The scooter wars are actually a century old
In the 1910s, there was a boom in scooter riding–and very familiar complaints about scooter behavior in cities–until cars pushed the devices off the streets.
In 1916, when the English socialite and suffragette Florence Norman went to work at her office in London, she rode a scooter that looked not unlike the modern version made by Lime or Bird. Around the same time, the U.S. Postal Service tested the use of scooters for special delivery. For a little while, scooters grew in popularity. But they didn’t survive the rise of the car.