Electric Scooters Bring A Cool New Way For The Police To Stop People

The police aren't your mom, and don't need to be helmet enforcement.

We need to talk about the scooters.

Rent-by-the-minute electric scooters briefly took over San Francisco, are quickly taking over Los Angeles (my temporary home), and are probably coming to a city near you. They’re a little out of control, littering sidewalks and startling pedestrians in the places where they get the heaviest use. But on the other hand, they make LA’s sparse public transportation almost user-friendly.

Unfortunately, California law also makes it impossible to use them without inviting the police to get involved. There are real consequences to letting a silly, nanny-state helmet requirement allow police to pull people over who are just trying to go about their day without putting anyone else in danger.

I live a little over a mile from the Metro red line, which, once I’m at the station, can get me downtown in just 15 minutes. The problem is it takes 25 minutes to walk there. It’s doable, but it’s a boring, sweaty walk that tends to make my commute just a smidge longer than I’m willing to put up with.

The few times I’ve lucked into finding a scooter near the metro in my part of town I’ve cut my commute down by 15 minutes, and my sweat down by a large, unquantified amount. It’s not exactly glamorous: I can’t figure out how to make them go above 10 mph on a flat, and I look like an absolute idiot crawling uphill at 7 mph toward my apartment (theoretically, they top out at 15 mph). Regardless, it’s cheaper and better for the environment than an uber or, god forbid, a personal car. It’s more flexible than a docked bikeshare, of which there are exactly zero in my neighborhood.

The problem is, every time I get on a scooter I’m risking a police interaction. An arcane California law dating from 2004 (were there even electronics then?), Vehicle Code section 21235 mandates that anyone on an electric scooter 1) wear a bike helmet, and 2) be a licensed driver, among other things. It also prohibits tying the scooter to a car so the car can pull you around, which I strongly object to on the grounds that the legislature hates fun, but admit is somewhat reasonable. A violation of section 21235 restrictions can result in a $190 ticket.

This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. First, exactly nothing about my driver’s license, which I received in California after this law was passed, relates in any way to operating an electric scooter. I know how to ride a scooter largely because I was once a child who didn’t have a driver’s license and Razors were really cool. There is no reason a teenager can’t safely ride a scooter scrawling along at 10 mph just because it she pushes a button instead of kicks it.

Sponsored

Second, someone, for the love of god, tell me why you need a helmet to ride a scooter at 10 mph. People looooooove to talk about public safety, but it’s unclear to me under that rationale why you have to have a helmet on a scooter but not in a car or while walking around on the street. CDC data on traumatic brain injuries has just under 300,000 people a year going into American ERs for car accident-related concussions, and even more than that going in for “getting struck by/against an object.” Scooter and bike accidents may be a small part of one of those categories since the definitions are unclear, but they certainly aren’t all of them. They aren’t even a big enough category to break out separately (falling down and assault both are). So why is foregoing a helmet while on a scooter worth a traffic stop and a $190 ticket, but driving a car or, say, walking under a precariously placed anvil just routine concussion risks the public is allowed to take without penalty? (One woman in Santa Monica apparently did suffer a head injury when she was hit by a car because she didn’t stop for a stop sign, and, if true, I’d say that’s what the stop sign was for.)

My helmet ranting aside, the real problem with this law is it makes it hard to ride the scooters as they are designed, and invites hostile police interaction where none is necessary.

By having this dumb law that no one is going to follow, we’re inviting all sorts of traffic stops. That’s not a value-neutral proposition. It gives police reasonable suspicion to stop nearly anyone using a scooter. There will be too many people racing around on scooters to stop them all, so the police will have to choose who exactly they are going to enforce the law against. (It’s likely to be minorities.) Police department resources will be diverted from actual crimes and traffic violations to writing very lucrative tickets to Santa Monica tourists who failed to wear a helmet on the boardwalk.

And then, of course, any sort of traffic stop opens the door for the police to get into a person’s business. They give police a reason to question you, to investigate you, to search for probable cause to escalate into a full custodial arrest. The Rodney King beating started with a traffic stop. Traffic stops can be deadly.

Obviously, people do dangerous things on the roads and in their cars, and the police should have a right to stop them. But is riding a scooter without a driver’s license or a helmet one of those things? Is it worth it?

Sponsored


Shane Ferro is a law student and a former professional blogger. She is (obviously) a bleeding-heart public interest kid.