The scooter rider walked away fine. The car? Not so much. And the driver is left wondering what exactly they were supposed to do differently.

This is the state of micro-mobility in San Francisco: a lawless free-for-all where scooter riders treat bike lanes as their personal autobahn, directional arrows be damned. No helmet, no regard for traffic flow, no consequences.

Let's be clear about what happened here. The bike lane on 5th Street runs in one direction. This rider was going the opposite way, essentially playing chicken with anyone who dared use the road as intended. When you're a car making a legal turn and checking for oncoming bike lane traffic from the correct direction, a wrong-way scooter is practically invisible until it's decorating your quarter panel.

As one local put it, the stretch of 5th through SoMa is already "more of a dead zone with drug zombies than dangerous for people walking around" — and now we can add kamikaze scooter pilots to the ambiance.

The bigger question is one of accountability. San Francisco rolled out the red carpet for scooter companies, gave them permits, and designated lanes for micro-mobility. What the city didn't do is establish any meaningful enforcement framework for riders who treat traffic laws as suggestions. Wrong-way riding, no helmets, blowing through red lights — it's all happening daily, and SFPD has approximately zero interest in doing anything about it.

This isn't an argument against scooters or bike infrastructure. It's an argument for basic rules of the road applying to everyone who uses them. If you're in a bike lane, go the right direction. Wear a helmet. Don't make a car driver's insurance premium go up because you couldn't be bothered to ride one extra block.

The city loves to talk about Vision Zero — the goal of eliminating traffic deaths. Maybe start by enforcing the traffic laws we already have.