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After 3 Deaths, Revel Resumes N.Y.C. Moped Service With Stricter Rules

The shared moped company is returning to New York City, its biggest market, and will now be quizzing riders and requiring helmet selfies.

Revel has 360,000 registered users in New York City. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Immediate suspension for riding in the wrong direction down a one-way street. A 21-question test on which a rider must achieve a perfect score, twice. Photographic evidence of wearing a helmet.

These are the new rules that will govern who can ride Revel mopeds in New York City, after two rider deaths in July prompted the company to temporarily suspend service. A third rider, who was injured in July before the suspension, died in August.

On Thursday morning, Revel, a shareable electric moped company, will return to New York City, its biggest market. Over the next few weeks, the company will return 3,000 mopeds to city streets with a renewed, regulator-friendly emphasis on safety.

“There’s no more excuses anymore, like, ‘Oh, you mean that you have to stop at the stoplight?’ Yes, you do,” said Frank Reig, 34, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. “And if you don’t, we’re going to have a pretty strict policy of taking you off the service.”

After negotiations with city officials, Revel has agreed to continue to suspend service from midnight to 5 a.m. for at least 60 days.

When riders open the app on Thursday morning, they will be greeted with a mandatory, 21-question test that includes queries like “Who can I share my account with?” (correct answer: nobody) and “How will your Revel membership be affected if you drive a Revel without wearing a helmet?” (answer: A seven-day suspension upon first offense).

Riders will also have to watch a three-minute training video featuring a “lesson specialist” named Brandon, who quickly demonstrates how to use turn signals, honk the horn, accelerate, brake and access the free helmets in the box behind the moped seat.

Because Revel mopeds do not exceed 30 miles per hour, the state does not require users to have a motorcycle license. But operation of the mopeds is not always immediately intuitive to those more familiar with cars and bikes, and 17 percent of Revel crashes in 2020 occurred on the user’s first ride, according to New York City statistics. The crash rate for all riders rose by 59 percent in the overnight hours.

Riders were not wearing helmets in three of the five most serious Revel crashes since May, including two of the July incidents that led to fatalities, according to the city. The authorities say all three people who died appeared to have lost control of the moped.

In lawsuits, plaintiffs have alleged other issues with Revel, including a lack of adequate instruction and maintenance problems.

Nevertheless, City Hall’s focus on moped safety has rankled safe streets advocates, who argue that the city should expend its energy reining in the most deadly vehicles of all — cars.

More than 200 New Yorkers die every year on city streets. Very often they are pedestrians.

“This temporary ban on Revel, I think it reveals that elephant in the room and the blind spot that we have, that is the carnage of multi-ton cars and trucks,” said Marco Conner DiAquoi, the deputy director of Transportation Alternatives.

Revel uses lithium ion-powered electric mopeds made by Niu, a Chinese manufacturer. Its users average trips of four miles in length.

Mr. Conner DiAquoi argues that the mopeds can replace single-occupancy vehicles, which “not only pose a far greater danger but also pollute much, much, much more and also contribute to congestion.”

Mr. Reig, a Staten Island native, founded Revel in 2018 with 68 mopeds in Brooklyn. He has since raised $38 million in funding, much of it from venture capital firms. Mr. Reig, who now lives in Brooklyn, prides himself on refusing to structure his company using the gig-economy model favored by other micromobility firms. Those companies often rely on poorly paid freelancers with few worker protections.

Like the market for plexiglass shields, shared mopeds have proven to be one of the pandemic economy’s few growth industries. After New York City locked down, many people were reluctant to use mass transportation. Revel’s growth in New York City skyrocketed, adding about 200,000 new users between May and July. Today, the company has 360,000 users registered in New York City. That’s 4 percent of the city’s population.

As part of the relaunch, users will have to snap a photo of themselves in a helmet before their ride. Users will not have access to old photos from their photo libraries. Within 15 minutes, someone at Revel will manually review the photo. Any user without a helmet will be suspended for seven days. If it happens a second time, the user will be permanently suspended.

“If you think it’s funny to take a photo without a helmet or take a photo of your foot, at first you’ll be temporarily suspended for seven days, and then after that, you’re gone forever,” Mr. Reig said. “So we give you one shot to learn, to realize, like, we’re not joking.”

The company will also use GPS to automatically penalize riders it detects driving into any of 1,700 parks and 4,700 one-way streets.

Revel’s suspension of services came as Mayor Bill de Blasio was beginning to express concern about its safety record. City officials say these new safety guidelines were born from subsequent discussions.

“New Yorkers deserve more mobility options, and we’ve focused on welcoming a safer, more accountable service to city streets,” said Mitch Schwartz, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio. “But dangerous operations will not be tolerated; we’re watching closely for reckless practices, and we won’t hesitate to suspend shared moped services the moment we see them. We’ve worked hard to make our streets safe, and we won’t turn back now.”

Dana Rubinstein is a reporter on the Metro Desk covering New York City politics. Before joining The Times in 2020, she spent nine years at the publication now known as Politico New York. More about Dana Rubinstein

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