Birds bite back

Injuries cause decreased speeds on campus, though ‘incredibly’ safe compared to other transportation

By K. MAUSER The Breeze

Admittedly, junior Camilla Brown hasn’t had the best experience with Bird scooters.

Brown’s been seriously injured twice while riding Birds, she said, one injury resulting in a trip to the local urgent care. She said she was referred to an orthopedic doctor who concluded she’d torn both her ACL and her meniscus from riding the scooter, which impacted her ability to get around campus.

Brown said she couldn’t walk for a week after her injury and lived off campus. She said she had “no idea” what she was supposed to do in terms of getting to her classes.

The state of Bird safety around campus

Brown isn’t the only victim of a Birdrelated injury.

The University Health Center has recently seen an uptake in the number of injuries due to the Bird scooters found around campus, Tim Miller, vice president for student affairs, said. He also said in 2022, there were 16 reported Bird crashes in the Harrisonburg area and said this number didn’t include the numerous accidents that have likely gone unreported.

Miller said he’s “very worried” about how students continue to get injured and said these injuries haven’t been minor — a separated shoulder and broken hip were reported from students riding Birds “not too long ago,” he said.

Bird scooters, which are environmentally clean and car-free methods of transportation, according to the Bird website, are littered around campus in various locations. After downloading the Bird app to purchase a ride, a rider can use the motorized scooter to get around to any part of campus, often in a fraction of the time it would take to walk there.

However, due to consistent concerns about the speed regulations around campus, Bird scooters have decreased in speed across JMU. Miller said the speed limit for slow zones, which are traffic-heavy areas around campus like at the top of the Quad and by the Student Success Center, have a lower speed limit than other areas, decreased from 10 mph to 8 mph March 3. Miller also said the other areas of campus that aren’t slow zones have a speed limit of 12 mph, but decreased to 8 mph after 10 p.m. on this same day.

Miller also said he’s had concerns about the safety of the Bird scooters. He said he often sees injury due to the high speed a rider can reach before crashing, students using these scooters while intoxicated — especially at night — and riding with multiple people on one scooter.

Risk of injury

The first time Brown was injured, she said she only twisted her ankle. The second time, Brown said, is when she tore her ACL and meniscus.

“I was looking back at my friends and then the handlebar started wiggling,” Brown said. “I got kind of nervous that I was gonna fall anyways, so then I fell even worse and put another foot down. This time, I tore my ACL and meniscus.”

Before her injuries, Brown said she used the Bird scooters about three times a month and mostly for emergencies, such as running late to a class. Now, she said she never uses them.

“These are not, ‘I-sprained-my-ankle’-type of injuries,” Miller said. “Some of these are lifealtering injuries.”

Contrarily, Chris Stockwell, director of government and university partnerships for Bird, said the injury rate for bird riders is 0.0013% globally and that the rate of injury when riding a Bird scooter is similar to the rate of injury when riding a bike.

“The overall data is that, compared to many other forms of transportation, [Birds] are incredibly safe,” Stockwell said. “Ultimately, we have the data to back that up, and there’s enough research out there these days to support that as well.”

Riding under the influence

Brown said she’s seen a lot of riders using Bird scooters while intoxicated, especially at night. She also said she thinks this could be one of the reasons Bird injuries have become “more common.”

“The other thing we’ve seen is alcohol [with] birds,” Miller said, added that the university has been figuring out different options regarding how to address the issue of Bird use while intoxicated.

The official Bird website has a safety guide regarding the appropriate use of scooters. According to this guide, some of its features can prevent using these scooters while intoxicated or while practicing many other unsafe habits. The website writes that cities can opt to use things like Safe Start, which is an “in-app checkpoint” designed to discourage people from riding under the influence in order to encourage safe riding.

“[Safe Start] is a cognitive test that we’ve put into place for later hours that a user has to complete before using a scooter,” Stockwell said. “It’s a self-check, if you will.”

He said users had to complete a task similar to a word puzzle in order to be able to ride the scooter. He also said this doesn’t always stop intoxicated riders from using the Bird scooters, but will still provide an opportunity for the rider to question whether they should be using the Bird while intoxicated.

Jamie Kwiecinski, a JMU police officer, said he’d personally never come across a Bird rider who was intoxicated while riding, but that it still happens.

Kwiecinski said it “probably should be a DUI,” but wrote in a later email April 21 that a DUI couldn’t be issued to intoxicated bird riders under VA Code 46.2-705. This code doesn’t classify motorized scooters as a motor vehicle, he wrote, which is the reason they cannot issue a DUI for intoxicated scooter riders.

He also wrote that although his department cannot write a DUI for intoxicated Bird riders, they can charge the individual with any other alcohol violation that fits, including public intoxication, underage possession and other similar violations, and said they can send the student to the Office of Accountability and Restorative Practices (OSARP) for University discipline.

Recently, Kwiecinski said his department has been working with OSARP to implement more rules about using the scooters around campus, which he calls “micromobility policies.”

Culture

Creating a safer campus

Micromobility policies, which have been implemented in many other cities, according to Shared-Use Mobility Center, regulate many areas of bike, e-bike and scooter use by enforcing “guidelines, permits and laws” for use.

Kwiecinski said his department hopes to get these policies in place soon, as JMU doesn’t have some of the micromobility policies that other campuses have implemented.

“Most of the time, the operators do not follow the rules of the road,” he said. “If they see an opportunity, they’ll go through a red light or they’ll jump in the other lane and pass a vehicle, which are all violations of law.”

Stockwell said Bird tries to work with cities and universities to counteract the different types of unsafe riding trends the company sees in different areas, and can adjust Bird’s educational approach and enforcement based on these trends.

Bird has many different safety tools they can use in each area to counteract the unsafe riding in various locations, which includes reducing the speed of bird scooters in certain sections of a city or university— like JMU did March 3.

Although Brown said the speed limits put in place around campus are helpful for the safety of JMU students, she also said the roads off campus and around the Harrisonburg community have unregulated speeds.

“They’re wild,” Brown said. “You can go so fast.”

Kwiecinski said his department responds to more accidents off campus than on. He said he’s seen serious injuries such as broken bones, but said he didn’t think his department had ever responded to a scooter-related death.

Brown said she thinks one reason people use the Bird scooters is to navigate what she called difficult terrain on JMU’s campus and in the surrounding area.

The hill that runs through the Village residence halls is especially dangerous in terms of speed because riders can travel steeply downhill, Miller said, adding he wants students to make good choices when traveling across campus.

“I would just say for everything, for me and for us on the campus,” Miller said, “[we’re] about students being safe and getting to the end of every day safely.”

Brown said she has other friends who’ve been injured when riding a motorized scooter. She said one of her friends broke his arm falling off a scooter.

Although there are some universities that have gotten rid of the Bird scooters entirely, Miller said this possibility isn’t his preference because he knows how valuable they are to JMU students, who, in some cases, might be using them for their own safety, like to get away from someone chasing them. He said the university will monitor the safe use of Bird scooters through the fall to see if the speed change will help Bird riders practice safety.

“We definitely want our students and our writers to be safe,” Kwiecinski said, “and to [ride] correctly on campus and off campus.”

CONTACT K. Mauser at mauserkk@dukes.jmu.edu. For more on the culture, arts and lifestyle of the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the culture desk on Twitter and Instagram @Breeze_Culture.