San Diego will be returning to the drawing board to figure out how to soften San Diego’s strict scooter regulations without compromising safety, the City Council decided Monday.
Councilmember Kent Lee withdrew the proposal after the city’s controversial plan to roll back scooter rules was met with numerous concerns from both the public and some of his peers.
Instead, the council voted 5-3 to let his office keep working with the city attorney and the city’s Sustainability and Mobility Department to refine revisions to the policy.
The move comes two months after the last remaining electric scooter company pulled out of San Diego.
Proponents of the changes say scooters are key to San Diego’s climate action plan, as they reduce greenhouse gases by providing a convenient alternative to cars.
City officials hoped loosening rules would persuade scooter companies to return.
However, critics contended the rule rollbacks would compromise safety and essentially subsidize scooters with taxpayer money.
Although critics say scooters are used mostly by tourists along the coast and downtown, not by ordinary residents trying to streamline their commute, city officials argued any scooter use is beneficial to the environment.
Nearly everyone who spoke during public comment voiced concerns with the proposal, including leaders of the city’s coastal communities, who showed video footage of scooter crashes and photos of an elderly woman who’d been hit by a scooter.
Among the changes the city had proposed to its current rules were allowing scooters to be deployed in more locations, lowering city fees scooter companies must pay and softening identification requirements for riders that aim to prevent underage use.
But most took issue with a key change in the proposal that would effectively mean scooters could travel up to 15 mph on or near sidewalks, giving riders only a loud audio alert and a flash when they appear to be riding on one.
Riding scooters on sidewalks is illegal under state law. Currently, city rules force companies to install speed-throttling technology that automatically slows scooters that appear to be on sidewalks to 3 mph.
But city officials wanted to undo that rule, saying that such geofencing requirements were not safe or effective in some areas and posed a barrier to their use there.
Opponents of the proposal balked at that change.
“You’re being asked to either protect scooter drivers or pedestrians, but put one of them at deadly risk,” said Janet Rogers, co-chair of the pedestrian advocacy group Safe Walkways. “If the scooter company technology can’t protect both while obeying state law — and remember they swore they could — then they don’t deserve to operate.”
The city’s idea is that the proposed audio alert will be so irritating that the scooter rider will quickly leave the sidewalk, but critics Monday disagreed.
“The audible noise is really not going to deter anybody who would lack the conscientiousness not to drive on the sidewalk in the first place,” said resident Angela Bingham.
Councilmember Joe LaCava noted that most of the scooter crashes depicted in the video shown happened on sidewalks — where scooters are already banned — and contended there is a way to ensure safety while adjusting the rules to let scooter companies keep operating.
During public comment, Dr. Jay Doucet, chief of trauma surgery at UC San Diego Health, said he’d seen an epidemic of scooter trauma in the last five years and asked the council to keep the current restrictions in place, not just for the public’s health but also for doctors who treat the severe trauma caused by scooter accidents.
“It’s too much for surgeons to be dealing with — we don’t like seeing these patients,” Doucet said.
Councilmember Stephen Whitburn described the time before the increased regulations as the “Wild West of scooters.”
“That’s why the council put reasonable safety measures in place to address the problem of riders breaking the law,” he said. “As technology advances, we may be able to effectively and safely keep scooters off the sidewalk, but I can’t support today’s proposal.”
Whitburn and Councilmembers Jennifer Campbell and Marni von Wilpert voted not to support the continued work to revise the proposed scooter regulations.
Those changes will be brought back to the council at a later date.
