Opinion: Lime trials should be halted until safety measures are sorted out

Unless you've been living under a rock, you will have noticed or heard about the Lime e-scooter trials taking place in several New Zealand cities.

They've been met with joy by some, who say they are a great alternative to congestion and a simple way to get from A to B, while others say they are simply too dangerous.

I've initially been in the camp of the former, and believed that after the initial bedding-in period, people would learn to handle the associated risks, to ride responsibly, and these zippy little numbers would become a widely-accepted form of transport.

They're a lot of fun to ride, they're convenient, and they're relatively cheap.

But it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore the mounting number of injuries, the latest of which is the most concerning yet.

A software fault inside a Lime-S scooter locked up the brake on the scooter Liam Thompson , 27, was riding, sending him hurtling over the handlebars face-first into the road.

He broke his jaw and is now facing reconstructive surgery due to no fault of his own.

This is not a "glitch" as Lime put it when they admitted the fault was present earlier this month - this is a catastrophic failure.

Lime's director Kristin Devitt told the NZ Herald "the affected scooters have been removed from circulation" and that "we are in the process of rolling out early detection and additional preventative measures for our global fleet.

"User safety is our first priority," she said.

The truth is - this issue has been affecting Lime scooters for weeks. There's no guarantee the next Lime you grab while you're running late for work won't send you to hospital.

Let's look at it this way: If your Toyota Corolla suddenly jammed on the handbrake as you were rounding a corner, sending you sliding into a lamp post, you'd be upset. You could also be seriously hurt.

You'd probably expect some kind of compensation - maybe an investigation into what went wrong with that car. You might even think a recall would be in order while the issue is sorted out.

Those would all be entirely reasonable things to expect.

It's fine for Lime to say it will take time for people to get used to these scooters, to offer free helmets (yeah, right) and to warn people not to ride on the footpath.

But when these scooters begin to cause injuries in a way which is beyond the control of the user - it's time to urgently pull these things off the streets until Lime can 100 per cent guarantee the issue will never happen again.

To ignore this issue is negligent and councils need to act now before anyone else gets hurt.

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