Lime Scooters: What Do We Do With Them?

Lime Scooters parked in front of Union Station

Students and faculty around East are all too familiar with the obnoxiously neon green scooters and bikes that go by the name of Lime. Especially around Denver, more specifically around East and on Colfax, these fast driven transportation machines that operate with little to no traffic laws traumatize people of all ages. It is terrifying to see someone on a neon green blur driving at 17 miles per hour, but they are also scary because normally the people riding them just don’t care, and if they hit someone, what can they do about it?

Quinlan Jamieson, an East junior, described Lime Scooters as cheap. “You can get places fast, faster than walking; 30 minutes costs $3.” Through a guided tour of the app, Quinlan explained how it’s easy to find the scooters nearby, and how it’s simple to invest in a set series of prepaid rides.

Lime Micromobility, who carries and distributes the bikes and scooters in 280 cities, 30 countries, and five continents was founded in January of 2017, where the mobility devices were first launched at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Normally, college freshmen can’t have a car on campus, and scooters and bikes were a quick alternative to turn too, and very accessible, some of the minimal plus sides. 

However, the scooters and bikes quickly spread around; not to other campuses, but to large cities like Seattle, and San Francisco, which is very concerning for multiple reasons. Scooters and bikes seem reasonable for college campuses consisting mostly of pedestrians, but introducing these transportation machines to large cities with lots of drivers and no helmets proved to be dangerous, with over 115,713 scooter related injuries in 2024 alone.

Even if the driver of the Lime Scooter does everything right and is perfectly safe, it doesn’t guarantee a safe ride. Cars aren’t always aware, or just are clueless on what to do when it comes to passing scooters and avoiding them, but scooter riders should not always be seen as victims; plenty of pedestrians have been hit by them.

Silas Everhart, a freshman who was walking to the student lot after school, and was run into with a Lime scooter described his experience as, “...Quite frightful, violent, and surprising. I get frustrated that people on lime scooters are reckless and not responsible. They also have no regard for the safety of others or even themselves.” 

Junior Hope Skinner, who has a younger brother, saw her brother and his friend on a Lime Bike going at least 16 miles per hour down Colfax during the lunch rush. She expressed concern: “It scared me and my brother insisted it was fine, but it’s so dangerous and unsafe. It made me really worried for his safety, as it was so dangerous to do that on a street with a bunch of cars.” When asked if she was worried about hitting people on bikes and scooters herself, she said “When I drive, I feel like I am always close to hitting them because they are so unpredictable.”

Lime scooters and bikes raise concern for so many serious injuries, such as head trauma, fractures, road burn, teeth trauma, and many others. Brian Fun, the nurse at Denver East High school explained, “Chances of the injury being serious are about 80%. When I worked at Denver Health, we had a lot of scooter injuries coming into the ER. Most of them result in concussions, shoulder dislocation, broken wrists, broken arms, and injured knees. Anytime you have a TBI, or a head injury, and you hit your head, you can have internal bleeding, and it could be fatal. There should be a law that if you are on a Lime scooter, you wear a helmet, it should be considered a moving vehicle. Many injuries occur on sidewalks, pedestrians can get bruised and banged up, which is why Lime Scooters should be prohibited from sidewalks.”

Between 2018 and 2022, there were 600 E-bike or E-scooter related deaths in Denver, and even though Denver has implemented accessible safety features for scooters, such as adding 137 miles of bike and scooter lanes around the city, it doesn’t fix the issue of people riding in the road and getting hit by cars, or riding on the sidewalk, hitting pedestrians. 

Not only is this becoming a bigger issue in Denver, but it’s becoming a bigger issue all over the world, and it’s targeting youth. There have been deaths recently regarding people under 18, and the numbers are still increasing. Denver specifically has had a few instances of children getting injured, or even killed on electric scooters. Back in August, a 16 year old was hit and killed by a distracted driver in Aurora, even though he was in the bike lane. Another incident includes a 12 year old boy who was hit and killed by another distracted driver back in July, while he was riding his scooter across a marked cross walk. 

What can we do to fix this? Bike lanes have proved to be somewhat ineffective, possibly leading to more harm than benefit because of irresponsible drivers. However, sidewalks and streets aren’t functional for anyone, so where do we put them? Is the only option to get rid of Lime Scooters completely?