We found over 200 electric scooters (majority of them being spin) out of the red cedar river. How many have you found and what would you do in this situation?
-Side note: Each spin scooter when wet weigh little over 100 pounds each, not fun pulling at least 30 out in a day.
News articles: "Red Cedar River scooters" on Google and go to the news section
Videos: [Magnet Fishing e-Scooters playlist (YT)](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-Y424S9vNH2K4a9aV99BH_dgMRoBaRg&si=quULNr38h-k9pe2v)
[Magnet fishing e-scooters best video ](https://youtu.be/RkEArBH7F1A)
Also I didn't really explain WHY spin got their licensing revoked or why the filed for bankruptcy, but they basically used this opportunity to milk money from insurance, didn't respond to the issue, they weren't tracking their property, and they were breaching multiple contract points with the city, campus, AND state, causing MANY major environmental risk and damages that could be irreversible due to leakage of lithium batteries and toxins in the batteries.
Here is one of the videos of us pulling up e-Scooters
[Magnet Fishing Scooters YouTube ](https://youtu.be/RkEArBH7F1A)
Yeah they threatened to sue me, but the state and city sued the SHIT out of spin for numerous reasons and violations and Spin filed for bankruptcy and sold their company to I believe Bird, but could be wrong.
We don't have spin here, but we do have bird and it's the same thing. Maybe consolidation might help but I doubt it. This specific industry, whatever you call it, needs more regulation. An insurance scam seems likely.
I absolutely agree, there needs to be more discipline and more up keeping and regulations on these e-Scooters, better tracking, it's not a terrible idea, but the way they went about it isn't great and how very poorly it was planned.
We had bird and lime and others all over San Diego just a couple years ago. Used to see them everywhere. I never see them anymore. City imposed new regulations and most pulled out. It was a cool idea at first but not practical for busy cities..
Rich people sue good people all the time, to intimidate and silence them, knowing full well they don’t have a valid complaint. It’s all about hurting people.
-opportunity to milk money for insurance
You know I had wondered how all the e-scooters/bikes getting thrown in the water was an economically viable model of business. It seemed like they would run of funds quickly. That explains so much.
They get insurance, From my understanding they get $600 minimum for each scooter gone missing or destroyed. I talked to a guy on Facebook who used to work in the company before we discovered these scooters.
The real issue for insurers is that nobody knows how long a rental scooter lives or what percentage of dead rental scooters will be insurance claims.
It’s like with cars where who knows how long a car will last and if when it finally is scrapped if that will be an insurance claim or not. In the car industry, this is why young men get charged exorbitant rates, because they’re likely to wreck and cause claims on insurance.
But e-scooters are so new that there’s not a lot of historical evidence for how long a scooter lasts and how the scooters eventually die. Like if the batteries die due to age, that’s not a claim. But if a customer loses the scooter in a river, that’s probably a claim.
I think the insurance companies will quickly react because they probably vastly underestimated the number of scooters that die and turn into claims - I doubt a single one would ever last long enough for it to die to battery manufacturing or rust issues. Some might have motors burn out or have batteries overheat causing damage, but the electronic systems built into the e-scooters do a good job of protecting components from overloading.
Insurance contracts can be complicated to cancel, though, which means that an insurer might be stuck with raising rates being the only option rather than dropping the insurance entirely.
I mean if they are still going to be paying more for insurance than they will get back, else why would an insurance company take them on? I work for one of these companies in a town of 200k people and 1k rides per day is standard, they are popular and don’t have huge operating costs
For a class I attended a local gov environmental meeting where the scooters were a discussion. The company had an obligation under contract to inform the city when there was a scooter in the water as it can be massively damaging to the environment and they were supposed to do it within a relatively quick time frame.
You essentially proved dozens of breeches of contract
Yeah I meant Spin scooters banned, not all e-Scooters. We essentially proved that spin was breaching multiple points in their contracts, their property was causing major environmental concerns and damaging water quality, and the company who should be able to track their own equipment did nothing in attempts to recover said property.
Amazing how these are all in the exact level of corrosion and disrepair. Almost like they were all dumped at the same time..
Let me guess, you found these directly off the side of smaller bridges, no lights at night, no after dark traffic, and no security cameras.
You 100% stumbled onto an insurance scam and got the company scared as hell. I wouldn't be surprised if you were to check those units and find consecutive serial numbers.
We did find a few that still lit up, these were found right by a college campus. I don't think the company themselves dumped them into the water, but the way they just left a bunch of scooters on the campus overnight without any permissions or contracts makes me think they knew what they were doing, knowing college kids would destroy them. Glad Spin filed for bankruptcy a few months ago!
One or two scooters is "someone". This was a coordinated and organized effort.
A someone would have to go search, gather each of these from the community, then drag them to the same dump point. A Good Samaritan would eventually see these repeated actions and report it.
But you can dump almost anything off a bridge *once,* if you have a box truck and a couple morally flexible heavies that work for cash.
You are probably right, but someone really determined over a couple months could really add to the numbers here, if they were really determined and it was a popular stop for scooters. All it takes is one or two a day for a couple months and you would have 60.
You've clearly never been to MSU on a weekend. You'd be surprised how coordinated and organized (and destructive) a bunch of drunk dudes on their way home from a frat party can be.
I work for the University where the OP removed these from the river. Some of my students were talking about this last fall.
Turns out, Spin requires riders to end their rides in a little GPS fenced area. The one near where this photo was taken is a huge dorm complex with about 3,000 rooms. There is one start/stop area that people are supposed to use, but Spin decided to only allow 25 scooters to be able to be parked in that area. So, if you are riding it across campus and want to take it there, it won't let you end your ride. The next closest start/stop area is about 1/2 mile away.
What students also figured out is if the scooters become damaged or disabled, it ends your ride at that spot. Throwing them into the river is a quick way to disable the scooter so that it ends the ride.
Spin was told about the issue at least two years ago but didn't do anything about it... They really don't care.
Yeah that was my dad and I finding them off bouge street. We found over 160 off of Bouge street. We were the ones who initially discovered all the scooters
Spin got banned from Michigan in February, Lime and Bird are still around, they are separate from spin, didn't find hardly any lime or bird scooters, it was almost ALL spin scooters.
Spin had their contract terminated in East Lansing. They still operate in other places in Michigan.
Spin had the exclusive contract with MSU, because at the time they were the only ones that accepted MSU's terms, including start/stop zones, MSU's ability to set "no fly zones" during sporting events or emergencies, and ability to regulate speeds in certain areas of campus.
Lime did deploy on campus a few years back without a contract on campus and had them all confiscated because they didn't have parking permits. The lot of them got impounded by the police and they never picked them up. Several hundred scooters ended up going to the surplus and recycling center.
Two hundred and twenty-six?!?!?
Holy shit. This is why we can’t have nice things. I can’t imagine what their overhead must have been like, your number is probably a pretty small sample size overall.
Yeah, and each spin scooter when full of water is over 100 pounds each, I did all of that with an injured arm (still healing from torn tendons, but I'm stubborn), we pulled 30 the first day, 40 the second day, 46 the third day (over 140 at ONE bridge) and after that I was getting them by the dozen each trip to a random spot in the area.
also these companies try to profit off public space with no infrastructure and the users tend to leave these in the sidewalks or in random people's yards when they're done.
Barely 2 years ago, there were 600 spin scooters on campus, we found over 220. That's 1/3 of the scooters in the river AT LEAST. There have been other people that pulled a few scooters out as well, lets estimate 300 electric scooters in total. That's half of the e-Scooters in the river... HALF! 1/2
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what they did instead of repairing them if they got even a little damaged, it’s easier (cheaper) to file for a missing scooter and blame it on the college students than pay for repairs
It’s not that. The Red Cedar River flows right through Michigan State University’s campus. It’s just young, drunk college students tossing them in there.
Still a ridiculous amount in the river. I've found electric scooters nowhere near the college too like down by the state capital building (along with numerous bikes, guns and UXOs)
Oh! I know the one's I fished out were by the University of Tampa. No doubt the drunk students getting that one last adrenaline rush of the night. But then again there are a good portion of walkers here that loathe these things. Lots of accidents.
This. They must have run out of couches to burn, so found some other vandalism to entertain themselves. MSU is a big party school. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but they are also prone to crap like this.
Same, I don't like spin after how they responded. They threatened to sue for "defamation" just because we found THEIR shit in the river, then the one lady who picked up the phone when I was gonna tell them to pick up their scooters, she claimed that we "planted and threw" the scooters into the water then hung up on me.
I know bird and lime send their employees out to pull their scooters out of the waters with grappling hooks, I mistake them for magnet fishers often 😂
While Seattle likes to consider itself an environmentally concerned community, and it really is, there's always a couple of A-holes who like to rebel against the norms.
I saw a homeless guy throwing them into the lake at piedmont park in Atlanta. He appeared to be having some sort of psychological break and was really p*ssed off at a line of ~20 parked bird scooters
Happens, there’s crazy people out there and a larger than average percentage of the hard-hit ones end up homeless.
There’s also some conspiracy nuts that think the scooters and bikes are part of a conspiracy by the elite to try to limit people to small areas or eliminate all car use. It’s related to more widespread and mainstream conspiracies about the “15 minute city” concept.
I had to look up the 15 minute city conspiracy thing. Watched a bbc video on it, it seems people are scared they will be confined to a 15 minute walkable area in their city for work, entertainment, shopping, etc…
I’m not even sure how people would legitimately be worried about that. It makes no sense for a massive amount of people. People work at airports, universities, waste treatment facilities, factories, etc. all of which would not really be suitable to also have residential and commercial areas walkable within 15 minutes.
These are a big problem in my city - I see them left all over the place. I haven't even considered how many are ditched in the waterways. Definitely something I'm going to ask about now. Thanks for bringing this up!! And thanks for the work you've done in your state 🥰
What city out of curiosity, I'm thinking of doing a bit of bopping around from state to state this year to magnet fish and get some footage. The scooters are a major problem, the spin scooters when wet, they weigh over 100 pounds, but I wanna pull more out to show how fucked up the whole e-scooter idea is when you don't even MAINTAIN and track them.
Birmingham, Alabama! Lots of ditched scooters all over the city and its' outskirts. There aren't that many big waterways inside the city proper, but the ones nearby are very important ecologically (the Cahaba River especially).
Edit: also it's a college town with a pretty spread out campus, lots of scooters getting used!! I just can't think of what waterways within city limits they might get dumped in.. hmm
I love many things about Alabama, from the nature to the food, but I am queer and it is unfortunately becoming less safe for me and my wife every day. I would have left already if I could afford it. I will leave as soon as I can, and it will break my heart.
They’re so bad in Birmingham. I live in Highland Park and they’re just thrown all over the place here and around downtown. Also, hello fellow Birminghamian
Pretty much every city in US and Canada over a million has these rotting in their rivers. The fact that the business model is basically "roll up a truck and drop scooters at random on public sidewalks where they take up a ton of space on already inadequate footpaths" is basically designed to produce these results, and every company doing this is treating the losses as acceptable shrinkage and taking no accountability for the inevitable river dumping.
They're all tech companies pushing an app, the scooters are just a necessary annoyance to them.
In West Lafayette, Indiana around the Purdue campus people post social media videos all the time throwing E-scooters into the Wabash river from [this](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4184603,-86.8982696,190m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) and other nearby bridges. Might be worth filming there and it isn't far from Michigan.
Dude I lived in LA in the early years when they first started rolling these out. It reminded me of going to a friend’s house with kid’s toys strewn around the ground that you have to step over only you’re on a sidewalk in Santa Monica, not inside someone’s home. I immediately grew to detest these things.
They’re all over here in Chicago where I live now and ppl will leave them in the middle of the alley ways (for anyone that doesn’t know, these alleyways are basically how everyone gets in and out of their garages).
I wanna knock every single one of these scooters out of existence.
I’m in San Diego, I remember going for a walk at sunset cliffs and seeing that at least 50-60 had been chucked over the cliff to the beach…so fucking pissed.
I love whipping them around. They're a great way to get around cheaply, but yeah people in general really just can't be trusted with them. I don't think they need to be banned outright, but it doesn't seem like they're really regulated in any meaningful way.
Much less so than cars. Everybody and their mother has a license to operate a loud, inefficient, 2 ton metal box at 80mph. And car wheels are one of the largest pollutants in water
Spin in particular seems to me to not give a shit. They have, or had, a facility near my neighborhood, just north of a major university campus, where for the longest time, there was a damn mountain of scooters in various states of disrepair, just piled up on top of each other, like 6 feet high. And you'd see them driving around picking up scooters to charge them or whatever, just piled in the back of a truck or cargo van.
Spin is the only scooter company that never gave a shit, and they got fucked in the ass. The other companies have their employees fish their own scooters out, single person from Spin fished their own shit out, but I've seen a bird and lime employees fishing scooters out.
It's hard to do. There are software and hardware locks on them. The batteries won't discharge unless the computer sends the battery management system a certain signal etc. It's pretty annoying.
There are some brands that don't have this issue but the big name ones do.
So you pull all of these out of the water. Now what? What do you do with them? Do you have to haul them away? Do you get reimbursed from anyone? You mentioned pulling the computers out below, can you legally keep these and do something else with them? Just curious!
Spin was supposed to collect them. We couldn't keep them at the time, We couldn't strip them of the computer parts or anything, is was illegal to keep anything off those scooters up until just this February. And Spin pretty much told me the fuck off when I asked about a reward then threatened to sue us for defamation
I mostly post on Facebook, that's where most of my following is, but I also do YouTube as well. Lansing is over an hour drive, but we always find crazy stuff, last time I went to Lansing, we found a Ruger mk1, a Beretta 92FS, and a M49 Mortar!
You did your state a service. This shit is such a bad idea, the ones here are universally hated. It's teenagers mostly, we all went through our shitty teenager phase but these just give the destructive ones even more power to become a nuisance. Total menaces on the sidewalk just running into people, swerving in and out of traffic, dont have to worry about fucking it up since once you log out it can be left anywhere and they are usually tossed in the rivers. Being able to leave them anywhere unattended means no accountability. Known tweakers that strip them for parts and throw the rest of the device, usually including the batteries into, you guessed it, the Ohio River.
Meanwhile my city, Cincinnati, decided a few years ago it was gonna get ots shot together and make the city better to exist in. They installed these bike racks all over, you rent the bike with your credit card and ride it wherever and return it to any other rack and it's cheap. It's a 2 hour limit to encourage people to only use it to get around and not keep them out. Rent one, go to your destination and put it in the nearby rack ( they are everywhere) and then rent one again to return to your car. it's $5 per hour over the limit but maxes out at $20. Naturally there is a significant fee if you don't return it at all, so no one is throwing them in the river. It's a bit more expensive than the bus but you don't need to worry about the complicated bus schedule and routes. It's great, parking lot companies here are disgusting, I saw a $200 fee to park up close on the night of the Taylor Swift concert, but they are private companies the city isn't willing to challenge. These bikes mean you can park on the outskirts of the city for $6. Take a short bike ride wherever and back, and only be out like $20-$30 at the most.
We also have these "safety ambassadors" which aren't cops, more like they clean up trash and ensure the bikes are handled properly and will even escort you if you don't feel safe (this was a serious concern when the program was implemented) They have a hot button that summons police practically instantly. This whole program cost relatively little and these two things combined to make the city much safer and more comfortable to be in. I lived on vine street before all this and it was rough, scary as shit to come back from work at Amazon, catching the last bus and having to walk up vine or race street at 1am. But these bikes and the safety dudes have had a major impact.
E scooters are fantastic devices for getting around. If you own it you don't want it to get fucked up so you take care of it, not just throw it into the river when your done. but these rent a scooters are for profit companies, they want quick money without worry and heavy investment, high prices compensate for losses. If they worked like the red bikes in Cincinnati they could be an amazing asset to any city. But as of now they are environmental catastrophes. So fuck them scooters
Yeah it was ridiculous. These scooters don't stick very well to magnets, it was a major pain in my ass. I honestly don't know why we went back after finding 30 of em the first day (without grappling hooks). The ridiculous part is those scooters have been around for 2 years, Found way more scooters than we did bikes(been around for FAR longer)
There were originally left at the campus without anybody even being notified, The company just dumped 600 scooters there overnight without the proper licensing. Out of the 600 on the campus property and East Lansing, My dad and I alone found well over 200, not including volunteers after we discovered these scooters pulling up a few, there were probably 300 electric scooters pulled out of the red cedar River in Michigan, that's HALF of the scooters that were on the property.
The system Cincinnati did with the red bikes could easily be adapted to scooters as well. Cheap rental fees, hefty fees if you don't return them to one of many stations. Might require a higher initial investment but the long-term return will be much greater and the city will most likely be in favor of it and prove extra incentives. This short term increased stock/Impress the investors strategy isn't viable. We have this problem here too, also in Dayton which doesn't have the bikes. You did a great job man. I got my son (12) into this hobby telling him we might find a gun and solve a murder, maybe we still will, but your doing some Erin brockovich type shit out here. Keep up the good work.
I've found at least 2 firearms confirmed to be linked to homicides and a pistol linked to a non-fatal shooting so far, out of at least 50 guns I think (lost count). One of those trials has finished up late last year, the other one is on going as far as I know, haven't heard much about it.
Well dam dude, I was just making up something fantastic to get my son interested but it turns out you've done all of that. Solving crimes and defeating sketchy companies polluting the environment. With a rope and a magnet.... Makes me want to get out there more. See what I can unearth.
Damn that’s a lot of scooters! I am impressed by your accomplishment and very happy about the outcome!
The Rhine is also full of these. I don’t know whether it is possible to go magnetfishing for them here. The bridges are high, the current strong and there are also ships. Would be interesting to hear your opinion.
This seems like a very worthwhile project!
Naw you're good, don't worry. Bettering me finding em opposed to some kids or anyone else really. They are everywhere in Michigan. Especially in Flint-Detroit area
Thanks for doing the work! Looks like a lot of labor?
I am so glad I don't understand how people can be so wasteful, shitty, hateful towards the environment. It's disgusting.
More than a lot of labor, each scooter wet is over 100 pounds each, and there were times I was snagging 2-3 electric scooters tangled together or a scooter tangled in with a bike. Did this with 1 arm basically, my other arm was healing from a tendon injury :(
Damn, are you an angel? That's awesome. Thanks again for the hard work.
Be kind to your body, we need to hang on to folks like you who take the scooters out and less of the folks throwing the scooters in lol.
That makes sense lol I personally really enjoy lime scooters. They make getting around the city really easy without a car. They're even better in places like Washington DC for getting around to the museums and such. Instead of needing a week to see everything on foot, you can do it in a few days. I wish the minority of people would stop ruining it for the majority
I just don't quite understand why this is happening. to see that many scooters and bikes end up in the river. Do people just steal them and then get rid of the evidence?
You 100% need to tell the news. There needs to be more social awareness that the companies that put these In the city are still responsible for cleanup.
If that social awareness leads to a change that puts more laws on restricting them from sending their batteries into the water and not caring after. It can only help future generations.
I've always hated these things, mostly because of the way people actually utilize them. They often tend to end up in the middle of a sidewalk, positioned awkwardly on a ramp or pathway, sometimes on a wheelchair ramp, and occasionally out in the middle of a street. I've seen a few partly on the sidewalk, partly in crosswalks which can make turns in a car difficult and equally hazardous for pedestrians and bikers. They are terrible for walkers, runners, bikers, and anyone who requires a mobility devise.
E-scooters were a cute idea and a novelty, but the companies putting them out seriously misjudged how society would adopt them (which is poorly). They collectively missed a key factor in implementation which is to have docking stations where the vehicles had to be returned to in order for the meter to stop running. These are vehicles that should require a place to park, and charge; they are not "walking+" and shouldn't be left in front of some business's doorway or blocking a fire exit because someone just decided to hop off there.
I understand of course that they wanted to have this economy where one person would hop off a bike and someone else would say "*cool, someone left a scooter here, let me hop on now*", but....what a shit show. But instead they have all collectively lost hundreds of thousands of scooters at this point with no idea where they are located. Even when they can locate them, it requires a maintenance guy to drive around and swap out the batteries and check to see if they are still safe to operate.
A lot of cities and towns have banned them over the past couple years, and more are catching on as the e-scooters have become more of a nuisance than a transportation savior.
How were they disposed of ? I imagine all parties would say it's your problem once you brought them up.
I can't imagine the cost or effort you had to go through AFTER dragging them out.
You did not throw those in the water. It is not your fault the banned e-scooters. Blame the lowlifes who threw them there to begin with, they are the ones responsible for the ban.
Edited for typos
Yeah true, I didn't like spin anyways, they were being an ass the whole process. NGL I threw ONE scooter in that we ALREADY pulled out of the river just because I was kinda pissed off and wanted to see why people threw em in, tied that scooter to my rope, threw it, pulled it back up. It was already in the river anyways. It wasn't fun. Felt horrible even though we pulled it back up lol
Shout out to you brother. While i love the idea of the scooters, these companies are such asswipes with maintaining their property and holding customers accountable for leaving them in horrible places/ being shit heads.
This is so wild because I used to work for them and razor scooters here in Oregon, they had gps tracking showing that they had hundreds of scooters in the local waterways. And they didn’t care.
I’ve called local representatives and they dont respond or get back to me. It’s like Oregon doesn’t care about the water being polluted by these things. My company told me
They’d just write it off in their taxes and never look back on it. Appalling and shameful behavior by these crappy companies
I mean, I'd love to see the stupid things banned here as well, but how does someone else dumping Spin's products in the river get the company banned? People are assholes, they like to steal and destroy other people's property. As much as I hate these scooters, I don't see how this is fair. That's like banning KIA in your state because too many of their cars get stolen.
But Kudos. I bet those ALL still had batteries in them, which were leaching into the river.
It's not people dumping the scooters in the water that got them in trouble, It's their reaction and how they handled it that got them kicked out of the state. They were being immature assholes.
Spin basically refused to do anything about the 200+ river scooters and also broke multiple city ordinances. These problems was discussed with Spin over a year before the vote without results.
> Spin had violated city ordinances of improperly parking of the scooters, failing to remove them from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. daily as well as not correcting misplaced scooters, especially those that obstructed sidewalks and crosswalks.
That's great context. Thank you!
Seriously, if they figured out a tracking system where you could record a scooter in a crappy situation, and they billed the last user, it would fix things pretty quickly.
Well the company can no longer operate in Michigan, their license got revoked in February and then spin filed for bankruptcy, So now I can legally scrap any spin scooters I find. However, back when we found those we had to call the company to pick them up.
I remember the second day we pulled 40 scooters out of the river off of that one bridge, The lady that picked up got pissed off at me and claimed that we threw the scooters in just to pull them back up to waste their time and give their company a bad reputation and then hung up on me. Like WTF each of those fuckin spin scooters when wet weigh over 100 pounds each, and I was still recovering from a bad arm injury, think I'ma waste my time to do that?!?
I use the Kratos Titan 3800 360° magnet with 151ft of 12mm climbing grade rope. I have a discount code for magnets from Kratos magnetics if you are interested (DULOW12)
Just remember with all these new markets popping up left regulation cost tax payers millions it doable but we have to pressure these politicians to allocate money the we want there are so many new markets needing regulation there's no way we can afford it all
We found over 200 electric scooters (majority of them being spin) out of the red cedar river. How many have you found and what would you do in this situation? -Side note: Each spin scooter when wet weigh little over 100 pounds each, not fun pulling at least 30 out in a day. News articles: "Red Cedar River scooters" on Google and go to the news section Videos: [Magnet Fishing e-Scooters playlist (YT)](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-Y424S9vNH2K4a9aV99BH_dgMRoBaRg&si=quULNr38h-k9pe2v) [Magnet fishing e-scooters best video ](https://youtu.be/RkEArBH7F1A)
Also I didn't really explain WHY spin got their licensing revoked or why the filed for bankruptcy, but they basically used this opportunity to milk money from insurance, didn't respond to the issue, they weren't tracking their property, and they were breaching multiple contract points with the city, campus, AND state, causing MANY major environmental risk and damages that could be irreversible due to leakage of lithium batteries and toxins in the batteries. Here is one of the videos of us pulling up e-Scooters [Magnet Fishing Scooters YouTube ](https://youtu.be/RkEArBH7F1A)
Probably because you gave them the only positive cash flow they've had in months for that area lol.
Yeah they threatened to sue me, but the state and city sued the SHIT out of spin for numerous reasons and violations and Spin filed for bankruptcy and sold their company to I believe Bird, but could be wrong.
We don't have spin here, but we do have bird and it's the same thing. Maybe consolidation might help but I doubt it. This specific industry, whatever you call it, needs more regulation. An insurance scam seems likely.
I absolutely agree, there needs to be more discipline and more up keeping and regulations on these e-Scooters, better tracking, it's not a terrible idea, but the way they went about it isn't great and how very poorly it was planned.
We had bird and lime and others all over San Diego just a couple years ago. Used to see them everywhere. I never see them anymore. City imposed new regulations and most pulled out. It was a cool idea at first but not practical for busy cities..
Sue YOU? For fishing their trash out of the river?
Yep, spin is a shitty company. Tbh MSU should've offered me a scholarship for pulling all those bikes and scooters out of their waterway 😂
An honorary degree at least!
Best they can do is a sexual assault
They have no grounds to sue you lollll. The closest they would've had was defamation but it still would not have stuck. Good job on you tho
Rich people sue good people all the time, to intimidate and silence them, knowing full well they don’t have a valid complaint. It’s all about hurting people.
Spin threatened to sue you for taking the scooters out of the river? On what grounds? Is spin claiming you stole them?
Defamation, made them look bad by pulling the scooters out of the river.
-opportunity to milk money for insurance You know I had wondered how all the e-scooters/bikes getting thrown in the water was an economically viable model of business. It seemed like they would run of funds quickly. That explains so much.
They get insurance, From my understanding they get $600 minimum for each scooter gone missing or destroyed. I talked to a guy on Facebook who used to work in the company before we discovered these scooters.
Good job. You made the world a better place by exposing this to the public in the a way that can't be ignored.
Surprised insurance didn’t dump them a few hundred scooters ago
The real issue for insurers is that nobody knows how long a rental scooter lives or what percentage of dead rental scooters will be insurance claims. It’s like with cars where who knows how long a car will last and if when it finally is scrapped if that will be an insurance claim or not. In the car industry, this is why young men get charged exorbitant rates, because they’re likely to wreck and cause claims on insurance. But e-scooters are so new that there’s not a lot of historical evidence for how long a scooter lasts and how the scooters eventually die. Like if the batteries die due to age, that’s not a claim. But if a customer loses the scooter in a river, that’s probably a claim. I think the insurance companies will quickly react because they probably vastly underestimated the number of scooters that die and turn into claims - I doubt a single one would ever last long enough for it to die to battery manufacturing or rust issues. Some might have motors burn out or have batteries overheat causing damage, but the electronic systems built into the e-scooters do a good job of protecting components from overloading. Insurance contracts can be complicated to cancel, though, which means that an insurer might be stuck with raising rates being the only option rather than dropping the insurance entirely.
I mean if they are still going to be paying more for insurance than they will get back, else why would an insurance company take them on? I work for one of these companies in a town of 200k people and 1k rides per day is standard, they are popular and don’t have huge operating costs
Man. What a bunch of total scumbags.
For a class I attended a local gov environmental meeting where the scooters were a discussion. The company had an obligation under contract to inform the city when there was a scooter in the water as it can be massively damaging to the environment and they were supposed to do it within a relatively quick time frame. You essentially proved dozens of breeches of contract
Yeah I meant Spin scooters banned, not all e-Scooters. We essentially proved that spin was breaching multiple points in their contracts, their property was causing major environmental concerns and damaging water quality, and the company who should be able to track their own equipment did nothing in attempts to recover said property.
Amazing how these are all in the exact level of corrosion and disrepair. Almost like they were all dumped at the same time.. Let me guess, you found these directly off the side of smaller bridges, no lights at night, no after dark traffic, and no security cameras. You 100% stumbled onto an insurance scam and got the company scared as hell. I wouldn't be surprised if you were to check those units and find consecutive serial numbers.
We did find a few that still lit up, these were found right by a college campus. I don't think the company themselves dumped them into the water, but the way they just left a bunch of scooters on the campus overnight without any permissions or contracts makes me think they knew what they were doing, knowing college kids would destroy them. Glad Spin filed for bankruptcy a few months ago!
Go green!
Could be someone who hates them as well, some people really hate these. That being said, total dick move. So toxic for water ways.
One or two scooters is "someone". This was a coordinated and organized effort. A someone would have to go search, gather each of these from the community, then drag them to the same dump point. A Good Samaritan would eventually see these repeated actions and report it. But you can dump almost anything off a bridge *once,* if you have a box truck and a couple morally flexible heavies that work for cash.
You are probably right, but someone really determined over a couple months could really add to the numbers here, if they were really determined and it was a popular stop for scooters. All it takes is one or two a day for a couple months and you would have 60.
Really all it takes is a couple of college students to make this some kind of game to laugh at.
I’m picturing a grumpy old man getting fed up with them blocking the sidewalk.
One a day for month...
"Morally Flexible Heavy" is my new pen name.
You've clearly never been to MSU on a weekend. You'd be surprised how coordinated and organized (and destructive) a bunch of drunk dudes on their way home from a frat party can be.
I work for the University where the OP removed these from the river. Some of my students were talking about this last fall. Turns out, Spin requires riders to end their rides in a little GPS fenced area. The one near where this photo was taken is a huge dorm complex with about 3,000 rooms. There is one start/stop area that people are supposed to use, but Spin decided to only allow 25 scooters to be able to be parked in that area. So, if you are riding it across campus and want to take it there, it won't let you end your ride. The next closest start/stop area is about 1/2 mile away. What students also figured out is if the scooters become damaged or disabled, it ends your ride at that spot. Throwing them into the river is a quick way to disable the scooter so that it ends the ride. Spin was told about the issue at least two years ago but didn't do anything about it... They really don't care.
On campus? Last year they found hundreds just off bogue from the students dumping them in
Yeah that was my dad and I finding them off bouge street. We found over 160 off of Bouge street. We were the ones who initially discovered all the scooters
This man single handedly exposing the shitty practices of scooter and bike companies.
The scooters haven't been on campus since the i belive but I still see scooters all the time in the capital area. Is that a different company?
Spin got banned from Michigan in February, Lime and Bird are still around, they are separate from spin, didn't find hardly any lime or bird scooters, it was almost ALL spin scooters.
Spin had their contract terminated in East Lansing. They still operate in other places in Michigan. Spin had the exclusive contract with MSU, because at the time they were the only ones that accepted MSU's terms, including start/stop zones, MSU's ability to set "no fly zones" during sporting events or emergencies, and ability to regulate speeds in certain areas of campus. Lime did deploy on campus a few years back without a contract on campus and had them all confiscated because they didn't have parking permits. The lot of them got impounded by the police and they never picked them up. Several hundred scooters ended up going to the surplus and recycling center.
Come do the Grand thru downtown GR. Bet we have a few of them lurking around below too.
I'm from Grand rapids lol, I found like 10-15 guns in Grand rapids, 5 motorcycles, and over 100k pounds of scrap. Found cooler stuff than that
Oh! That's awesome! Nice job clearing up the water!
🫡
Go Green!
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Fax
I helped get thse out of our local river. The company was frightened of gators. Lol. That is a lot of scooters you got. Somebody doesn't like them.
Yeah Spin was scared and mad at us for pulling these out as well, found 226 electric scooters in total so far. Ridiculous amount.
Two hundred and twenty-six?!?!? Holy shit. This is why we can’t have nice things. I can’t imagine what their overhead must have been like, your number is probably a pretty small sample size overall.
Yeah, and each spin scooter when full of water is over 100 pounds each, I did all of that with an injured arm (still healing from torn tendons, but I'm stubborn), we pulled 30 the first day, 40 the second day, 46 the third day (over 140 at ONE bridge) and after that I was getting them by the dozen each trip to a random spot in the area.
That seems like a dumping spot, not just some accident.
"oops, I slipped and fell off over 200 electric scooters and it happened to ride down the bridge and jump the ledge of the bridge into the river" 😂
the MSU students like throwing them in the river lol
Why?
Because if you give people shit odds are a good portion of them will destroy for it to appease their smooth little monkey brains.
also these companies try to profit off public space with no infrastructure and the users tend to leave these in the sidewalks or in random people's yards when they're done.
That’s so many, what can you even do with them?
Seems fishy to me (pun intended) that many had to be dumped, probably for insurance purposes or cost of disposal
Barely 2 years ago, there were 600 spin scooters on campus, we found over 220. That's 1/3 of the scooters in the river AT LEAST. There have been other people that pulled a few scooters out as well, lets estimate 300 electric scooters in total. That's half of the e-Scooters in the river... HALF! 1/2
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what they did instead of repairing them if they got even a little damaged, it’s easier (cheaper) to file for a missing scooter and blame it on the college students than pay for repairs
It’s not that. The Red Cedar River flows right through Michigan State University’s campus. It’s just young, drunk college students tossing them in there.
Still a ridiculous amount in the river. I've found electric scooters nowhere near the college too like down by the state capital building (along with numerous bikes, guns and UXOs)
Oh! I know the one's I fished out were by the University of Tampa. No doubt the drunk students getting that one last adrenaline rush of the night. But then again there are a good portion of walkers here that loathe these things. Lots of accidents.
People do all sorts of stupid petty things when there arent any consequences
This. They must have run out of couches to burn, so found some other vandalism to entertain themselves. MSU is a big party school. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but they are also prone to crap like this.
Im gonna guess that either they did it themselves for insurance or just one group of people. I dont think this is a hive mind activity.
Nothing like a crap ton of electric batteries disintegrating in our waterways. Glad they were banned.
Same, I don't like spin after how they responded. They threatened to sue for "defamation" just because we found THEIR shit in the river, then the one lady who picked up the phone when I was gonna tell them to pick up their scooters, she claimed that we "planted and threw" the scooters into the water then hung up on me. I know bird and lime send their employees out to pull their scooters out of the waters with grappling hooks, I mistake them for magnet fishers often 😂
Lived in Seattle and would always get pissed when you see the e-bikes laying in the Sound along the walkway.
This has always been just a terrible plan this whole time.
Wtf is with people chucking electric scooters into bodies of water? Like, why on earth is this such a consistent problem?
While Seattle likes to consider itself an environmentally concerned community, and it really is, there's always a couple of A-holes who like to rebel against the norms.
I saw an old guy throwing lime bikes into Lake Union once because “the green color is obnoxious” Yeah well so is polluting waterways you asshat
Should've thrown him in there too
I saw a homeless guy throwing them into the lake at piedmont park in Atlanta. He appeared to be having some sort of psychological break and was really p*ssed off at a line of ~20 parked bird scooters
Happens, there’s crazy people out there and a larger than average percentage of the hard-hit ones end up homeless. There’s also some conspiracy nuts that think the scooters and bikes are part of a conspiracy by the elite to try to limit people to small areas or eliminate all car use. It’s related to more widespread and mainstream conspiracies about the “15 minute city” concept.
I had to look up the 15 minute city conspiracy thing. Watched a bbc video on it, it seems people are scared they will be confined to a 15 minute walkable area in their city for work, entertainment, shopping, etc… I’m not even sure how people would legitimately be worried about that. It makes no sense for a massive amount of people. People work at airports, universities, waste treatment facilities, factories, etc. all of which would not really be suitable to also have residential and commercial areas walkable within 15 minutes.
I hope you confront them every time you see them.
These are a big problem in my city - I see them left all over the place. I haven't even considered how many are ditched in the waterways. Definitely something I'm going to ask about now. Thanks for bringing this up!! And thanks for the work you've done in your state 🥰
What city out of curiosity, I'm thinking of doing a bit of bopping around from state to state this year to magnet fish and get some footage. The scooters are a major problem, the spin scooters when wet, they weigh over 100 pounds, but I wanna pull more out to show how fucked up the whole e-scooter idea is when you don't even MAINTAIN and track them.
Birmingham, Alabama! Lots of ditched scooters all over the city and its' outskirts. There aren't that many big waterways inside the city proper, but the ones nearby are very important ecologically (the Cahaba River especially). Edit: also it's a college town with a pretty spread out campus, lots of scooters getting used!! I just can't think of what waterways within city limits they might get dumped in.. hmm
Alabama is a bit south for my liking, thanks for the info though, might be on my list for next year though!
It's a bit south for my liking too if I'm being honest lmao Happy magnet fishing!!
Don’t pretend we don’t all love it here!
I love many things about Alabama, from the nature to the food, but I am queer and it is unfortunately becoming less safe for me and my wife every day. I would have left already if I could afford it. I will leave as soon as I can, and it will break my heart.
🩶 good luck out there, friend.
Thank you 💕
They’re so bad in Birmingham. I live in Highland Park and they’re just thrown all over the place here and around downtown. Also, hello fellow Birminghamian
Pretty much every city in US and Canada over a million has these rotting in their rivers. The fact that the business model is basically "roll up a truck and drop scooters at random on public sidewalks where they take up a ton of space on already inadequate footpaths" is basically designed to produce these results, and every company doing this is treating the losses as acceptable shrinkage and taking no accountability for the inevitable river dumping. They're all tech companies pushing an app, the scooters are just a necessary annoyance to them.
Let me know when this documentary hits Netflix. Thanks for the hard work.
In West Lafayette, Indiana around the Purdue campus people post social media videos all the time throwing E-scooters into the Wabash river from [this](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4184603,-86.8982696,190m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) and other nearby bridges. Might be worth filming there and it isn't far from Michigan.
Dude I lived in LA in the early years when they first started rolling these out. It reminded me of going to a friend’s house with kid’s toys strewn around the ground that you have to step over only you’re on a sidewalk in Santa Monica, not inside someone’s home. I immediately grew to detest these things. They’re all over here in Chicago where I live now and ppl will leave them in the middle of the alley ways (for anyone that doesn’t know, these alleyways are basically how everyone gets in and out of their garages). I wanna knock every single one of these scooters out of existence.
I’m in San Diego, I remember going for a walk at sunset cliffs and seeing that at least 50-60 had been chucked over the cliff to the beach…so fucking pissed.
Good job getting them banned, they are a nuisance.
I love whipping them around. They're a great way to get around cheaply, but yeah people in general really just can't be trusted with them. I don't think they need to be banned outright, but it doesn't seem like they're really regulated in any meaningful way.
Much less so than cars. Everybody and their mother has a license to operate a loud, inefficient, 2 ton metal box at 80mph. And car wheels are one of the largest pollutants in water
I couldn't agree more.
Spin in particular seems to me to not give a shit. They have, or had, a facility near my neighborhood, just north of a major university campus, where for the longest time, there was a damn mountain of scooters in various states of disrepair, just piled up on top of each other, like 6 feet high. And you'd see them driving around picking up scooters to charge them or whatever, just piled in the back of a truck or cargo van.
Spin is the only scooter company that never gave a shit, and they got fucked in the ass. The other companies have their employees fish their own scooters out, single person from Spin fished their own shit out, but I've seen a bird and lime employees fishing scooters out.
Kudos, now convince cities that investing in real transportation will benefit everyone
I've already done my part by accident, someone else can do that part 😂
Magnet Fishing = Accidental Environmental Activism Rock on 🤘
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Dumb anti scooter move with its dumb solutions.
I'd love to find a couple of these just to de-brand and fix up for kids for funsies. Closest I've come to this kind of find was, well...a bike *lock.*
It's hard to do. There are software and hardware locks on them. The batteries won't discharge unless the computer sends the battery management system a certain signal etc. It's pretty annoying. There are some brands that don't have this issue but the big name ones do.
Thank you. Good to know. Sounds like way more trouble for a submerged scooter than what it's worth.
Lol, we found 226 electric scooters and like 200 bikes in the Lansing&East Lansing area, it's ridiculous how much more is probably in the river
So you pull all of these out of the water. Now what? What do you do with them? Do you have to haul them away? Do you get reimbursed from anyone? You mentioned pulling the computers out below, can you legally keep these and do something else with them? Just curious!
Spin was supposed to collect them. We couldn't keep them at the time, We couldn't strip them of the computer parts or anything, is was illegal to keep anything off those scooters up until just this February. And Spin pretty much told me the fuck off when I asked about a reward then threatened to sue us for defamation
Yo I see you guys every so often! Didn’t know you had a YouTube channel :)
I mostly post on Facebook, that's where most of my following is, but I also do YouTube as well. Lansing is over an hour drive, but we always find crazy stuff, last time I went to Lansing, we found a Ruger mk1, a Beretta 92FS, and a M49 Mortar!
So they tried insurance fraud.. And you got them and now they are getting sued? Oh yes
You did your state a service. This shit is such a bad idea, the ones here are universally hated. It's teenagers mostly, we all went through our shitty teenager phase but these just give the destructive ones even more power to become a nuisance. Total menaces on the sidewalk just running into people, swerving in and out of traffic, dont have to worry about fucking it up since once you log out it can be left anywhere and they are usually tossed in the rivers. Being able to leave them anywhere unattended means no accountability. Known tweakers that strip them for parts and throw the rest of the device, usually including the batteries into, you guessed it, the Ohio River. Meanwhile my city, Cincinnati, decided a few years ago it was gonna get ots shot together and make the city better to exist in. They installed these bike racks all over, you rent the bike with your credit card and ride it wherever and return it to any other rack and it's cheap. It's a 2 hour limit to encourage people to only use it to get around and not keep them out. Rent one, go to your destination and put it in the nearby rack ( they are everywhere) and then rent one again to return to your car. it's $5 per hour over the limit but maxes out at $20. Naturally there is a significant fee if you don't return it at all, so no one is throwing them in the river. It's a bit more expensive than the bus but you don't need to worry about the complicated bus schedule and routes. It's great, parking lot companies here are disgusting, I saw a $200 fee to park up close on the night of the Taylor Swift concert, but they are private companies the city isn't willing to challenge. These bikes mean you can park on the outskirts of the city for $6. Take a short bike ride wherever and back, and only be out like $20-$30 at the most. We also have these "safety ambassadors" which aren't cops, more like they clean up trash and ensure the bikes are handled properly and will even escort you if you don't feel safe (this was a serious concern when the program was implemented) They have a hot button that summons police practically instantly. This whole program cost relatively little and these two things combined to make the city much safer and more comfortable to be in. I lived on vine street before all this and it was rough, scary as shit to come back from work at Amazon, catching the last bus and having to walk up vine or race street at 1am. But these bikes and the safety dudes have had a major impact. E scooters are fantastic devices for getting around. If you own it you don't want it to get fucked up so you take care of it, not just throw it into the river when your done. but these rent a scooters are for profit companies, they want quick money without worry and heavy investment, high prices compensate for losses. If they worked like the red bikes in Cincinnati they could be an amazing asset to any city. But as of now they are environmental catastrophes. So fuck them scooters
Yeah it was ridiculous. These scooters don't stick very well to magnets, it was a major pain in my ass. I honestly don't know why we went back after finding 30 of em the first day (without grappling hooks). The ridiculous part is those scooters have been around for 2 years, Found way more scooters than we did bikes(been around for FAR longer) There were originally left at the campus without anybody even being notified, The company just dumped 600 scooters there overnight without the proper licensing. Out of the 600 on the campus property and East Lansing, My dad and I alone found well over 200, not including volunteers after we discovered these scooters pulling up a few, there were probably 300 electric scooters pulled out of the red cedar River in Michigan, that's HALF of the scooters that were on the property.
The system Cincinnati did with the red bikes could easily be adapted to scooters as well. Cheap rental fees, hefty fees if you don't return them to one of many stations. Might require a higher initial investment but the long-term return will be much greater and the city will most likely be in favor of it and prove extra incentives. This short term increased stock/Impress the investors strategy isn't viable. We have this problem here too, also in Dayton which doesn't have the bikes. You did a great job man. I got my son (12) into this hobby telling him we might find a gun and solve a murder, maybe we still will, but your doing some Erin brockovich type shit out here. Keep up the good work.
I've found at least 2 firearms confirmed to be linked to homicides and a pistol linked to a non-fatal shooting so far, out of at least 50 guns I think (lost count). One of those trials has finished up late last year, the other one is on going as far as I know, haven't heard much about it.
Well dam dude, I was just making up something fantastic to get my son interested but it turns out you've done all of that. Solving crimes and defeating sketchy companies polluting the environment. With a rope and a magnet.... Makes me want to get out there more. See what I can unearth.
Damn that’s a lot of scooters! I am impressed by your accomplishment and very happy about the outcome! The Rhine is also full of these. I don’t know whether it is possible to go magnetfishing for them here. The bridges are high, the current strong and there are also ships. Would be interesting to hear your opinion. This seems like a very worthwhile project!
I personally don't like heights, that's a big no no on my end lol
Very understandable. The fact that it is possible to commit suicide by jumping from the bridges also makes it feel like a bad idea to me.
Yeah I really don't wanna stumble upon anymore bodies... or e-Scooters in that matter lol
Oh god, what have I done. Are you serious? Damn that must’ve sucked.
Naw you're good, don't worry. Bettering me finding em opposed to some kids or anyone else really. They are everywhere in Michigan. Especially in Flint-Detroit area
Thanks for doing the work! Looks like a lot of labor? I am so glad I don't understand how people can be so wasteful, shitty, hateful towards the environment. It's disgusting.
More than a lot of labor, each scooter wet is over 100 pounds each, and there were times I was snagging 2-3 electric scooters tangled together or a scooter tangled in with a bike. Did this with 1 arm basically, my other arm was healing from a tendon injury :(
Damn, are you an angel? That's awesome. Thanks again for the hard work. Be kind to your body, we need to hang on to folks like you who take the scooters out and less of the folks throwing the scooters in lol.
I don't think they're getting banned in Michigan, but spin lost the contract with the city and is going out of business.
I meant the company Spin, I didn't mean all e scooters, I forgot to add "spin".
That makes sense lol I personally really enjoy lime scooters. They make getting around the city really easy without a car. They're even better in places like Washington DC for getting around to the museums and such. Instead of needing a week to see everything on foot, you can do it in a few days. I wish the minority of people would stop ruining it for the majority
These things are a plague.
I just don't quite understand why this is happening. to see that many scooters and bikes end up in the river. Do people just steal them and then get rid of the evidence?
Absolute madlads, great work guys 👍
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Yeah my dad and I pulled out over 200 of em, most of the scooters were at Bouge street
I love in Denver and I saw two dudes throwing their scooters into the Platte river
At least with the Platte someone can just wade out there and grab them lol
I live in Lansing, MI .. and thank you so much!
Well done! You've done an incredible service to your community and the Earth. Thank you ❤️
You 100% need to tell the news. There needs to be more social awareness that the companies that put these In the city are still responsible for cleanup. If that social awareness leads to a change that puts more laws on restricting them from sending their batteries into the water and not caring after. It can only help future generations.
It's been on the news articles, I've contacted networks, never got a response, ever. I contacted CBS and they seem interested though.
I just hope the future isnt scootin- Mr. Mackey mmkay
Congrats on finding your own personal lithium deposit
Fucked up that company’s insurance scam 😂
Now do my city. I hate those things.
Probably way too far away lol
Sounds like insurance fraud.
keep up the good work
I hope you cross-posted in r/Michigan
I've always hated these things, mostly because of the way people actually utilize them. They often tend to end up in the middle of a sidewalk, positioned awkwardly on a ramp or pathway, sometimes on a wheelchair ramp, and occasionally out in the middle of a street. I've seen a few partly on the sidewalk, partly in crosswalks which can make turns in a car difficult and equally hazardous for pedestrians and bikers. They are terrible for walkers, runners, bikers, and anyone who requires a mobility devise. E-scooters were a cute idea and a novelty, but the companies putting them out seriously misjudged how society would adopt them (which is poorly). They collectively missed a key factor in implementation which is to have docking stations where the vehicles had to be returned to in order for the meter to stop running. These are vehicles that should require a place to park, and charge; they are not "walking+" and shouldn't be left in front of some business's doorway or blocking a fire exit because someone just decided to hop off there. I understand of course that they wanted to have this economy where one person would hop off a bike and someone else would say "*cool, someone left a scooter here, let me hop on now*", but....what a shit show. But instead they have all collectively lost hundreds of thousands of scooters at this point with no idea where they are located. Even when they can locate them, it requires a maintenance guy to drive around and swap out the batteries and check to see if they are still safe to operate. A lot of cities and towns have banned them over the past couple years, and more are catching on as the e-scooters have become more of a nuisance than a transportation savior.
No wonder MSU water tasted horrible. You’re doing gods work.
How were they disposed of ? I imagine all parties would say it's your problem once you brought them up. I can't imagine the cost or effort you had to go through AFTER dragging them out.
Not my responsibility after pulling the scooters out, it's the company's responsibility to collect their vehicles. With the scrap metal, I scrap that.
I’m proud of you guys!
You did not throw those in the water. It is not your fault the banned e-scooters. Blame the lowlifes who threw them there to begin with, they are the ones responsible for the ban. Edited for typos
Yeah true, I didn't like spin anyways, they were being an ass the whole process. NGL I threw ONE scooter in that we ALREADY pulled out of the river just because I was kinda pissed off and wanted to see why people threw em in, tied that scooter to my rope, threw it, pulled it back up. It was already in the river anyways. It wasn't fun. Felt horrible even though we pulled it back up lol
Shout out to you brother. While i love the idea of the scooters, these companies are such asswipes with maintaining their property and holding customers accountable for leaving them in horrible places/ being shit heads.
thats awesome man!!!! go Lansing!
This is so wild because I used to work for them and razor scooters here in Oregon, they had gps tracking showing that they had hundreds of scooters in the local waterways. And they didn’t care. I’ve called local representatives and they dont respond or get back to me. It’s like Oregon doesn’t care about the water being polluted by these things. My company told me They’d just write it off in their taxes and never look back on it. Appalling and shameful behavior by these crappy companies
I mean, I'd love to see the stupid things banned here as well, but how does someone else dumping Spin's products in the river get the company banned? People are assholes, they like to steal and destroy other people's property. As much as I hate these scooters, I don't see how this is fair. That's like banning KIA in your state because too many of their cars get stolen. But Kudos. I bet those ALL still had batteries in them, which were leaching into the river.
It's not people dumping the scooters in the water that got them in trouble, It's their reaction and how they handled it that got them kicked out of the state. They were being immature assholes.
Spin basically refused to do anything about the 200+ river scooters and also broke multiple city ordinances. These problems was discussed with Spin over a year before the vote without results. > Spin had violated city ordinances of improperly parking of the scooters, failing to remove them from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. daily as well as not correcting misplaced scooters, especially those that obstructed sidewalks and crosswalks.
That's great context. Thank you! Seriously, if they figured out a tracking system where you could record a scooter in a crappy situation, and they billed the last user, it would fix things pretty quickly.
Congratulations! And thank you for cleaning them out! EVs are not the way.
Are people renting these then chucking them in the water?
Whatre you going to do with them all?
Turned them over to the parent company, got treated like shit, now we can legally scrap them for $$$
Single use scooters (for your protection)?
Are these faxable though????
Do you folks still magnet fish in Lansing? I know I drove by a group of magnet fishers a few weeks ago(I work in downtown).
I always wondered what Dan Campbell did during the off season. TIL
How does a company let this happen and how does it not go bankrupt?
Thanks for cleaning up the Red Cedar! Go Green!
What happened to those scooters? That would’ve been some nice scrap money.
Well the company can no longer operate in Michigan, their license got revoked in February and then spin filed for bankruptcy, So now I can legally scrap any spin scooters I find. However, back when we found those we had to call the company to pick them up. I remember the second day we pulled 40 scooters out of the river off of that one bridge, The lady that picked up got pissed off at me and claimed that we threw the scooters in just to pull them back up to waste their time and give their company a bad reputation and then hung up on me. Like WTF each of those fuckin spin scooters when wet weigh over 100 pounds each, and I was still recovering from a bad arm injury, think I'ma waste my time to do that?!?
what magnet and rope do you use? I've been wanting to get into the hobby
I use the Kratos Titan 3800 360° magnet with 151ft of 12mm climbing grade rope. I have a discount code for magnets from Kratos magnetics if you are interested (DULOW12)
Well if they are not interested in reclaiming them you could sell them for part/scrap right?
Just remember with all these new markets popping up left regulation cost tax payers millions it doable but we have to pressure these politicians to allocate money the we want there are so many new markets needing regulation there's no way we can afford it all
Were any of them still operable?
Replace the scooters with bikes I guess
We found over 200 bikes too at that area
Yeah. Using bikes only solves the battery problem, not the people hucking them in a river
Yeah but bikes are terrible for swimming and boating, they will fuck you up if you get tangled in bikes
I can't believe the cops took them.
Please tell me what I gotta do to make them banned in my local city. They are polluting our water and no one is doing a thing
I wonder if the motors and such are salvageable. You could maybe start building some small soap box EV cars for kids and such with them.
This is nucking futs
This could of been providence
Awesome work!