city of Houston banned scooters<\/a> from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. across the city, with a few exceptions, after noticing an increase in accidents since 2021.<\/p>\n“8 p.m. is when they start trickling in and 9, 10, and 11 are your highest volume hours, so by cutting out those three additional hours, you’re essentially taking out 80-90 percent of their business,” said Bret Hightower, lobbyist for Legal Scooter Coalition.<\/p>\n
Hightower says many scooter companies have lost money since the ban started.<\/p>\n
While he’s on board with making the streets of Houston safer, he and others in the industry feel that can still be done if the city makes adjustments to the new law.<\/p>\n
“If the curfew would end at 11 o’clock and had a 30-minute grace period, and everything lights off at 12, you’re going to see a thriving business still standing as it did for many years.”<\/p>\n
From January 2021 to last month, there were 536 EMS calls downtown for scooter incidents, according to the Houston Fire Department. These numbers were shared with city council members this week.<\/p>\n
The data shows that 78 percent of these calls happened from Friday to Sunday during the current curfew hours.<\/p>\n
Recent numbers show that since the ban began on November 19, there have been 5 incidents through December 1. None of these happened during curfew hours.<\/p>\n
“If you close down I-45 at night, you’re also going to see zero accidents because it’s closed. That stat is not really fair at all,” said Jake Cooper, owner of Rent E-Boards Houston.<\/p>\n
“If the problem is, if people are using these recklessly, go downtown, enforce that, start ticketing people, impound scooters, do what needs to happen to stop what was already illegal instead of just putting in new laws in place,” said Cooper.<\/p>\n
Houston city councilmember Joaquin Martinez says he is open to working with businesses to change the curfew times, as long as they also help improve safety measures.<\/p>\n
“My hope is we can move on this pretty quickly, that we would ultimately see responsible vendors with technology that, then we can actually see what does this curfew look like,” said Martinez.<\/p>\n
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