Denver Councilman Wants to Crack Down on Reckless E-Scooter Drivers

Did you know it is illegal to ride a standing electric scooter on the sidewalk in Denver? What about riding with multiple people on one scooter? Riding while intoxicated?

These prohibited behaviors can be observed daily in downtown Denver, but there are little to no repercussions for unlawful scooter riders.

Denver police have issued only nine citations for improper scooter usage since they hit the city in 2018, compared to over 18.3 million e-scooter trips in the city in that time frame, according to a review of Denver County Court records for citations involving scooter-adjacent violations. (Only nine reports identified the offending vehicle as an e-scooter, but another 52 reports did not specify whether the vehicle was a scooter, bicycle or e-bike; citations for the violations most commonly involved bicycles.)

District 10 City Councilman Chris Hinds wants to change the Wild West culture of e-scooters in Denver. He's presenting to the Budget and Policy Committee on Monday, August 5, to discuss potential legislation that he says would better regulate scooter use.

"My thought is not to get rid of scooters. My thought is to make sure that everyone feels safe getting around," Hinds says. "We want to make sure that people ride them in a lawful manner."

Hinds's ideas include implementing a fine structure to crack down on violations like sidewalk riding. But rather than pulling over and issuing citations to individual riders, he suggests fining the e-scooter vendors that operate in the city, Lime and Lyft.

Hinds says other cities that have tried to fine individual scooter riders encountered issues with vendors refusing to identify riders. Instead, he proposes asking vendors to address illegal activity from riders and, if they're unsuccessful, the companies will face fines.

"The vendor could pass [the fines] along if they want," Hinds says, comparing the process to when the city fines a property owner if their tenant fails to shovel their sidewalk. "We would prefer to have a relationship with the rider specifically, but if scooter vendors believe that privacy concerns are at play, we can't just have riders be accountability-free because we don't have an easy way to reach them."

In addition to creating a fine system, Hinds is looking into potential limitations on where people can ride and park e-scooters.

While sidewalk riding is already prohibited, the councilman is considering technological enforcement. For example, automatically slowing or stopping scooters when they get onto a sidewalk, as they do when scooters enter the 16th Street Mall or McGregor Square. Similar technology could require scooter rides to only end in certain areas so that parked scooters do not block sidewalks and streets, he says.

Other cities have established similar restrictions to mixed results. Tampa started requiring scooters to be parked in designated docks in April, with the vendors fining riders who don't comply. San Diego passed several restrictions in 2022, including that scooters automatically slow to 3 miles per hour when on sidewalks. Every e-scooter operator in San Diego left the city by the following year, with the city council discussing ways to attract scooter vendors back in January.

"I'm not sure that I want to make our scooter vendors totally exit the city," Hinds says, noting that research on other cities' policy efforts and outcomes will be discussed during the committee meeting.

But regardless of the risk of upsetting vendors, Hinds says Denver needs to take action to curb dangerous behavior on e-scooters.

Denver Health alone registered 1,449 patient encounters attributed to scooter injuries in 2023 — nearly four each day of the year. That number includes duplicates for patients who visited multiple care facilities for the same injury and covers mobility scooters in addition to standing e-scooters.

Orthopedic injury admissions at Denver Health increased by 540 percent in the two years after e-scooters were introduced in the city, compared to the two years before, according to a 2022 study. The study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, identified 197 patients with scooter-related injuries, two-thirds of whom suffered broken bones, usually fractured forearms and lower legs. Thirty-eight patients had facial fractures, and 31 had head injuries or skull fractures. Of the injured patients, 73 percent were intoxicated at the time of the accident.

"A lot of people are getting significantly harmed by scooters every day," says Hinds, who is paralyzed from the chest down from a collision with a car while riding his bike. "These [vendor] contracts are five years long, we're already in year three. ... It seems crazy that we still haven't done anything. At some point, we have to listen to what the people of Denver want, and that's some additional guardrails around scooters."

Several residents of Hinds's District 10 — including Capitol Hill, Congress Park and central downtown Denver — brought up the issue during a town hall with Mayor Mike Johnston last month. Some attendees said they were "terrified" of e-scooters speeding down their sidewalks. Diane D'Angelo said scooters were "clogging [sidewalks] up for folks who have disabilities."

"I don't understand why those have been able to run amok and rampant," D'Angelo said after the meeting.

E-Scooter Laws

Though scarcely enforced, Denver has laws in place to regulate e-scooter riding in the city.

Under the city's municipal code, scooters must be ridden in bike lanes or to the right-hand side of a roadway. Scooters can only be ridden on sidewalks when parking and, while on a sidewalk, scooters must yield to pedestrians and not go faster than 6 miles per hour. When parked, scooters must not impede the movement of traffic, pedestrian or otherwise.

Scooters are to abide by all of the same speed limits, traffic signals and signs as cars. They're not allowed to travel on freeways, and riding a scooter while intoxicated is illegal. It is also illegal to operate an e-scooter with more than one person on it.

"Several laws have been put in place to help ensure people, including the [scooter] riders, are safe," says Jay Casillas, spokesperson for the Denver Police Department. "The Denver Police Department works to ensure the safety of everyone who lives, works or plays in Denver. ... Officers have issued citations to some of these violators."

According to Casillas, police have issued 24 citations for scooter-adjacent violations so far in 2024, which is more than the eight issued at this point in 2023. But none of the reports for this year's citations identify the offending vehicle as being an e-scooter. Three of the 24 reports identify the vehicle as a bicycle, and one identifies the vehicle as a car, with the rest not specifying. Casillas says citations included in that list can be for any "type of transport methods," and he can't tell how many were actually issued to e-scooter riders.

Hinds says he doesn't necessarily want police officers to chase down unlawful e-scooter riders, anyway: "We could think about ways that we could enforce as a city, like having police officers on e-bikes. Or we can say, 'Hey vendors, you've had three years of very limited accountability, so we're looking to you. ... Here's what we want solved, and it's up to you to solve it. We'll start fining you if it's not solved.'"

E-Scooter Citations

There were an average of 9,400 e-scooter trips taken every day in Denver between December 2018 and June 2024, according to the city's micromobility dashboard. Though most e-scooter riders get away with their violations, nine unlucky souls have been issued citations for unlawful scooter riding in Denver since 2018.

Of the nine reports, seven included the scooters crashing with vehicles and two were for careless/reckless driving, without additional details provided.

In four of the seven citation reports involving collisions, the scooter riders hit or were struck by cars after running a red light or stop sign. In two reports, the scooters were riding on the sidewalk and crashed into vehicles that were either parked or exiting a parking lot. In one report, the scooter rider was riding on the street against the flow of traffic and collided with a vehicle that was turning.

Two of the citations were for one 26-year-old man in August 2023, who reportedly ran a stop sign and crashed his e-scooter into a truck. He then allegedly fled the scene and, ten minutes later, crashed into another vehicle while pulling out of an alleyway without stopping.

Electric scooters were involved in 64 reported collisions on city streets in 2023, according to the Denver Police Department — tying 2022's record for the most reported scooter crashes ever. The riders in these collisions were not always issued citations, as there were only 34 citations issued for scooter-adjacent violations in 2023 and only six of those reports expressly identify the offending vehicle as being an e-scooter, according to Denver County Court records.

Last year's 64 reported scooter crashes resulted in eleven serious bodily injuries and one death. In total, eight people have died in Denver from accidents involving standing e-scooters, according to the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment.