The E-Scooter Craze

Hello!

We are a company on the southern edge of Portland, Oregon, located in the city of West Linn, called Green Light Triggers.  And we've put together this presentation to assist in the proliferation of this new e-scooter movement we're seeing in cities across America, and the world, by solving a practical problem all e-scooter operators experience, regularly.

There are some 1,350 e-scooters being tested in San Francisco, right now, by e-scooter producers, Scoot and Skip – with some 65 other cities, across America, also being inundated with the new e-scooter craze.  And with the massive recent venture capital funding of e-scooter companies, Lime and Bird, as well, we can expect e-scooters and their riders to be significant traffic participants in American cities, for years to come.

While the statistics are just in their infancy for e-scooters as they pertain to their effects on traffic and the various issues created and solved by their new presence, in one aspect, we can learn a lot about one particular issue from their bicycle riding, counterparts. 

Both operators, biker riders and e-scooter riders, share a common practical problem at traffic lights.  And that is, neither vehicle possesses the structural mass necessary to trigger the inductive loop embedded in the pavement at traffic light intersections.  For operators, it’s a maddening problem that often ends up being solved with an ill-advised user-fix that could include momentarily leaving the bike or scooter in the street to push a pedestrian crossing button on the sidewalk, to initiate a green light sequence, before returning to the scooter in the street.  And then there is the even more dangerous practice of simply running the red light – illegally, in many cases, and dangerously in all cases.

As it pertains to bike riders, it’s been reported that 40% of bicyclists have run a red light while riding and a quarter of those did so because they were unable to change a red light to a green one at traffic lights.  Other studies put the number significantly higher.  In addition, statistics show that nearly 50% of deaths in bike/car crashes were the cyclist’s fault.  We can expect e-scooter riders to exhibit similar behaviors at intersections, particularly in the early morning and later in the day when they are stuck, alone, at intersections with no bigger vehicles present to trigger the inductive loops in the pavement that turn these red lights into green ones, for them.  They’re literally facing the same problem as bicycle riders.  Even more troubling, however, is that in 2019, most bike riders are wearing helmets.  Most e-scooter riders, particularly those who are just quickly renting one for a short trip, don’t bother.

Well, our company, Green Light Triggers, can provide relief for this particular issue.

Green Light Triggers is the sole owner of two patents* whose intellectual property, we believe, will significantly increase the functionality of your e-scooters, in this way, by “enlarging” the presence of your e-scooters at these intersections and triggering green lights.

To recap some of the above, embedded in nearly all road surfaces at traffic lights are what are referred to as “vehicle detection loops” or “inductive-loop traffic detectors.”  As you may know, these are the somewhat crude systems which, basically, detect a vehicle when its insulated, electrically conducted “loop” is disrupted any time a large metal mass – near or over it – changes its magnetic field.  When this occurs, a signal is sent to the traffic light that a vehicle is present and needs to pass.  The green light sequence, then, is triggered.  Small vehicles, however, lack the mass to accomplish this sequence, leaving bike riders and scooter operators stuck at red lights in perpetuity. 

Our Green Light Trigger GLT 2.0 compensates for the lack of vehicle mass by employing two powerful neodymium magnets attached to a small, custom-designed, low-profile chassis.  The device efficiently, and cost-effectively, creates eddy currents in the embedded inductive loop resulting in a green light sequence.  The GLT 2.0 creates the same presence that a full size car or truck would have at any traffic light, putting bike riders and e-scooters on the same playing field.  Problem solved.

We would be happy to send you samples of the simple, but effective GLT 2.0s for you to test and look forward to speaking with you about making this technology a part of your business plan.

Thank you!

Matt Troy

Green Light Triggers, LLC

*Patents: 7,330,132 B1 and 7,026,955 B2