Streeter: Rented e-scooters and e-bikes are here to stay. Reckless riding shouldn’t be.

A few weeks ago, my life flashed before my eyes. Actually, the flash was the headlight of an electric scooter shining in the dark, rushing the wrong way up a one-way street toward my car. I had to swerve to miss it. Days later, two teenagers on a rented scooter zoomed past me on a sidewalk so fast I felt a whoosh of wind.

But I’m not just a middle-aged woman griping about disrespectful youth. I’m watching a hazard to pedestrians, drivers and the riders of such vehicles who don’t always follow the rules. The way some of you operate these things makes me feel unsafe with them on the road … and the sidewalk.

You know how they say there’s never a cop around when you need one? There are laws in place in the city, but police can only enforce the violations and crimes they see, and there weren’t any officers around during my personal encounters. Neither were representatives of Lime or Spin, the two companies licensed to rent these vehicles in Baltimore. To me, that means the onus is on the riders to do the right thing.

And to do better.

“The responsibility is shared by the rider, manufacturer and municipality,” said Johnathon Ehsani, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

E-scooters and e-bikes have revolutionized transportation, particularly in historically segregated neighborhoods underserved by public transit. It’s not quite the unregulated Wild West — Baltimore has its own laws, and Lime and Spin have in-app education and rules on their websites that potential riders agree to follow.

They include not having multiple people on the same vehicle, a minimum renter age of 18 and riding on sidewalks only when the speed limit is more than 30 mph. But how do you make people accountable to an honor system, swearing a digital oath to a quickly downloaded app on your phone? Many riders operate these vehicles as if they don’t read the rules.

We’ve all seen wrong-way riding, sans helmets, with multiple passengers. Remember the two young ladies who crashed a Lime scooter through the window of a business at the Rotunda during a youth meetup?

Baltimore Police spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said the department “enforces applicable traffic laws and city ordinances when officers observe violations involving e-bikes and e-scooters.” She said 98 crashes involving electric scooters and bikes, including rented and personal vehicles, had been reported in 2026 through Oct. 23, along with a total of 238 tickets and 133 warnings given across 91 traffic stops.

And that’s just crashes and tickets. Four fatal electric vehicle-related collisions have occurred in the city in the past two years, including two hit-and-runs, one of which killed a 17-year-old boy, Eldridge said.

“Unlike push or pedal bikes, the physics of the crash change. The force is a function of mass and speed. You have a heavier vehicle going faster,” Ehsani said, adding that injuries sustained even just falling off one of these devices tend to be more severe than on manual ones.

The rental companies and city agencies maintain they are doing what they can. “Our goal is to promote and build on this positivity while cracking down on and preventing the issues you cite,” Erika Duthely, regional head of government relations at Lime, said in an email. Spin did not respond to requests for comment.

Duthely said safety is important to Lime and more than 99.99% of trips on its devices ended without a “reported incident” in 2025. The company maintains that this percentage is accurate, but I can see how people ride and I’m like “for real?” Are people having accidents and just not reporting them? If riders violate Lime’s rules, the punishment can result in anything from a warning to a fine or a ban from the platform for repeat offenders.

Eldridge echoed Lime’s stance of educating riders, including emphasizing helmet use, “compliance with traffic laws, and responsible riding, particularly among young people. We recognize that a coordinated approach involving enforcement and education is essential to promoting public safety.” But I don’t personally see most riders wearing helmets. Do you?

Kathy Dominick of the city’s Department of Transportation said that, besides collaboration with police and the rental companies, her department passes out helmets at public events and the city has established geofenced “slow zones and no-ride zones,” throttling speeds in high-traffic areas such as the Inner Harbor promenade.

Ultimately, the department “places a strong emphasis on user education to encourage safe riding.” Which means y’all. She’s talking about y’all.

DO BETTER.

I am not stridently anti-scooter. These vehicles have environmental, economic and traffic benefits. “The average person will spend $600,000-700,000 on cars in their lifetime,” said e-bike rider and Upper Fells Point resident John Benson. “That’s money I want to spend on other things. Every scooter or e-bike means one less car on the road.”

There are also equity implications. Omar Faison, mobility organizer at Bikemore, enrolls residents of the Black Butterfly, the areas of the city where mostly Black residents live, in a special program to rent these vehicles at a lower cost. He noted that 30% of Baltimore households don’t have a car and “getting people around the city is one of the best ways to mitigate decades of redlining and segregation.”

That’s amazing. But how can we make this important resource work for everyone? Benson said he thinks there’s an infrastructure issue, like a need for exclusive e-vehicle lanes. “The road is meant for cars. The sidewalk is made for people walking. The bike lanes are for bikes,” he said. “There should be a separate thing.”

Faison agreed something like this could stop some bad rider behavior. “People might feel more comfortable riding in the street if they thought they might do so and not die,” he said.

Indeed. Also, unlike some other cities, Baltimore has no docking stations and riders are trusted to leave them in designated spaces. Newsflash: The sidewalk right in front of my stoop is not designated, nor is blocking people’s driveways.

“But I am reticent to blame the users,” said rider and Mount Vernon resident Matt Sorak. “Yes, they [the vehicles] can wind up all kinds of places, and it’s super annoying. But can you blame them when there’s nowhere for them to go?”

But there actually is somewhere for them to go, which I found out last week when I took my first-ever Lime bike ride through Patterson Park. Surprise! It’s fun. But I was careful to keep off the road because I didn’t know what I was doing, and I got a discount for walking the bike across the street to the designated parking spot.

Y’all don’t always do that. Duthely said Lime uses technology to tell when vehicles are ridden on sidewalks or parked incorrectly — both rule violations it can ding you for — and has a team working around the clock to move them.

But enforcement does little if people are determined to follow their own rules. It’s great to have a new method of getting from here to there. But you guys have to ride like you want to get home alive.