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It’s not hard to spot e-scooters on the roads and pavements of many cities across the globe, the two-wheelers are better for the environment and can be a cheaper alternative for those looking to get around. “The goal is to get people out of their cars.” says Maria Diviney, COO and Co-founder of Luna Systems, e-scooters are achieving this as their popularity skyrockets. But with that boom also comes concerns over the safety of the vehicles. On average, approximately 1.3 million people are killed in road accidents around the world each year, according to the WHO. The organisation also reports that over half of road fatalities worldwide are VRUs (Vulnerable Road Users), such as pedestrians, cyclists, as well as other two-wheelers. Yet, micromobility (both shared and consumer) are an essential part of a more sustainable mobility strategy.
Luna Systems, a micromobility-focused Computer Vision company, is looking to make shared e-scooter schemes safer for riders and other road users. When it comes to the management of these public shared e-scooter schemes “there’s a knowledge gap”, declares MariaLuna Systems’ solution offers a two-pronged approach to reduce errant riding behaviour – specifically the riding of e-scooters on sidewalks. Firstly, it provides detailed analysis of sidewalk riding, enabling operators to have a better handle on which riders are mounting the sidewalk. : “With visual proof of infraction, we provide them with actionable data, every time somebody mounts a sidewalk, we detect this, we know what speed they are travelling at, and we know the number of pedestrians that are in the path of the vehicle” explained Maria. “If a rider is speeding on the pavement for example and there are pedestrians detected in the path of the vehicle, the operator may decide to issue a penalty, or if they see repetitive behaviour from the same individual they might decide OK, we want to ban this person completely from our service”. With the availability of this data, Luna Systems, which is part of EIT Urban Mobility’s scale up programme, helps make mobility safer without creating customer friction, it gives operators “visual proof that a person is riding on the sidewalk” and allows them to “confidently reach out to (the customer) without compromising the overall experience. The shared micromobility market is heavily invested right now on sustainable growth from an economic point of view. We believe that a key part of this should be building a sustainable ridership consisting of riders who follow rules that are put in place to keep everyone safe. The net effect of this is greater trust in the shared micromobility model which supports the future of the entire industry.”
Cities are also making use of the technology as well, the data from Luna systems helps authorities to understand key infrastructure pain points. As Maria says, “cities are built for cars, they need this kind of data going into the future, so they can plan how they’re going to accommodate (e-scooters).” Thanks to EIT Urban Mobility, Luna Systems is currently working with the city of Istanbul to tackle parking challenges there, Maria says “EIT has provided everything to (Luna Systems) from funding which is just one side of it, but also mentorship, connection with cities,helping us as a small company to navigate how to work with a city and make the best of every project from every perspective.”
Luna Systems is trying to make the sidewalks as safe as possible and their data encourages e-scooter users to cruise on cycle lanes instead. Maria believes that it is in the interest of each operator to leverage tech solutions to provide safer schemes. From their experience in city trials, the technology has the ability to reduce a major portion of sidewalk riding, but also acknowledges that tech is “still just one piece of the puzzle (…) and figuring out the infrastructure piece is still the biggest task.” We provide detailed analysis of how e-scooters are being ridden in cities and why they are mounting the sidewalk in the first place. This data really highlights that the need to deliver a more suitable cycling infrastructure is clearly needed to deliver the bigger impact on safety”, a sentiment that Engineer and EIT Urban Mobility masters student, Axel Rimbaud shares. The 35-year-old founded ‘MEL’, a road safety NGO based in Chile, the organisation aims to reduce the number of accidents by creating greater safeguards in Chile’s infrastructure. His work with the NGO is what pushed him to focus on road safety in his masters programme at EIT Urban Mobility.
‘MEL’ is looking to make roads in Chile safer by changing the law: “the first goals of the NGO was to help get three laws approved, one was to the reduce speed limit in cities(…) the law got approved in August 2018(…) then have more enforcement using speed automated speed control and higher sanctions for speeding” explained Axel Rimbaud. The NGO has already been successful in getting laws changed, “we managed to talk to congress, to many MPs, senators, and we managed to be invited to be part of the conversation in politics about those topics and with the Ministry of Transport.”
MEL is making its mark on Chile where 2,000 people die each year from road accidents, an issue that Axel says not only affects the “people involved in the crash(…) but also the people witnessing it and the families of the victims . So even if we talk about millions of people being injured and killed, there’s also even more people being impacted by it globally… it’s a massive impact.
There aren’t many e-scooters in Chile at the moment, safety around the machines is “not so much of a problem there yet ” says Axel, “but we had the same issue with bicycles so we made new laws to determine where the bikes could go and there was a big debate about if they should be allowed on the pavement or if they should go on the road. The final position of our NGO and our interpretation of the Chilean law, is that cyclists and, thinking about future mobility, all individual mobility device users can go on the pavement when they do not feel safe on the road or on badly designed bicycle lanes, however if they do they have to do it at low speed and respecting the priority of pedestrians.”
If cyclists or e-scooter users use the pavement it is usually because they do not feel safe on the road or on the cycling lane. Therefore, the solution in this case is “reducing the space for cars and creating a safe cycling network and to have more space for both pedestrians and cyclists which are modes of transport that are more beneficial for society anyway.”
Luna Systems’ work with operators and cities displays the collaboration that must take place between the public sector and the private sector to make our roads safer, Axel believes that “the public sector has to push for road safety but then (it has to) invite the private sector to join and try to make changes together. We could use the data to see where e-scooter users use the pavement and understand what is missing in the bicycle infrastructure at those location. Alternatively, this application could be used to reduce the speed of e-scooter while they are on the pavement.”
The Founder of MEL is currently at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia after studying in Sweden as part of EIT Urban Mobility’s masters programme, “the two (cities) together really helped me grow my technical skills, the fact that (…) we have these two different cities (helps us) to see how the city’s been built and how the mobility system has an impact on cities and how it shapes people’s life(…) seeing the way mobility and transport integrate has been super interesting.”
