Almost a week ago Greensboro decided to ban the use of Bird Scooters. The City Manager's Office asked Bird to remove all scooters from the city, immediately.
Greensboro police are tasked with collecting any remaining scooters and taking them to a storage facility along South Swing Road in Greensboro.
But now other cities are starting to see the dangers of scooters along city streets.
The company sent WFMY News 2 this statement on the issue:
Bird launched the industry’s first Community Mode feature to empower individuals in communities to provide feedback on parking and damaged vehicles directly to Bird. Community Mode will roll out in cities where Bird is available in the coming weeks, and it allows anyone with the Bird app to report irresponsible parking, as well as damaged Birds that may be on the road.
“We want to give the broader communities in which we operate the opportunity to partner with us as we help cities alleviate problems associated with congestion and carbon emissions,” said Travis VanderZanden, CEO of Bird. “Community Mode gives any individual the power to engage with Bird in real time, so that we can work together on making our streets safer and people friendly. If we want to get cars off the road and make a real impact in the fight against climate change, it’s going to take a collective effort — one we hope Community Mode can help foster.”
Our sister station in Dallas took a look and found that emergency room visits are actually on the rise related to scooter accidents. From scrapes to fractures of the face dental fractures, and even big head lacerations, doctors have seen it all.
About 40 health professionals were surveyed and said they see almost 1 to 3 scooter accident victims a month. For just one hospital, that comes to between 160 and 480 injury cases since the ridesharing scooters have hit the streets.
Lime Scooters announced that they would invest $3 million to educate riders about safety inside their app.