Tipped-Over Bikes Can Send Help By Themselves Now
The fever of E-scooters has continued as major companies like Bird and Lime have claimed millions of rides in their recent report. However, people have complained about that the unused e-scooters are ruining the landscape of cities. Apparently, dockless e-scooters and bikes create potential threat not only to our urban landscape, but also to the safety of pedestrians and riders.
Lime, one of the largest startup companies for sharing e-scooters and bikes, has added a new technology to their LimeBike to help city transportation department to maintain sideway accessibility, and to locate potholes and bumpy areas at the same time. The new “gyroscope” technology can detect the location, elevation, and orientation of the vehicles, so the company can know exactly when and where the vehicles are tipped over. Besides, the gyroscope data will also include bumps and potholes that are detected during the trip, which help city transportation department to monitor and improve road conditions. All of these actions are made possible through a sensor insides of each vehicle. By building this orientation alert system, Lime makes one step forward in improving street accessibility and collaborating with city agencies.
While this gyroscope technology may fix the chaos of unused bikes and e-scooters, other issues like vandalizing the vehicles and creating safety concern for pedestrians remained unsolved. For the next step, Lime could leverage this hardware inside each vehicle and develop a rating system for its riders to encourage positive behaviors when using the vehicle.
Source:
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/chicagos-south-side-gets-dockless-bike-share/560042/
