After several weekends of problems that St. Louis' public safety department attributed to large groups of kids -- some on scooters -- the city decided to suspend all scooters service downtown until further notice. Scooter company Lime has been working on ways to allow people to ride but with some added precautions.
Lee Foley from Lime told KMOX's Maria Keena that some of the main concerns from the city have to do with underage riding and people parking scooters haphazardly or in places they're not supposed to. Their new safety campaign includes requiring all riders be 18 years or older Citywide.
"Liveness testing requires riders to present their ID, take a photo of theri ID using the Lime app, and in real time, the app then verifies the legitimacy of that ID," Foley said. "And the second part of that, the rider is then required to take a selfie, and the liveness test then compares the selfie and compares it to the image on the ID."
If both those things check out, the rider can unlock the scooter and get going. Foley said it is disappointing to see fewer people being able to ride, but he understands the need for regulations.
"It is discouraging, and we love to be able ot see as many people as possible riding Lime scooters, but we know what the city's concerns are, and it is our responsiblity as a partner of the city to respond to those concerns."
He said that after the city planned to shut down scooters entirely, Lime wrote up these new regulations to see if they could further test their effectiveness. So far, he said, it's been going well.
"We can see within Forest Park and other areas in the city that we're not seeing the problems we were seeing before we turned those features on," Foley said.
Lime is also rolling out mandatory parking zones for the scooters.
Public Safety Director Dan Isom told KMOX that he's willing to reach some agreements with the scooter companies -- to an extent.
"We're not going to compromise on public safety," he said. "And so hopefully we can come to one, but I rode around on Saturday and there was a marked difference in behavior and just the environment without the scooters."