On a warm June evening in San Antonio, Texas, Tina Galvan decided to take an e-scooter from one of the new shared schemes for a spin in the Government Hill residential district near downtown San Antonio. By the summer of 2019, e-scooter companies Bird, Lime, and Razor had rolled out systems rentable via smartphone apps, some of which required a brief safety guide before acceptance of their terms and conditions for use. Ms Galvan hit a small pothole and hit the asphalt hard.

‘When I came to my knee was swollen so bad I couldn't walk and (it was) bleeding, my forehead was bleeding, my teeth had gone through my bottom lip and my arm was broken,’ Ms Galvan told a radio reporter via telephone (Flahive, 2019). Galvan sued both Lime and the City of San Antonio for damages, claiming the scooter's design was not capable of safely navigating the pothole, which she could not see because of inadequate lighting and a lack of painted markings. Technologies—the new e-scooter, and the city's street conditions—were inadequate for the task, Galvan claimed.

E-scooter riders, the involved lawyers, and transport planners know that humans and technologies are intertwined factors in any transport problem. Industrial engineers designed the scooters with funding driven by venture capital, in a race to deliver the first, best product. City workers deliver services under political and economic conditions of their local council district, city, and sometimes regional, state, or federal funding. Everyday people traverse the city using complex ensembles of machines, navigation tools, and conversations with others about how to move around.