It's a Bird! It's a -- What?

Let's be clear about this: I'm never going to ride a scooter, motorized or not.  In fact, I've never ridden a scooter.  I've ridden bikes, roller skates, even roller blades, but scooters have always seemed to me to be an unnecessary version of transportation. 

Evidently I'm in a minority about this.  Scooters companies are all the rage.  After just a few months, ride-sharing leaders Bird and Lime are valued at over $2b and $1b, respectively.  There are also Skip, Scoot, and Spin.  It may be that investors are just desperate not to miss the next Uber, but, still, something seems to be happening here.

Credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Starting as what might have been passed off as just another California fad, appearing in San Francisco and Santa Monica in the spring, the scooter ride sharing services now are available in at least 65 cities across the nation, according to Vox, and are breaking into Europe and the Middle East.  They've already been banned, regulated, and debated.  And they are popular.

Even car ride sharing services Uber and Lyft are jumping onto the bandwagon, or, rather, scooter.  Uber's CEO predicts that within 10 years they'll be doing more rides with "individual electric vehicles" than cars. 

The concept is simple.   You use an app to find available scooters, such as in designed parking areas, use the app to unlock it, and take it where you want to go, typically a short trip in town.  The ride is charged to your stored credit card.  Depending on the local regulations, you ride it on the streets, bike lanes, or sidewalks.  What traffic laws apply can be murky.

Most rides average 1 - 2 miles, longer than most people want to walk, yet shorter than they might feel justifies getting in a car.

One might assume that these are just toys for hip tech millennials, but that may not be the case.  Vox found more support for them among lower income people, for whom they may help address "transportation deserts."

Bloomberg speculates that electric scooters may be the future of urban transportation, potentially "reshaping cities," although they note bike ride-sharing services haven't had much of a dent.  In addition, weather may make them a seasonal mode of transportation in many markets. 

Another Bloomberg article cited some advantages of scooters:

What they are great at, though, is being a last- or only-mile option for quick, inexpensive movement. Like electric bicycles, the scooters accelerate briskly. Unlike bicycles, they’re friendly to pretty much any attire. (Also unlike pedal-assisted electric bicycles, scooters require riders to have a driver’s license, as scooters have a throttle.) Scooters are also easy to dispatch: A delivery van can hold a lot more charged scooters than bicycles, and that makes them easier to move to where and when they’re most in demand.

Behind the scenes, the scooters need to get periodically recharged and serviced, although when and how the latter happens is a pain point for the industry.  Scooter companies claim regular maintenance schedules, but more often may default to reports of issues from riders.

Phillip Rosescu, a forensic engineer, told The Washington Post: "Enterprise Rent-A-Car is not going to rely on renters and drivers to report that the brake fluid needs to be refilled or when the windshield wipers need to be changed.  Being reactive in the transportation industry is very dangerous."   Even more worrisome, The Post found numerous ads on Craiglist for scooter mechanics, some of which seemed to require little or no experience. 

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the increased scooter ridership is also being accompanied, at least anecdotally, by an increase in scooter injuries.  The Post says that injured riders "have been pouring into emergency rooms around the nation all summer."  Michael Sise, chief of medical staff at Scripps Mercy Hospital (San Diego), put it bluntly: "Injuries are coming in fast and furious.  It’s just a matter of time before someone is killed. I’m absolutely certain of it." 

Credit: News Channel 5 (Nashville)

The San Francisco Chronicle had a similar article on the rise of scooter injuries in that city, saying  they are the "untold story" of the industry.  They noted injuries not just to riders but also to pedestrians.

It doesn't help that riders are not usually required to wear helmets, or that the user agreements require arbitration in case of any liability issues. 

The hope is that more scooters will mean fewer cars, both personally owned ones or ones used by taxi companies or ride sharing services.  That remains to be seen; they could equally be drawing from public transportation or even walking, which would confound the optimists who believe scooters will somehow be a healthy alternative. 

 It would be nice if scooters help us redesign cities to lessen their orientations around cars -- all that traffic, all those roads, all those parking lots and parking spaces, and all that pollution.  It would be nicer still if we were convinced to travel under our own power, such as walking or on bikes. 

Still, when I look at the scooter craze, I keep thinking about something else: where is the healthcare "ride-sharing" craze? 

I mean that figuratively, not literally like actual ride-sharing services for healthcare such as UberHealth.  I mean things that would be like us reducing our dependence on cars.  I mean things that could fundamentally change where and how we get care and/or attend to our health. 

I touched upon this recently in First, Let's Blow up All the Hospitals, arguing that hospitals shouldn't be big buildings but rather should be community-based services.  Certainly telehealth services tout being on-demand, and retail clinics have changed perceptions about both needing appointments and about going to a doctor's office.  But I don't see their valuations exploding like Bird's. 

Consider this analogy: perhaps the "car" in our healthcare system are doctors.  We historically have relied on them.  They're expensive to "build," expensive to own and operate, and come with a lot of associated regulation and infrastructure.  Although there are some situations where we definitely need them (e.g., longer/faster "trips"), many of the times we use them we probably could use a less expensive option.

Where is healthcare's scooter?