Virginia Tech rolls out electric scooters for pilot research

[00:00:02] >> There's a new way to get around campus. At least for the next year. "And to be able to do it as a research project with a limited time gives us that really empirical data that we'll need to say it will either work here or with data will say it won't work here. [00:00:16] And we'll be able to use that to justify how we move forward." The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, in partnership with Ford-owned, Spin is rolling out 300 electric scooters as part of a pilot program. "We really want to study and understand what the magnitude is and then understand also what countermeasures we can apply to make the whole program work a little bit better here on campus." They'll look at how people ride and potential safety issues. [00:00:41] Equipped with forward-facing cameras and a few fixed cameras across campus, Virginia Tech researchers can essentially go along for the ride and analyze rider behavior and e-scooter interactions. "So the when maybe a conflict occurs or if they, if we detect a crash or something like that, we can look up stream on that video to understand you know, what were the causes of that particular event. [00:01:05] So we really want to understand you know, is it something about the scooter design? Is there something about the infrastructure or was it poor riding behavior so that we can go back out and address the community and try to solve some of those problems." E-scooters will only be operable on campus, a living- learning lab, as researchers gai