“You get a lot of anecdotal evidence in the press about this being a bad thing from a safety perspective,” said Mike Mollenhauer, director of Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s Center for Technology Implementation. “We were really bracing ourselves for the worst.”
VTTI has embarked on an 18-month study to gather data on how scooters could best be deployed at other campuses and in other localities. Spin, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Co., provided the scooters to Tech’s campus for the duration of the study, which it bankrolled to the tune of about $260,000. Another $210,000 comes from a federal grant.
So far, researchers aren’t seeing the same rates of injuries that have plagued scooter users in Austin, Texas, and southern California, according to Mollenhauer, the study’s principal investigator.
Mollenhauer said this month that he’s aware of six crashes reported through the Spin app, which is used to unlock the scooters, and four through Virginia Tech police. That’s out of nearly 80,000 rides on campus, he said.
The research team is still working to get information on medical visits that may be scooter-related, Mollenhauer said.
“It is my understanding that they have seen very few patients/students with electronic scooter-related injuries,” a spokeswoman for LewisGale Hospital in Montgomery County said in an email.
Scooters are restricted to Tech’s campus, thanks to geofencing technology that disables them too far from approved boundaries. They’re also limited to 12 miles per hour in most locations on campus, and banned from the Drillfield. They cost $1 to unlock and 15 cents a minute to use.
Spin has made a couple notable changes to the deployment since the scooters debuted: it switched out its entire fleet with new models, complete with pneumatic tires and better brakes, from manufacturer Segway. It also dropped the total number of scooters from 300 to 200.
A Spin spokeswoman said, “we decided to decrease our fleet size to reduce scooter clutter and improve the overall experience with scooters on campus.”
A team of researchers is poring over video from cameras mounted on 50 scooters, as well as video from fixed cameras around campus. Surveys of riders and non-riders will also give researchers a sense of how people view scooters.
While injuries haven’t been seen as a major issue, a few problems persist.
Helmet usage is low, Mollenhauer said, despite the availability of free helmets people can pick up at the Virginia Tech Alternative Transportation Center at the Perry Street parking garage.
Another wrinkle is parking.
University policy says scooters must be parked near bike racks or other designated areas. When a user finishes a scooter ride, they’re prompted to take a picture through the Spin app to ensure the scooter’s in good condition and parked properly.
“The pictures are being taken,” Mollenhauer said. “Whether they’re in the right place or not is another issue.”
Mark Owczarski, a university spokesman, said scooters will be gone from campus by June. Tech will assess whether to have scooters on campus once the study is complete some months after that.
“It depends on what the study finds,” Owczarski said. “To be determined.”
Mollenhauer said he did not think it was a conflict of interest that half of the study is being funded by a company with a financial interest in expanding the scooter market. (The scooters generate revenue less from their operating costs than from the data companies mine from users.)
“Our reputation as VTTI is on the line as being an independent evaluator,” Mollenhauer said.
Spin said it will receive advanced copies of proposed publications “to review the material for potentially patentable inventions or an inadvertent release of Spin confidential information.”
Mollenhauer said he’s already gotten several requests for data from researchers interested in the study.
“A lot of campuses are making these kinds of decisions,” he said. “So hopefully we can give them the data to at least have a good reason to say one thing or another moving forward.”
2019-12-26 03:30:00Z
https://www.roanoke.com/news/education/wht-scooters-still-under-study-on-virginia-tech-campus/article_e49f06d6-a60b-59cf-9f89-8633f0b80e38.html
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