Denver eyes sobriety test, other regulations on e-bikes and e-scooters | outtherecolorado.com

General Assignment Reporter

FILE PHOTO: E-scooters are parked in a forced parking zone in downtown Colorado Springs in June 2022. Denver City Council members are looking at new legislation regulating e-bikes and scooters Monday.

Mickey Mouse.

That was the name a renter used to access an e-scooter that was involved in a hit-and-run incident.

The incident was reported to authorities, who checked the vendor's records and found out the bike was rented under the fake name.

Councilmember Chris Hinds highlighted the case as he and several councilmembers began discussion on a proposal they said would hold riders accountable for damages or injuries.

Notably, the proposal could include sobriety testing.

The proposal's proponents argued that the proliferation of e-scooter and e-bike rentals in Denver has led to numerous challenges, such as how to identify riders who injure pedestrians or damage property but then flee the scene.

While creating new ID requirements doesn’t make sense, Hinds, the councilmember, said there should still be some way to hold offenders accountable for damages.

“For what it's worth, I'm not trying to get rid of scooters," said Hinds, who is pushing for the measure, alongside sponsors Councilmembers Sarah Parady and Darrell Watson. “But there should be some reasonable regulation, and so that's what we're talking about here.”

Under Denver's scooter and bike share program, the city has partnered with Lime and Lyft. The partnership between Denver and the ride-share companies is scheduled to end in 2026.

E-scooters and e-bikes can be accessed through mobile phone applications.

City data shows that electric scooters have been used for more than 23 million trips since their introduction to Denver in 2018.

In the last year alone, riders made more than 6.6 million trips, roughly 25% of which occurred in the city center.

“I'd love to get rid of the scooters that exist today and get a better product on the street,” said District 6 Councilmember Paul Kashmann. “I don't see any other form of mobility in our society that has been spared safety requirements the way the scooters that are on the streets now.”

E-bikes and scooters have soared in popularity in the last few years. Supporters have argued that they offer the public with a "sustainable" transportation system and they give people more options to get to places in lieu of cars. Supporters have also billed them as helping in reducing carbon emissions trips.

Supporters also said they solve the challenge of getting people out of vehicles and into public transit.

As scooter usage continues to grow, so does the number of scooter-related accidents.

In 2024, Denver Health reported 1,962 scooter-related accidents. The average patient age is 34 years old, and the average cost of those accidents per patient was more than $19,000.

That rise in accidents is happening nationally. One study said from 2017 to 2022, some 45,500 e-bike and 190,000 e-scooter riders ended up in the emergency room.

Hinds said the “scooter litter” generated by their random abandonment on sidewalks and right-of-ways is also a big problem, especially for those who use wheelchairs for mobility.

“Scooters are everywhere,” Hinds said. “In 18 minutes, I took four pictures of four different intersections where micro-mobility (e-scooters and e-bikes) devices were blocking the right-of-way, specifically the curb ramp. On my way to the office today, I saw two bikes fully obstructing the sidewalk in Civic Center Park, and I had to push them out of the way.”

Sponsors also said they want to deploy mandatory sidewalk-riding technology, which supposedly limits where and how fast scooters can be driven, and mandatory docking zones, where an app directs riders to park their scooters and complete their rides.

Denver law already prohibits ride scooters or bikes on the sidewalk, except for very specific exceptions, such as for police officers, but Hinds said the technology could help prevent injuries by slowing scooters and bikes to a slower speed or emitting an audible message, such as “No sidewalk riding.”

“I want to really be clear, in some parts of this bill, there's a lot of sausage making you can ask for today, without a lot of time for us to really engage in dialog,” Watson said.

Watson added: “As a councilmember and bill sponsor, I do not support slowing speeds while folks are on there (e-scooters and e-bikes) as an option to slow people down. I can see, for safety and health reasons, that's going to be problematic.”

Watson reiterated to the committee that the ideas are not set in stone and they're only seeking feedback at this time.

“The important thing is that we are looking for ideas from council as the way to make this safer, allow for our residents to continue to leverage this mobility tool, and we're working in collaboration with DOTI and our health professionals to make sure whatever we put into place actually helps and supports,” Watson said.

Committee members said there needs to be careful consideration regarding enforcement and more engagement with e-scooter vendors.

In the past two years, other U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and Washington, have implemented e-scooter regulations.

Los Angeles, for example, has a helmet requirement for e-scooter riders in the public right of way, a minimum age of 18, a ban on sidewalks, and a no-riding-under-the-influence policy.

“Unlike other cities, we've sort of left DOTI to negotiate this in a market kind of way, without our policymaker backup,” Parady said, referring to the city's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. “And so Councilmember Hines is doing exactly the right thing, getting us in the place that other cities are already in, where they do regulate it by ordinance, and then contractual negotiations can happen in the shadow of an ordinance.”

The discussion is expected to move to the Land Use Transformation and Infrastructure committee in April and before the City Council sometime in June or July.

Those heading out to rent an e-bike or e-scooter may see a different logo on their ride.

General Assignment Reporter

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