Scooter Safety

Challenge

Urban micro-mobility has a genuine safety problem, but the response from the safety sector has largely been to adapt existing cycling protection to scooter use — an approach that ignores how differently people use and carry scooters. The project identified that the primary barrier to adoption is not awareness but friction: equipment that does not fit into the scooter journey.

Process

Field observation of scooter use in urban contexts revealed that carrying, locking, and transitioning between scooter and other transport are the moments when safety equipment is most often abandoned. The design process focused on these transitions as the primary brief — asking how protection could be integrated into the journey rather than added on top of it. Form development ran alongside rapid prototyping of compact storage and single-handed donning.

Outcome

The Oi system is designed to travel with the scooter rather than with the rider, removing the primary compliance barrier identified in the research. It provides meaningful protection across the key impact zones for scooter falls while adding negligible friction to the start and end of a journey.