By Harold Emert
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Electric scooters, called patinetes in Portuguese, are invading and clogging up thirteen Brazilian cities further complicating the life of not only pedestrians but bicycle riders, buses, and motorists.
The misuse of these unregulated vehicles has resulted in calls for immediate formal legislation. The rented scooters are controlled by computers and apps and can be parked anywhere to be recovered by their owners.
The results are the blocking of streets and havoc in a city like Rio de Janeiro.
“I have seen people of all genders, ages and body size flying (around Rio) on these scooters. And I know from the incidence of shoulders, hips, and knees injured in falls or collisions,” observes Brazilian author and popular newspaper columnist Ruy Castro.
A fad which originated in California and has spread throughout Europe and China, the scooters entered the Brazilian market late last year and have spread as fast as other made-in-USA fads like Uber taxis and Starbucks coffee.
Initial tests of the “patinetes” were made in September 2017 in São Paulo by the Brazilian Firm Yellow, which purchased 150 Chinese-made “patinetes” from Xiaomi.
Marcelo Loureiro, President of Yellow, says: “We initially confronted all the difficulties to operate here: rain, thieves and users who leave the scooters in the wrong places. We had ten patinetes stolen in three months and we recovered another 15 which were about to be robbed.”
His firm which invested 63 million U.S. dollars in scooters, has now fused with the Mexican Firm Grin to place even more scooters on São Paulo’s streets.
Bicycle Users are Angered by Increasing fad
The director of the Rio’s bicycle orchestra, Cyclophonica, UFRJ professor of acoustics and oboist Leo Fuks, 56, has recently returned from the World Forum of Bicycles in Quito, Ecuador.
Prof. Fuks echoes bicycle users when he observes: “I think that the patinete is a very inadequate and invasive means of transport. It does not fit in with the streets or sidewalks because it is a threat to old people, children and those with disabilities. These scooters have saturated Rio, there are no laws for them and users park them where they wish regardless of who is in the way.”