united-states theft
Why can’t I take the Uber/Lyft/etc Electric Scooters?
<p><strong>NOTE: This is a hypothetical question I came up with while walking around. I’m not planning on taking scooters.</strong></p>
<p>In many major US cities, i.e. DC, Philly, NYC, companies will place electric scooters out on the sidewalk. These scooters must be “unlocked” with an app on your phone, which cost a rental fee, to be used. The scooters are typically branded with the companies, information, and if you were to pick one up and walk away with it without unlocking them, they start beeping.</p>
<p>In the US, if someone places a couch out on the sidewalk, it’s well known that this couch is up for grabs before the trash truck comes. That is, anyone can come and take the couch for free. What is the difference between me taking this couch and one of the electric scooters?</p>
<p>If I were to take a couch left on the side of the road, and reupholster it, there’s no problem. Can I take an electric scooter, reflash the firmware so I can use it without paying, and spray paint it?</p>

<p>The premise about couches is true in terms of popular beliefs, but false in terms of law. Taking the property of another person without permission, with the intention to keep it, is theft. However, taking it with permission is allowed. W.r.t. a couch, your belief works because you generally have implicit permission.
A sign saying &quot;free&quot; is good evidence, in lieu of a personal interaction with the owner, that you have such permission. There are scenarios where a person is moving a couch into their house, leaves it outside for a break, and some prankster puts a &quot;free&quot; sign on the couch. You nab and leave, 911 is called, you get arrested (more likely there will be an interaction of the type &quot;give him back his couch&quot;) and you defend yourself against a charge of theft on the grounds that you reasonably believed you had permission to take the couch.</p>
<p>At present, a reasonable person would know that a scooter left by the side of the road is not actually &quot;there for the taking&quot;, therefore you know (or should know) that you are committing a crime. Additionally, there are more stringent law regarding theft of vehicles as opposed to theft of couches, which expands the concept of &quot;theft&quot; to include &quot;take in order to just temporarily use&quot;, thus &quot;keeping&quot; is not a requirement of vehicle theft laws. Rentascooter is generally and obviously locked in some way,  which is further evidence that the item was not abandoned (this goes to your state of mind in taking the object), supporting the wrongfulness of this taking.</p>

<h2>The presumption that trash is up for grabs varies by jurisdiction</h2>
<p>Cities may ban it for several reasons.  First, they need to protect the revenue stream of the garbage company - a lot of trash is profitable, and there's a significant operation to picking through trash to get at it. <strong>That especially applies to recyclables</strong> and they aren't necessarily in a separate bin.   Most landfills operate a metallic separator (Magnetic for ferrous, eddy current for non-ferrous) at the very least.  Some towns do &quot;recycling in the same bin&quot; asking that you bag or bundle your recyclables, then at the landfill they have an operation that uses bio-robots to pick out the recyclables.</p>
<p>It's well understood that &quot;pickers&quot; are a serious threat to the financial viability of recycling programs.  Especially in bottle deposit states. The recycler depends on the revenue from the mineral value (or deposit value) of the recyclables. Hey, I used to get $50/ton for paper back in the 90s.  I'm sure it hasn't gone down.</p>
<p>So right out of the chute, a scooter would probably count as a &quot;recyclable&quot; even if someone was honestly putting it to the curb, and probably illegal to take if separate-bin recycling exists.</p>
<p>Other reasons they ban picking are: residents can be uneasy about pickers wandering their neighborhoods.  They are loud at night.  Many of them make a huge mess because they toss on the ground anything they don't want. They may be &quot;casing&quot; the neighborhood for crime, and it's just creepy to have people go through your trash, people perceived as &quot;riff-raff&quot;. Police are very happy for an ordinance criminalizing trash picking.</p>
<h2>Even so, a reasonable person's standard applies</h2>
<p>You plainly know there's a difference between taking an old fluorescent fixture on a pile of obvious trash, vs. taking a 2022 Harley motorcycle parked right next to it.</p>
<p>And the difference is, can you can convince a &quot;reasonable person&quot; (or more precisely, twelve on a jury) that you had honest reason to believe it was bona-fide garbage located there because it was in a bona-fide waste stream?</p>
<p>Many American cities have 2 days a year where normal trash rules are suspended and you can set out almost anything to the curb and the trucks will take it away.  Honestly I have to wonder if any of those short-term-rental scooters disappeared because someone left them next to a pile of special trash?</p>
<p>So the plan of taking a plainly marked rental scooter will fail the &quot;reasonable person&quot; test.</p>
<p>Though, it's been tried, by people who reasonably ought to have better lawyers than us rabble.
<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/24/20696405/dockless-scooters-share-repo-men-repossessor-lawsuit-tow-yard-lime-bird-lyft-uber-razor" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/24/20696405/dockless-scooters-share-repo-men-repossessor-lawsuit-tow-yard-lime-bird-lyft-uber-razor</a></p>
