief customer and business development officer for the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority, which Spin uses to collect and deploy the devices.

E-scooters and shared bikes are part of a “micromobility transportation” network that is going across the nation, according to Ben Story of North America for Wheels Labs. Story said in written testimony on the bill that in 2018, Americans took 84 million rides on scooters, bikes and bikeshare systems, which was more than double from 2017.