A Denver police officer was dispatched to Interstate 70 on the morning of Thursday, May 11, after receiving a call about a man and woman on a single Lime scooter riding between traffic lanes on the busy highway in the pouring rain.
Footage of the unfazed odd couple has been making the rounds on social media over the past few days, with most people wondering the same thing: Where the hell did these two need to get to so badly?
There are two people riding a scooter on I-70. This is so scary and I hope they end up okay. pic.twitter.com/e7jlGFtta6
— Katie Eastman (@KatieEastman) May 11, 2023
"We received a call for a scooter on the highway Thursday morning, shortly after 10:30 a.m.," says a Denver Police Department spokesperson. "An officer was dispatched, but the scooter riders had left the highway by the time they arrived."
Cell phone video posted on Instagram by an account named @chaperone_stunts showed the pair traveling west on I-70 toward the Washington Street exit. They were riding their scooter along lane markers between cars.
According to the DPD, if the officer had found them, they would have been "safely directed off the highway" and likely issued a citation for violating Colorado Title 42, which bars low-speed electric vehicles from traveling on state highways.
Comments have poured in on social media offering theories about the I-70 scooter riders.
Instagram/@chaperone_stunts
"A low-speed electric vehicle may be operated only on a roadway that has a speed limit equal to or less than 35 miles per hour," the DPD notes.
"It may be operated to directly cross a roadway that has a speed limit greater than 35 miles per hour at an at-grade crossing to continue traveling along a roadway with a speed limit equal to or less than 35 miles per hour," the statute reads. However, "a low-speed electric vehicle may be operated on a state highway that has a speed limit equal to forty."
Denver Police dispatched an officer to find the scooter riders, but to no avail.
Instagram/@chaperone_stunts
Lime's scooter rules clearly state that only one person is allowed to ride at a time. That, coupled with where the pair decided to take their ride, made for a dangerous combo.
"This is very dangerous and could lead to serious injury or even death," says the police spokesperson.
Earlier this week — on May 7 at around 10 p.m. — two people riding one scooter were struck and seriously injured by a car at the intersection of 18th and Market streets. The area is in a part of LoDo where Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is now making "multimodal travel improvements," including a protected bike lane on Blake Street, according to DOTI officials.
"The department encourages riders to safely operate standup scooters in areas for which they are intended," says the DPD spokesperson. "Thankfully, it appears [the I-70 riders] were able to exit the highway safely, and the department does not intend to try to locate them to cite them after the fact for a low-level traffic infraction."
Then he concludes: "Simply put, please do NOT take a standup scooter on the highway."
