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Whoa. That was an e-scooter. I’m on a sidewalk and I almost got taken out by an e-scooter. Where do these things come from? I never even saw one. Guess what? What is a e-scooter? An electric scooter. Why is it here? Where’d it go? I thought they disappeared. 1900, the e-scooter was invented in New York City. World War Two, there wasn’t enough gasoline so electric scooters got popular then. But for many years, few and far between until, I don’t know, five years ago, all of a sudden electric scooters. Big cities, Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles, all of these places have Lyme, Bolt. Even Uber have electric scooters all over the place. They’re on the street. They’re in front of your shop. They’re lined up. What is going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on.

Local governments, municipalities, they want to get people off the road driving. They want to find easy options for people. Some people can’t afford cars and they need transit. They need transportation. They might not like mass transit. Maybe your city doesn’t have mass transit or it has bad mass transit. So these companies have come out of the woodwork and have come up with the e-scooter. Everything is looking good. The local governments, hey, what are the rules of the road? You’re on a scooter, you could cause problems. You could get hit. You could hit somebody. People are going crazy with the electric scooter. People are drinking and driving on the electric scooter. People are dropping their electric scooter off in an ADA accessible ramp. People are dropping their scooter off right in front of your business store. What is going on? What can we do about it?

Here’s what’s going on. The electric scooters are coming in vogue. The local governments, like I said, they love it, so what are they doing? They’ve got to figure out what to do. Where do these things drive? Where can you go? How old do you have to be? Do you have to wear a helmet? What are the rules? What are the regulations? Pilot programs, that is what the local governments are doing. They’re running pilot programs. Hey, let’s go for six months, see what’s going on. Here are going to be the temporary rules of the road. That has happened. All of a sudden COVID hits and local governments get hysterical that people riding these little electric scooters might transmit their COVID to the next person that comes on. So these pilot programs are suspended or closed out altogether, for whatever reasons.

Localities are not happy with all these electric scooters driving all over the place. People walking out of stores and almost getting by clipped by somebody on an electric scooter driving 20 miles an hour, drunk at 16 years old. It’s not a safe environment. But the upsides are showing to be even greater during COVID. Why? Because people don’t want to go on mass transit during COVID and local governments are realizing this might be the best way forward. We’ve got to fix it. We’re going to install better regulations and better rules/ that is what’s coming down the pipe, people. You are going to see your electric scooters in your local areas. Originally, they were downtown, but now they’re going to spread everywhere. Why? Because it’s the only fair thing to do.