People literally leave them all around the city, for hours or even days at a time. Completely unencumbered as well, and taking up prime public space that could be used by the public in so many other ways. You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them.
(Obviously sarcasm, but as a non-car-owner I get a kick out of people freaking out about these scooters taking up public space. Meanwhile every street in the city is full of cars with one person in them and has two lanes of free or heavily subsidized parking. It's clearly a massively less efficient use of public space, and no one ever talks about that).
Whereas with cars, there is a special legal difference which allows tow trucks to confiscate random people's cars even though the cars are neither the property of the tow truck owner nor abandoned. Cars do not enjoy any special privileges. They are the subject of a special legal burden.
To take possession of a Bird scooter, you'd first need to establish that it was abandoned property, which seems like it would be difficult to do. But maybe it's easy! Consult your local law of abandoned property.
Try a bike. Try a skateboard.
The roads are not there for cars, they existed prior, and the car owners are not what is paying for our roads.
This is actually false if add all taxes related to cars (which would include sales taxes on cars, repairs, and parts)
When most people say that they only account for gasoline taxes, often even excluding the Fuel taxes collected by the Commercial Fuel tax programs as they are accounted for differently.
Yes Gasoline Taxation on gas does not equal road maintenance, but all taxation on cars does meet and and often exceed the road costs
Not sure where to start about taxes, but for one thing we came pretty close to repealing the gas tax in CA a few months ago so that doesn't seem to be a necessary condition. And some people just happen to pay almost no property tax at all because they got here first (prop 13) but they still get access to all the same schools and fire and police services. Taxes are paid by the public at large, to benefit the public at large, you're not paying for the specific services you're using when you pay taxes. In fact it's exactly the opposite, these things are public goods.
In addition as other comments mentioned, the scooter companies are paying registration fees and taxes. At least in some cities, and I'm sure if they stick around it'll soon be in all cities.
That was a recent increase to the gas tax that was up for repeal, not the whole gas tax.
so while they are licensed, they are certainly not paying market rates for the use of these right of ways.
I don't follow...these things aren't comparable. Cities have developed a common infrastructure over decades to facilitate car ownership and usage in everyday life. While they may do the same with rental bikes and scooters in the future, they have not yet done so.
We also have a rich body of legal literature pertaining to car ownership, storage, usage and property laws. Likewise, we don't yet have those precedents for rental scooters stored on sidewalks. What we do have is a rough patchwork of sidewalk and property laws we can try to extrapolate from. How's that for efficiency?
That you get a kick out of peoples' dissatisfaction about this, for the reason you stated, suggests to me that you don't actually understand why they're upset. I don't think most people are strictly concerned about how literally space-efficient the scooters are; rather that they have a tendency to be parked on a sidewalk. People would get pretty upset if cars were suddenly parked on sidewalks without oversight too.
For example, in many cities once every week every bike parked in a public area is labelled with a little color ribbon. The colors rotate according to a fixed schedule, so that it can be verified if a bike has been parked for more than two, three, four weeks. If a bike has been left unattended for more than N weeks (where N can vary) it gets towed away. They all get stored someplace out of town, and once a month the bikes that haven't been reclaimed for M months get sold for cheap.
In other words, there are systems for how long you can leave your property unattended in public before it ceases to be your property.
The primary reason there's no system for handling abandoned bikes in the US is not that nobody uses bikes. Bikes aren't especially common, but the issue of an abandoned bike isn't going to come up -- ever -- because of the extreme frequency of bike theft. An abandoned bike will quickly be stolen, just like a non-abandoned bike. Bird's scooters don't have this problem because they're tracked. But the background reality of bicycles may contribute to jzl's (false) impression that you should be legally able to just take scooters that aren't locked down.
How much of an issue is bicycle theft in the Netherlands? How long would you expect to be able to own one before having it stolen?
This does not represent my experience at all, I've had bikes stolen once every three years on average. It won't surprise you that students learn to buy very cheap second-hand bikes with very big bulky locks really quickly here.
On the plus side, I've never been worried about junkies mugging me. They steal/sell bikes for drug money instead, and I honestly wonder if that is a uniquely Dutch thing.
Also, there's supposed to be organized rings where bikes stolen in Portland are trucked to Seattle (so they're much harder to identify as stolen) and vice-versa.
Sometimes scooters are parked on the side of the road. Sometimes scooters are parked in a ditch beside the road. Bikes rarely are.
Speaking from my experience in Shanghai, where bicycles are common, there's no such thing as a bike rack. (Well, I have seen racks for rental bikes. But none for individually-owned bicycles.)
Rather, supermarkets, university buildings, apartment complexes, and other places which are likely to receive a lot of incoming traffic have bicycle parking lots, and if you're somewhere else, you park on the sidewalk.
Scooters can be parked at bike racks. Are there enough bike racks to park the scooters at the bike racks? would the situation be similar if all of those scooters were bicycles or if bicycles were as cheap as scooters?
There are laws for cars including but not limited to federal highways laws, state/city/county/municipal traffic laws and parking laws. Those laws authorize what you refer to as “leaving them around the city”, you can only leave your car around the city if it’s in compliance and authorized by the law, the Law often specifically penalizing leaving your car in certain situations (ex. in front of fire hydrants; in handicap spaces without permits; in traffic lanes). Their are no laws blankety authorizing scooter companies to adbadon and/or sell their products/goods/services on public sidewalks or roadway. Generally speaking most states/counties/cities/municipalities will have laws specifically prohibiting the same subject to various penalties without prior authorization, permits, etc... consider the number of stories in recent years about kids lemonade stands being shutdown and fined for operating without licenses.
Depending how old you are you might remember pay phones, phone booths, or coin operated newspaper stands...definitely you are probably familiar with atms and vending machines. What if a “tech startup” just started cluttering streets and sidewalks with those. That too would be illegal and not at all similar legally to cars being “left around the city”. Maybe another example is farmers markets, think if a “tech company” just started setting up farmers markets wherever they wanted without prior authorization.
As anyone who has had their car towed when it was legally parked (buddy of mine once got towed from his own assigned spot) this is pretty much spot on. The difference is so far Bird isn't ransoming their property back.
As I point out in another comment, this is not because being located in a random spot is sufficient to establish that an item is abandoned property. (If it were, the tow truck company would be legally entitled to keep your car!)
Rather, there is legislation which specifically allows towing of cars in certain areas, subject to certain rules. There is no such legislation for scooters.
Your sarcastic analogy would make sense if people just parked cars anywhere they wanted without repercussions.
I would have no problem if the city took away parking spots for cars and said park them there.
I wish I could give you more than 1 downvote.
Is that true in the US?
In Ireland, by default you're allowed park on the side of the road. There are exceptions, ie you can't cause an obstruction to traffic, block an entrance, park where road markings prohibit it, or within certain distances of a junction. However, if none of the above apply, you don't need to find a marked parking space - you can just park.
Most cities in the US make big money off parking violations.
My property doesn't cease to be my property just because it isn't on my land. Registration or licencing doesn't come into it. "Finders keepers" is not a law.
What is the anticipated solution when you leave your bike on my private land? I've seen loads of bird scooters left on private property, and I don't see what the property owners are supposed to do. Call the police every time?
Is there some sort of mental block happening here where people are forgetting how the world works because they hate scooters so much, or do you guys really not understand the fundamentals of property law and common sense?
And where should I put it? I don't want it on the sidewalk, and I don't want it in mystreet. I can't put it in the trash because it's someone else's property. That's essentially what I meant by "anticipated solution."
Note I never suggested it would become mine, so a good portion of your comment is responding to someone else. And I'm not sure who you are referring to by "you guys," but I can honestly say I have never before been in a situation prior to these scooters that someone just left their valuable stuff on my private property and I had to deal with it. Are there equivalents to towing companies I can call for random valuable crap that belongs to someone else?
[Downvoters: I'm not saying that I think I should be able to grab a Bird off the street, I just want to hear the legal explanation of how this works.]
In California, if you find it and choose to take charge of it, you become a depositary for the legal owner. Additionally, if it is worth $100+, and you can't locate and return it to the owner within a reasonable period, you are required to turn it into the police or sheriff depending on the jurisdiction in which it was found. It may become yours if the owner doesn't claim it from the police/sheriff within 90 days, with some additional requirements if it is worth more than $250.
If it was intentionally abandoned by the owner this doesn't apply.
EDIT: Source, Civil Code § 2080 et seq..
They clearly haven't abandoned them as that applies generally to property; if you are in fact charging rental fees, you haven't intentionally relinquished the right to control something, as you are exercising that right by charging others for the right to temporarily exercise some portion of it.
There may be rules regarding public rights of way which impact this, though the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already rejected the claim that property left unattended on a public sidewalk is therefore abandoned and subject to deprivation when the City of Los Angeles used that as an excuse to take the goods belonging to the homeless without due process, so I think what is really going on in those DAs offices is people have made the decision “we don't like what Bird is doing so we aren't going to enforce the law when people commit crimes against them.”
In contrast, the homeless person has not left there property around for the express purpose of letting others use it.
Intending to rent it to others for use, yes.
> If they are not locally permitted to do so, then this act constitutes abandonment
No, it doesn't. It may constitute violation of whatever ordinance does not permit it, but the Lavan v. LA case is directly on point, that whatever regulatory powers local jurisdiction has, a property owner not intending to entirely relinquish control has not abandoned (and the state cannot without violating the due process clause of the 14th amendment treat them as having abandoned) property merely because it is unattended on a public way in violation of some local control. (They may have the right to take the property with due process from the person who remains, until that process has been given, the owner, but that's a remedy against the owner, not abandonment by the owner.)
While I concede that your position is correct academically, I've successfully argued my position in court several times (pro bono, since I only take on criminal def when I believe in the case), so I'm confident that my position is correct where it matters.
And if you're ever actually practiced in the California court system, you would know that you only need to convince a single appellate judge statewide to make valuable precedent. (Because in California, a lower court can follow the precedent of any higher California appellate ruling.)
Usually that process involves turning the property in to the government, and waiting some period of time for the original owner to claim it. If it is not claimed, it would become yours.
I don't know of any law that requires property on public space to be locked. There may be laws saying you can't leave property in public for more than a certain amount of time, but I am pretty sure none of those would allow anyone to just take the property.
https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/abandoned-per...
Property owners don't have any legal responsibility not to leave an item in public unlocked. That might be careless, but it's not illegal.
If Bird leaves a scooter in the road, for someone else to use, they have relinquished the right to control the device, and it is thus abandoned; the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors.
Regarding statutory violations, first of all Bird is probably not littering because the scooters are (arguably) not trash. Second, where the scooters are impounded by cities and other municipalities, it is for parking violations or other statutes against them. As a private citizen, you would have no more right to take their scooter than you would to take my car that was illegally parked.
No, if they are charging use fees, offering money for people to choose charge them, etc., they have not relinquished all rights to control.
> the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors.
That's a big false dichotomy.
My neighbor has a sign on the dash of his van explaining that it is in working condition, is able to be moved, and is definitely not abandoned. Obviously he got complaints from other neighbors in the past about it.
Every state has regulations on the exact process by which private individuals can be deprived of their property rights due to "abandonment." Not a single one of those regulations is as straight-forward as "finders keepers."
On the other hand you have the ground occupied by or encumbered by said property, which is also property, owned by somebody, often the public, and likely intended for some other purpose besides storing your property. "Don't make your stuff our problem!"
Different places balance the two interests in different ways. Most provide some legal framework or mechanism by which your private property rights can become subordinate to public property rights, i.e. your property is declared abandoned, or simply seized based on a nuisance or safety argument.
Property owners do not have any obligation to lock up their items.
There are sometimes very specific laws regarding found property when the owner cannot be located, generally these involve turning the property over to the state first.
Which is the same problem that Bird is facing--in cities where they aren't actually permitted by the appropriate authority (city, county, etc.), Birds are abandoned property. In cities where they have been granted a permit to conduct business activities, the question is more nebulous, but thus far DAs are decisively on the side of not treating it as a crime.
Is there a citation for this in CA? can you just take abandoned property and claim it as yours without a single paperwork step?
I'm not so sure scooters with GPS tracking and contractors looking for them would be considered abandoned in the eyes of the law, even if they have been left in an unpermitted location.
“In law, abandonment is the relinquishment, giving up or renunciation of an interest, claim, civil proceedings, appeal, privilege, possession, or right, especially with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting it. Such intentional action may take the form of a discontinuance or a waiver.“
-It would make cool artwork! -I dislike seeing scooters strewn about all over the city.
But (in SF at least) walking by Civic Center BART on Market Street, in broad daylight, you can gawk at least 10 homeless people per hour shooting up black tar heroin directly across from about five or more uniformed SFPD officers and then witness no arrests for such flagrant behavior [0]. Hell, if you've not seen a homeless person shit in the middle of the street on a Tuesday, you need to get out more.
Like, Bird/Lime/whatever may be sending out these notices to Cory Doctorow's blogosphere Zeppelins [1], but ain't no cop in SF (and likely in nearly every other city in the US) is EVER going to prosecute you for making a cheapo scooter into a vase for growing your weeds in. Like every single other person that isn't on the books at these scoot companies (and ~90% of the people in them anyway), all members of the legal system have better things to worry about.
[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-Bay-Area-New-Y...