Finally, scooters that shame you for riding on the sidewalk

Even if it doesn’t feel safe to ride electric scooters in the street, that doesn’t mean you can terrorize pedestrians at 12 mph. 

The rise of e-scooter-sharing inevitably means people breaking the rules. It happens. But now, e-scooter giant Lime is cracking down on riders’ potential flagrant disregard for staying off the sidewalks while renting its battery-powered two-wheelers. 

The small but zippy electric vehicles are supposed to be in the bike lane alongside cars. Lime’s other rules and regulations include wearing a helmet, no double-riding, and no drinking and riding. But for now, Lime is focused on working to eliminate sidewalk-riding. It’s nearly impossible to force people to comply. That’s why scooter companies like Bird and VeoRide are trying to incentivize riders and use AI detection to get riders to stick to the rules.

In a pilot program that kicked off in San Jose, California on Tuesday, Lime began tracking rides. Specifically, Lime looked at accelerometer and speed data  and worked to determine the vibration of the surface someone is riding on. Lime claims its AI model is accurate 95 percent of the time when detecting if it’s a sidewalk or street underneath the scooter. Vibrations, man.

If your 10-minute, 1.5-mile trip was mostly sidewalk (more than 50 percent), you’ll get a notification chastising you for breaking the rules. Here’s how that looks on the Lime app:

For now that’s it (a bit too polite in my opinion with that “please ride on the street in the future” line), but future plans also include sending a map pinpointing exactly where the rider committed the sidewalk crime. An email will also go to your linked account with the same information.

For shame!