Star Tribune
When rented scooters malfunction and crash, who’s responsible?
Irina Gornovskaya and her boyfriend, Adam Barrett, set out to have some holiday fun, renting electric scooters for a Memorial Day ride across the Stone Arch Bridge and through downtown Minneapolis’ North Loop district.
The couple had taken the same ride several times before. But 10 minutes in, things went drastically wrong.
Gornovskaya’s Spin scooter gave out, the vehicle abruptly stopped and she went tumbling onto the pavement on 1st Avenue N. Gornovskaya broke her right arm, damaged ligaments in her left and sustained deep lacerations and scrapes over the rest of her body.
“You trust the company will have them in proper care,” she said in an interview two weeks after the crash. “You are not thinking about problems of them not being maintained or inspected.”
Facing $28,000 in medical bills and unsure if they will be covered by insurance, Gornovskaya, 40, of Burnsville, has thought a lot about the incident. She wonders who, if anyone, can be held responsible when a rented scooter malfunctions, and if she has any recourse.
Gornovskaya reported her mishap to Spin, which refunded the $12.94 she paid for the ride and offered an apology. But beyond that, the San Francisco-based company absolved itself of responsibility and directed Gornovskaya to the user agreement she signed.
“Unfortunately, Spin is not able to cover the cost of these damages,” part of an email the company sent to Gornovskaya read. “Our riders have agreed to accept responsibility for any damages caused or incurred while operating a Spin scooter. We sincerely apologize for the experience with us and promise to start the hard work of making sure this does not happen again. We’ll investigate this expeditiously and will pull that vehicle from public use immediately.”
Spin did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The company’s rider agreement — like that of most other scooter rental companies — requires users to acknowledge that scooter riding is an “inherently dangerous recreational activity.” The agreement also has users agree to “indemnify, hold harmless, and forever release and discharge” the company and its subsidiaries from any and all injuries, demands, losses or damages.
Some companies, like Lime, carry corporate liability insurance, but experts say responsibility for damages is likely to fall on riders’ shoulders because of the terms and conditions users agree to when they download the app.
The implications of those rider agreements are murky, said Chuck Slane, a partner at TSR Injury Law and president of the Minnesota Association for Justice. When riders sign them, they assume some degree of risk and could be giving up some rights in cases when minor negligence is involved, he said. But you can’t sign away rights in cases where there is gross negligence, he added.
The difference between minor and gross negligence is “super vague,” Slane said. “The court has not ruled on what that means.”
That can make it tough to successfully take legal action, because the agreements generally stand up in court, said Bryant Greening, co-founder of Chicago-based LegalRideshare, which handles cases involving scooter injuries.
“There is a lot of risk for a rider,” Greening said. “They are inherently dangerous. Every time you get on a device, you put your health and safety at risk, and potentially a lack of recourse.”
There are ways to challenge rider agreements, Greening said, but to do so a rider would need to prove the scooter was defective in some way or provide proof the manufacturer was negligent. The scooter in question would need to be identified, pulled from service and inspected immediately, and “time is of the essence,” Greening said.
All that legwork could lead an attorney to shy away from taking a case like Gornovskaya’s, Slane said. It could come down to how badly a rider is injured, the ability to prove negligence and if the attorney could financially justify the case.
“Otherwise, probably not.” he said.
Barrett shared Gornovskaya’s case with Minneapolis City Council Member Michael Rainville, who said the lack of accountability is an issue the city may have to consider when awarding future contracts.
“It is not good policy to have the scooters not be responsible for a malfunction event,” he wrote in an email to Barrett. “I will ask our staff to add that requirement to the license agreement.”
Gornovskaya, a single mother, has been unsuccessful at finding an attorney to take her case. She said she isn’t looking to sue for money, but wants someone to be held accountable.
“You can die on a scooter because they are not maintained,” she said. “You take all the risk.”
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings