Lime scooters are back on Tallahassee streets. The re-emergence comes after the company found their e-scooters where they were not supposed to be: on Florida State University’s campus. Now, two more companies, Bird and Gotcha, have been asked to recall their vehicles.
E-scooter companies like Lime track their vehicles with GPS. When a rider drives a scooter into an off-limits area like FSU, the vehicle is supposed to slow down and eventually stop. However, that was not happening with Lime’s e-scooters. Chelsea Sims is Lime’s City Launcher for Tallahassee. She says the problem is now fixed.
“It is essentially a new software that the scooter received [that] prevent it from going into the zone, the Zones that FSU outlined,” she says.
To access an e-scooter, riders must download an app; this app contains software that creates a virtual fence around no-ride zones, a process called geofencing. Yesterday, the city of Tallahassee asked Bird and Gotcha to recall their e-scooters. The request comes after officials tested Gotcha and Bird e-scooters and found they could break the geofence. The vendors are not allowed to redeploy their vehicles until the problem is fixed.
Currently, only Tallahassee colleges are blocked off. City officials say no private businesses have asked to be geofenced.
