New Scooter Removal Service Appears
scootscoop.com
scootscoop.com
If you leave your car for days in some business's parking lot, then they will call a tow service who will pick up the car at no charge to the business owner, then charge the car's actual owner an exorbitant set of fees for towing and storage.
You can read the California laws on "Removal of Parked and Abandoned Vehicles" here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
> Public property does not mean you can obstruct it and use how you want.
>If they leave their property on your property, you're well within your rights to have it removed.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that the property owner is also responsible for keeping the sidewalk negotiable when somebody illegally dumps a piano on it. From my experience formerly owning property in Philadelphia, it was my impression that keeping the sidewalk clear of anything was my responsibility.
I couldn't find anything about trash on sidewalks in San Diego, but their government page on sidewalks suggest that property owners are partially responsible for maintenance costs of sidewalks:
> Normal sidewalk wear and tear or age damage is the responsibility of the homeowner who can take advantage of the City's 50/50 Cost Sharing Program to help offset the cost of repairs.
https://www.sandiego.gov/street-div/services/roadways/sidewa...
This suggests to me that responsibility for clearing out crap dumped on the sidewalk on your property is probably also the responsibility of the property owner. And if some freak weather caused a blizzard in San Diego, I'd expect property owners would be obligated to clear the snow as well (or pay somebody else to do it.)
I've never had to think about it, but I'm now trying to figure out my options if people left large objects on my sidewalk. I throw away litter. But if there was a bunch of bicycles or scooters, I'd probably ignore them for a bit and hope the owner came back to retrieve them. If it was blocking my driveway or causing a problem, I'd move them off the sidewalk and onto the adjoining grass. If they are left there long enough, I might put a sign to the affect of "this litter will be picked up on __" for the next trash day.
But if I lived in a scooter rental place and this was an ongoing issue, I would definitely be fine with using a service like this.
Yes, they can, if they are impeding the use of a public right of way. When someone parks a car on the (public) street outside of your driveway, blocking you in, you can call a tow company to have it removed, and they would be legally justified in removing it and charging the owner for the impound.
It's kinda established that if you park like an asshole, someone might call a towing company, and they'll charge you a fee to release your car. In that case you've got a potentially shady towing company and their legal people lined up against an individual who owns a vehicle that was parked somewhere problematic enough that the tow company was prepared to risk towing it.
There's a different power dynamic when it's small local shady towing company versus VC backed "growth hacking" disruptive startup, who potentially have some fairly high powered legal services if not on retainer themselves, quite like available to them via their investors or stop accelerator...
I read recently Uber were talking about getting into the bike/scooter rental space? Pretty sure I'd advise against local small business towing company/franchise from risking getting into a lawyer fight with Uber...
In most cities sidewalks are private property. As one of the conditions of being allowed to build on the property, the developer granted an easement to the city for the sidewalk.
This is why a homeowner is required to remove snow from their sidewalk. It's their sidewalk.
Also I assume if your rental car gets towed, the rental company will try to charge the cost back to you if they have to collect it, or you'll have to pay to get it yourself. You've already agreed to bring the car back to them on x day at y time. Could the scooter companies charge riders the towing fee?
Surely some of them are, so this is already a resolved matter.
> Could the scooter companies charge riders the towing fee?
Why not? They knew who last rode it, and they know were it was parked. If they believe it was parked legally, they can sue the towing company. If they believe the towing company was in the right, they could demand payment from the customer who fucked up. Is that not reasonable?
And that’s exactly what should happen if you’re in an unauthorized space. The need for convenience does not suddenly grant short-term authorization.
If anything, I hope Bird learns from this service and starts implementing hubs/waypoints in their business model. In addition to chargers and riders, there should be hub owners, who get a payment for signing their property up as a hub for scooters to be safely parked at. Hubs are a piece of the puzzle I think Bird desperately needs if they want to avoid this gray area stuff.
Scooter companies could offer incentives to normalize the distribution of scooters around the city (for example, a discount or credit for taking a scooter from a densely covered area to a sparse one).
Most importantly "Scoot Scoop" for a name? I imagine they will be get getting a C&D for the use of the "Scoot" name in very, very, very short order.
I doubt it.
I think you're allowed to say your business is "iPhone Repairs" even though Apple have trademarked iPhone (and have an army of lawyers who'd love to slap you down if they thought they'd win in court).
http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86900097&caseType=SERIAL_N...
http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88018747&caseType=SERIAL_N...
The web site says that they are an existing towing business, and so they'll likely do the same thing.
Source: See recent videos from http://youtube.com/gtoger, who works at a company in Dallas.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
Companies notified and Invoiced to pick up at our facility
Seems a little bit like stealing. Not unexpected from a tow company.
We have half a dozen smartphone-operated bike schemes on the go. The bikes do literally litter the pavement sometimes. On occasion you have to climb over them (or carry them out of the way). They end up in the river and chucked into hedges. They end up mangled by the side of the road after people try to remove the locks. Some of them do objectively end up as 'trash'.
Yes, the blame lies squarely at the door of inconsiderate cyclists. But I can't help but think that the vendors (and licensing authorities) should have seen this coming. Is it stealing to personally take that rusy Ofo bike from the side of the road and re-use the materials? I think the answer is yes. What would the local authority do if I took it to the recycling station. They probably wouldn't want to touch it. So it's up to to the vendor to clean up their refuse.
I haven't seen scooters first hand, but if they're like the bikes, then I don't think that's a hyperbolic stretch to use the word 'littering'.
What if someone trips over a Scooter on your Property?
No More Obstructions Blocking Customer Access
It seems pretty clear the removal service is targeting property owners, not public spaces.
Now.. one company may own the building + sidewalk and the businesses inside the building are just leasing space. In that case, they would probably need the building owner to call the towing company, or have some sort of agreement to do so. For instance, the owner may delegate some sidewalk responsibilities to the round-level tenant in the lease. I have a rental property and I delegate snow removal and lawn maintenance to the tenants. (Though legally, if the tenants don't keep up with it, it would ultimately come back on me).
Stores have several alternatives to this:
• They can send employees off-property to pick up carts they find. I used to see this in the past; not really as much anymore.
• They can install an "invisible fence"-type system, which causes one of a cart's wheels to lock up when taken outside of the permitted area. If you walk to/from the store, you'll have seen signs warning about this; otherwise you can check the carts to see if one wheel looks different from the others. The Safeway near where I live does this.
• They can require that customers pay a refundable deposit to use the cart. See the "Why do I need a quarter?" question at https://www.aldi.us/en/about-aldi/faqs/about-aldi/ for an example of this. This doesn't happen in the US much.
Looks like they only remove scooters that are being left on private property. I would think its completely legal for the land owner to remove the scooter, therefore having another service remove them for you and charge for storage would be fine as long as the rate is not extortionate.
Because anybody can use and park the scooters, I would think it's in somebody's incentive to move scooters from pubic sidewalk onto patrolled private property to get scooped up.
TBH, I'd also trust an established towing business to handle scooter pickup, because scooter pickup would not be their only line of business, and they presumably wouldn't want scooter shenanigans to affect their towing business.
There's nothing new here.
I guess this service is targeting people with scrap removal needs but are too high class to call a "traditional" scrapper.