Help. Fwd: For Greenways - Another Post on SDOT sharedmicromobility fatality and injury risk

[Doug MacDonald]

This is bouncing back from my attempts to circulate it to NW Greenways. Can one of you help me sort out the problem and get it to the ground?

Thanks. 

    — Doug.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Doug MacDonald <dbmac...@earthlink.net>

Subject: For Greenways - Another Post on SDOT sharedmicromobility fatality and injury risk

Date: August 8, 2025 at 11:28:38 AM PDT

To: nwgre...@googlegroups.com, arcst...@googlegroups.com

After considerable teeth-pulling through PDRs to SDOT and the City Attorney’s Office, I was able to pull together another post for Post Alley. II’s not a good news story. 

 

I forward it here, together with my email to the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board (below).

Here’s another recent  interesting article  (USA Today) not from me, with a cautioned approach very grounded in Seattle.

It’s hard to cover all the anglers on shared micromobility and the 15,000 e-scooters and e-bikes SDOT now has riding around on Seattle streets and sidewalks. Pretty clearly nothing like it anywhere else in the country. 

 

In addition to injury risk there is also the major disconnect between this program and the City of Seattle’s obligations to maintain accessible sidewalks for all under the ADA. Day-after-day that obligation is violated all over the city by devices parked (discarded) on sidewalks, curb ramps, building frontages, bus platforms, etc. - all expressly prohibited on ADA grounds in the vendors’ permits. All with no effective remediation by SDOT which completely understands the ADA issue as evidenced the terms it has written into the permits. 

 

In any case a Greenways mailing list is aver important audience not only for this post, but also for the reader comments the post has elicited (following the post), These represent a very interesting sample of public opinion on the topic. For me, seeking to write for the public on this topic, the Greenways mailing list repents a great feedback opportunity. For each of you, which comment or two in the comment thread most accurately represents your perspective on the topic?!

 

Are you satisfied with the current SDOT program? 

 

A huge help to me in trying to gauge my audience.

 

Thanks for your interest. 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Doug MacDonald <dbmac...@earthlink.net>

Subject: Pls forward to the Pedestrian Advisory Board

Date: August 8, 2025 at 10:26:32 AM PDT

To: DOT_PedBoard <DOT_Pe...@seattle.gov>

Cc: "Nemani, Venu" <venu....@seattle.gov>, David.B...@seattle.gov

I am interested in how this matter will be treated in discussion of the monthly Vision Zero Report to the SPAB.

 

One of the important ethical questions presented by the SDOT shared micromobility program - now with 15,000 devices authorized by SDOT riding on Seattle streets and sidewalks - is SDOT’s complete avoidance of providing information to prospective riders about the specific dangers presented y thee devices. Customers should at least be equipped with information about whether to hop aboard and take their chances.

 

The attached post is, I believe, the only public facing information about Seattle’s first sidewalk riding (illegal) e-scooter fatality, apparently caused by the rider encountering a sidewalk anomaly in Belltown and being thrown from a Lime scooter to his death. It took weeks and a Public Disclosure Request to get out of SDOT  thee fact and circumstances of this fatality.

 

So far as SDOT seems to be concerned, news no one needs to know.

 

Nor, for that matter, news about the horrible e-scooter record associated with traumatic brain injury, also treated in this post, and never mentioned anywhere by SDOT to the public, so far as I can find.

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

So far asI can find, the last information on shared micromobility safety presented to the public by SDOT was for the year ending September 2021 - and was based on clearly inadequate information assembled to that point by SDOT. Recently I found that the shared micromobility program was supposed to prepare some kind of overall report in 2024, but the task was uncompleted. Not even on safety. 

[Lee Bruch]

I believe it maybe because you because you are the wrong address.

Although we have changed to name to "NW Greenways" and even though we managed to change the name that * appears * on posts as an alias, my understanding at that Google for some arcane technical reason doesn't allow changing the actual URL.

So to email a post to NW Greenways one must still use the old URL - https://groups.google.com/g/greenwood-phinney-greenways

Ancillary issues: 

Tom Lang (because he has moved to Shoreline and got a new full time senior job at Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (Assistant Director
​Regional Infrastructure Accelerator) which involves the entire PNW, including western Canada) had to reevaluate what he spent time on,

And myself (age related health problems are forcing me to cut back on lots of things)

Both occured suddenly at about the same time. So it's left NWG leaderless. We've searched and plead for people to step up. Very recently some are in the process of stepping up ... they may take a slightly different direction.

Lee Bruch

     206-355-4282 Mobile & Text

     Lee....@outlook.com

---

From: Doug MacDonald <dbmac...@earthlink.net>
Sent: Friday, August 8, 2025 11:42 AM
To: Lee Bruch > <Lee....@outlook.com>; 'Brent McFarlane' via NW Greenways <greenwood-phi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Help. Fwd: For Greenways - Another Post on SDOT sharedmicromobility fatality and injury risk