A special report interview on pedestrian and scooter safety with Attorney Edward Reyes.
Reporter:
All right, have you had a chance to try out scooters yet in Tampa that a new way to get around town is still in the trial phase? Some things are going well, others maybe not so great. We’re going to go in-depth now with one of the board members of the Tampa Bay Mobility Alliance Edward Reyes. Good to have you with us, Edward.
Edward Reyes:
Thank you.
Reporter:
Nice to see you. First of all, we’ve had folks on with the Tampa Bay Mobility Alliance before. But just tell us about what the vision of that is exactly is there for.
Edward Reyes:
Well, the biggest thing is to help reduce human error and traffic violence because there’s so much growth that is happening in our society and there’s a lot of incidents and people are being injured so the biggest thing is to facilitate or to have a society that we have less fatalities and less or no fatalities that’s the idea of the vision zero or reduce human error as much as possible.
Reporter:
And we are unfortunately an area where we haven’t been as pedestrian and bicycle-friendly as we need to be we know every year we see those statistics and that’s why vision zero was formed to protect folks who want to get out and walk and now scooters you add to the mix. Let’s see the city has logged about six hundred thousand trips since the test a program began for scooters and that’s just one piece of transportation, new ways to get around and walking and riding your bike. When you add in scooters have you, you’re an attorney have you have you had folks who have had issues with these scooters have been injured or had problems.
Edward Reyes:
Yes, actually because scooters are so new to our society and they’re popping up everywhere, drivers are not used to having scooters on the road for one. And to think about it they were already lots of accidents are happening before the scooter before the pedestrian boom that’s happening right now because people were still crashing into cars not crashing into people because they’re still running crosswalks, they’re still making left turns without paying attention, they’re still looking down on their phones there’s still a lot of issues. The difference is that now instead of it being a car it’s a person and the damages are more significant. Yes, and we have had a lot of incidents with scooter-related accidents or violence and pedestrians as well.
Reporter:
If you’re on a scooter are you considered a pedestrian, or you consider the motorist?
Edward Reyes:
You’re still considered to be a pedestrian because you do not need a license to have a scooter and you don’t even have that insurance to have a scooter because you can pick one up uber lyft or you know the new ones that are limed and all the new scooters are coming up. You could just pay and ride.
Reporter:
Use your phone and come on I’ve never done it.
Edward Reyes:
It’s pretty fun especially when the battery dies. So the idea is that you don’t have to have insurance but there’s a double edge so that sword as well because not having insurance if you are injured you may not be covered if you know by medical coverage or anything. But the flip note to that is that if you live in a household that has insurance either yourself your own auto insurance or you live in a household that somebody has auto insurance, you may fall into that person’s policy or your own auto insurance policy if you have it. If you do not live in a household has nobody to has insurance and then the person that crashes into you will take on their personal possession for their insurance and you’ll be covered for medical coverages like that.
Reporter:
So, you’re covered through your auto insurance even though you’re considered a pedestrian that’s interesting.
Edward Reyes:
Unless there’s a writer that separates that when you buy your policy but up to now right now, you’re covered through the auto insurance.
Reporter:
Now there are one of the problems that they’ve had that they’re gonna work out through this pilot program or trying to is there are certain areas you’re not supposed to go like the Riverwalk places that are crowded and you don’t want to you know have scooters there and people are unfortunately still going into those areas so that’s something to work out. So, if you get into an accident where you’ve gone somewhere you weren’t supposed to go with the scooter do you have extra liability because of that?
Edward Reyes:
Well, it depends because like let’s say the Riverwalk, for example, there are no cars running through Riverwalk typically people are walking right, so if you’re gonna get hit you’re probably the person that hits the person walking, you’re hitting a pedestrian you know on the scooter so the liability will be personal liability, so they can sue you directly that individual can sue you as a person if they choose to do that it depends on the injuries as well. So it gets that gets a little bit dicey because I haven’t seen so far your auto insurance pick up the tab on scooter incidents because it’s not a covered vehicle under their policy whereas your auto is a cover vehicle policy, so I think that the insurance companies are it’s gonna be a fun game.
Reporter:
Yeah, it’s just a new element that’s you know they got to catch up to how we’re gonna handle these things. I want to just step back from scooters and just take a larger overview look at transportation and mobility as your board does in Tampa. We want to be more pedestrian-friendly, we want more sidewalks, we want less cars on the road we know that’s not happening, but what is the overall game plan to try and cut down on those you know those deaths from pedestrians and cyclists and all the problems.
Edward Reyes:
Well, I think there’s a lot of things that can be implemented and I think vision zero does a great job Tampa mobility does a great job I know myself as an attorney through the firm I do a lot of education on this subject as well, is create some sort of as far as the city goes or the local government make the intersections or the crosswalks more visible, more lights something that can really call your attention and was speaking to somebody just today in fact and the idea also as if they can create and like even your phone when your GPS whatever the case is as you’re approaching a busy intersection an intersection there’s a lot of you because a lot of fortunate knows everything that’s going on because they’ve done a lot of data. So you know the dangerous intersections where there’s the most traffic violence so it would be interesting to see that there’s an app that says slow down there’s an intersection or a crosswalk because most incidents happen at the crosswalks in at the red lights by left turns or people running the lights. Typically, a pedestrian typically they’re not walking across the street in the middle of just the road. They’re not walking across just because you know.
Reporter:
If you’ve lived here long enough we have all seen those lighted crosswalks that you think that drivers would pay attention to and some people just don’t they just go right through them and it’s like oh my gosh you know you you’re doing everything right as the pedestrian and still getting folks to look up from their phones of course or slow down or pay attention
Edward Reyes:
Well, I think the phone idea would be if that could be implemented something like that it would be interesting because if they’re looking at their phone you’re saying you know to look all right it’s not paying attention you know you know there’s a crosswalk or whatever. And I think if they if they started permitting like double speed fines triple-speed fines people started saying wow if I get stopped here for speeding my tickets go up, my ticket goes much higher so then now you have a repercussion so then what happens that god forbid you don’t hit anybody, but you get caught driving in you’re speeding and law enforcement or they send you a ticket or whatever the case is now you say to yourself every time on this intersection I can get a ticket so I slowed down. So I think that that could also help too because there are ways there’s disruption. You have to break bad habits right and we have bad habits. I mean it happens all the time because life happens you got social media you got this you got that everything pops up on your phone and it’s hard not to want to look down
Reporter:
And then just one second is all it takes, so keep working at it. We appreciate having you Edward, thank you so much.
Edward Reyes:
Okay, thank you so much.
(Transcript from the video, transcribed but not reviewed)
