From Iceland — Electric Scooter Vandal Comes Forward

Electric Scooter Vandal Comes Forward

Published May 11, 2022

Alice Poggio
Photo by
Joana Fontinha

A cyclist who has been damaging the brakes on electric scooters turned himself in to Hopp’s CEO. Photos of him damaging the scooters were posted on Monday, along with a message from Hopp, asking him to meet to resolve their differences without the involvement of the law. They met and worked out an agreement, Visír reports.

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In a previous article by Visír, they reported The CEO Sæunn Ósk Unnsteindóttir explaining, “We are just advertising for him because we want to meet him. He is clearly very angry with us and I want to know why he is doing this.”

After the pictures were published, the man sent an email to Hopp and arranged a meeting for the following morning.

The man wanted to protest how badly the scooters are often parked, scattered across pedestrian crossings, or bicycle paths, where they often create a danger for other road users, especially cyclists.

“It was never his intention to harm anyone. This was just his way of protesting. He had tried to contact us but failed, so he protested like this,” says Sæunn.

“We had a great chat this morning and we just left the table in peace. Both maybe a little scared, I over having posted this on the internet, and he over having done this. He apologised to us, and I did the same for publishing pictures of him, which was perhaps not entirely fair of me,” Sæunn adds.

The meeting was constructive and both parties reached an understanding. Sæunn Ósk completely agreed with the criticism. Hopp needs to call for more parking spaces outside all public buildings, just like bicycles do, as well as asking its users to be more considerate when parking.

Sæunn Ósk believes that as soon as parking becomes more visible, people will start behaving differently.

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