Seattle's Scooter Carnage Continues

Doug MacDonald

July has been a tough month of bad news for Lime, the brand that rents e-scooters and e-bikes in Seattle under a permit from the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). Not, however, that you would have heard about it from Lime, or SDOT.

The first bombshell was rumor confirmation on July 18th from the City Attorney’s office that Lime had agreed to pay $2.5 million to a rider and his wife who had sued the city in 2023 for his horrendous injuries riding a Lime e-scooter. Five days later, on July 18th, SDOT released documents under a Public Disclosure Request, admitting there had been a Lime e-scooter ride fatality in Belltown almost a month earlier of which neither Lime nor SDOT had offered any mention to the public.

Are these the kind of events that should finally jolt Seattle, awash in thousands of rental e-scooters and e-bikes like no other city in the country, to demand whether SDOT has created a program anyone beyond the homegrown and tourist rider class really wants? As to Lime in Seattle, what has SDOT giveth? What has Lime taketh away?

Are any of the rules for e-scooters, no riding on sidewalls, no parking flouting the rights of people with disabilities, no riding under age 16, actually to be observed? Will the indisputable pile-up of injury statistics and the endless sidewalk clutter ever get an engaged response from SDOT? Will SDOT answer the obvious question, how much money is Lime making in Seattle from the permit SDOT has issued to install and conduct its business on the public’s right-of-way?

https://www.postalley.org/2025/07/28/seattles-scooter-carnage-continues/