LET'S TALK

LET'S TALK: Lime scooters boggle minds of older folks

Here's what we REALLY need

Lime scooters are lined up at Sixth and Main Streets in North Little Rock. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR.)
Lime scooters are lined up at Sixth and Main Streets in North Little Rock. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR.)

First, we got the Segways. Now we have the Lime electric scooters.

The dockless, battery-operated scooters were introduced in early January as a six-month pilot program between the Lime Co. and the city of Little Rock.

It's July, they're still here and going strong.

In its first 30 days, according to reports, riders in the city had racked up more than 14,000 miles on the electric scooters. Around the time of that report, I passed one forlorn little scooter on the way from car to office. It already looked like a significant number of those 14,000 miles had been spent on it alone. When warmer weather hit, it became Lime Scooter City around here.

Their future here had been uncertain. City officials had originally announced that the scooters would be gone after that first six months, but in May, they extended the agreement to keep the little buggers around. They're now around at least until 120 days after the May 15 agreement date.

The scooters can be activated for a nominal fee via a smartphone app; then cost an also nominal fee-per-minute to ride via credit/debit card input. "To unlock a Lime-S scooter, simply open the Lime app and tap on the 'Ride' button at the bottom of the screen," the scooters' website instructs. "From here, either scan the QR code using your phone's camera or manually enter the 6-digit vehicle code located beneath the QR code."

You can guess what the folk my age are saying. The Me Generation says "Me ain't willing to get on one of those consarned things, fall and seriously injure a body part."

Watching those more able whizz effortlessly back and forth as I walk and drive the streets of downtown Little Rock, I must admit to wishing that some enterprising company would provide dockless, rent-for-a-few-hours/bucks transportation and living aids for those who aren't officially handicapped, but are definitely slower of foot these days.

A few I'd like to see:

Mobility scooters. There are mobility scooter rental companies, to be sure, but like the scooters, these would be dockless. The upside: Riders won't whizz along at a gazillion miles an hour and startle us old ladies as we're crossing the street. A few downsides, though: 1. They do carry a stigma. In "How mobility scooters went from garage project to multibillion-dollar industry," a 2016 history of the devices at Timeline.com, Stephanie Buck points out that "Tumblrs and South Park episodes poke fun at Walmart shoppers who require scooters; comedians routinely jerk thumbs toward chair-assisted ... people." Also, she adds, folk on the Internet are suspicious as to whether people who use them really need them. 2. They may be riding too slowly for the folk walking behind them, which may give rise to some rude-word exchanging and fist shaking. Still, it'd be nice to have some red-for-energy scooters for the mature crowd ... maybe some with fancy accessories for those riders who want to, well, look cool.

Umbrella canes. These would be canes made up to look like, and even serve as, umbrellas. Got this idea from an Arkansas Arts Center guard who asked me if I was using my umbrella as a cane and said that if not, it wouldn't be allowed in the exhibit hall. Hey, some of us want to grow old disgracefully -- hush, you know what I'm trying to say -- and a cane done up as an umbrella would be great to rent when we're trying to look cute as we strut our way to church or the Bingo parlor.

Riding lawnmowers. These could be rented in suburban and rural areas, where they might possibly beat out the mobility scooters. Riders will just need to make sure they don't pull a George Jones and use them for liquor-store runs. And they wouldn't be able to make any epic riding-lawnmower trips like Paul "Wheels" Woods who, back in the aughts, traveled from Barrow, Alaska, to Mystic, Conn. That would cost too much.

Specialty portable restrooms. Seriously ... those of the mature ilk would give over some real good pay-toilet money to rent the use of fancy portable restroom facilities that boast taller commodes with cushioned seats; quality bathroom tissue in generous dispensers, rather than those that only seem to want to dispense cheap tissue that tears off in single sections; hand rails in each stall; stalls that are all generously sized; and hand dryers that aren't all the way across the bathroom from the sinks.

Midlife-crisis Smart cars. So what if the Smart Co. took those mini-electric and micro urban cars and cut a deal with the makers of Corvettes and Maseratis and Porches and Jaguars and Aston Martins and Lamborghinis -- oh my -- made them Smart Car-size, and made them available on a Lime Scooter-like basis?

'Nuff said.

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hwilliams@arkansasonline.com

Style on 07/21/2019

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