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Riders could provide Scooti taxi service

Scooti ride-sharing scooter service

Riders could soon be earning a wage taxiing people around on their bike or scooter like an Uber driver, thanks to the new Scooti service starting in Melbourne in April.

Scooti chief operating officer Brett Balsters says they are recruiting riders who can use their own bikes or buy an electric scooter from one of their suppliers. 

Like Uber, the service is based on an app which customers and riders use for bookings.

The app is still being tested and optimised with plans to go live in April in Melbourne with about 50 riders.

They say Scooti will develop “as quickly as interest gains momentum”, with plans to launch in Sydney within the next 12 months. 

Riders and their bikes or scooters will be tested and approved by Scooti and riders will have to provide their own insurance. However, Scooti has back-up insurance in case the rider’s insurer fails, such as going into liquidation.

Scooti peer-to-peer scooter taxi service
Scooti COO Brett Balsters, CMO Eva Krane and CEO Cameron Nadi

Riders must also provide their own approved helmets and hair nets.

Scooti boss Cameron Nadi says the main advantage of Scooti is getting where you want to go sooner.

“Two wheels has a distinct advantage in busy traffic,” he says.

“It’s more cost-effective than other chauffeur-driven ride sharing options and creates less emissions than most other public or shared transport options available.”

Nadi says Scooti promises benchmark pay rates and rewards, and a commitment to have a female driver available for women who want to ride with a female driver.

“Our checks and balances go beyond the likes of an Uber and involve practical assessments of scooter skill and common sense,” he says.

Peer-to-peer services

UberEATS money scooti
UberEATS app

The Scooti service follows the launch in 2016 of UberEATS in Melbourne.

UberEATS is part of the Uber worldwide taxi service which operates in 58 countries and 300 cities, including the first motorcycle passenger service in Thailand.

Scooti - Thai scooter taxi
Thai scooter taxi

Spokesperson Megan Smith says Uber Eats has been “overwhelmed by the positive response from local residents who’ve truly embraced the app as a new way to get the food they love, delivered to their door at Uber speed”.

However, she could not disclose how many riders or deliveries they do “for competitor reasons”, not how much riders earn.

“Earnings vary depending on the time or day our delivery partners choose to work,” she says.

“UberEATS also offers delivery partners a flexible way to make money on their own schedule.

“Delivery partners can go online when they want, and choose how they want to deliver, with motorbikes being an efficient option.”

UberEATS money scooti
A Parisienne UberEATS cyclist

While these peer-to-peer services are escalating around the world, there are a few hurdles for riders.

They include:

  • Carrying the right size helmet for all passengers;
  • the varying standards of safety gear passengers wear; and 
  • the cost of insurance which is already high for motorcyclists. Imagine how much higher it would be if you are using your bike or scooter as a taxi service!

Uber fatal

Meanwhile, Uber has suspended testing self-driving vehicles in North America after one of their self-driving cars hit and killed a woman crossing a street in Arizona.

It is the latest incident involving autonomous vehicles being tested.

A lane-splitting rider was hit by a GM self-driving car in San Francisco, a Tesla Model S on autopilot crashed into a parked fire engine in Los Angeles and a female motorcycle rider was rear-ended by an automated Tesla S under test in Norway.

Autonomous Tesla hits fire engine cancer scooti
Autonomous Tesla hits fire engine
  1. Fail!
    There is a service called scooter man in London that seems to be working and there was an attempt in Sydney to use a tiny folding scooter that the rider would ride to the location of the client and drive the clients vehicle home for them while folding up the scooter to put in the boot.
    This was very dangerous for the riders as the scooter could barely manage fifty kph down hill with a tail wind ok for London but a fail for Sydney.
    Most scooters that can carry a passenger safely and quickly are fairly large and expensive and having two front wheels wouldn’t hurt either.
    Jumping on any kind of bike is not something to be done as a novice passenger probably wearing totally inappropriate clothing for a ride and a borrowed helmet.
    As a very experienced rider I take great care to ensure any pillion I carry won’t kill us both!
    I have seen novice pillions do the wrong thing and cause a crash even on a bike far less twitchy than a scooter.
    So I say FAIL! And I recommend that no one give this terrible idea any consideration other than something to laugh at.

  2. So the rider has to provide his own bike, or buy one of theirs, buy his own insurance, I assume buy his own petrol, do all the work, take all the risk, while the app developer takes most of the profits. That sounds fair.

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