The Responsibility and Risk of Bike-Sharing Industries -A Case Study of the Situation in which Shared Bikes Parked on Public Roads Cause Damage to Pedestrians.

• Main Authors: Han-Hsin LI, 李漢鑫
• Other Authors: Chun-Nan Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/fqkpbg

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 財務金融研究所 === 106 === Under the tendency of sharing economy and the Internet of Things, bike-sharing is like a hundred flowers in bloom all over the place. The trace of shared bikes is everywhere at Taiwan metropolitan areas. Besides satisfying the citizens with short-distanced movement, bike-sharing also provides the function of traveling and exercising at the metropolitan area, letting people roam around the city in a free and easy way, which makes more people go after becoming the knight on a bicycle like a flock of ducks. The business model of bike sharing is distinguished into whether the government is be part of it or not. One type of bike- sharing is with governmental participation, also known as public bicycle, which usually has stationed/fixed rental places, whom we can see in Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung and Changhua. In addition to YouBike(Taipei), which has more than one thousand fixed rental place, there are other different kinds of bike-sharing such as iBike(Taichung), TBike (Tainan), cBike(Kaohsiung, PBike (Pingtung), and so on； The other type of bike- sharing is without governmental participation. Owing to smart technologies, enterprisescreate the anywhere-and-anytime mode of renting and returning throw the cell phones commercial platform and the Internet of Things. The bike-sharing which provides the mode of renting at anywhere and anytime without fixed rental places, is called dockless bike- sharing. Contributed to the dockless type, the convenience and consumers’ use-stickiness of bike-sharing promotes, which makes it to be seen everywhere at metropolitan areas. However, the roads in Taiwan are usually narrow, and most of them aren’t be marked a bike lane off. As a result, bicycles compete against not only pedestrians but also motorcycles and cars, making bicyclists conflict with other users. Therefore, besides delighting in the increasing usage rate of bike-sharing, the government and bicycle industry should teach bicyclists the correct etiquette , put great efforts into publicizing the trafficregulations, and perfect the policy formulation, in order to reduce the car-accident rate, which let it possible for shared bicycles to coexist in peace with pedestrians and car drivers. Otherwise, the regulations of parking shared bicycles in different local governments aren’t all the same. Part of local governments such as Taipei City and New Taipei City prohibit people from parking shared bicycles on motorcycle parking spaces. In areas where people are allowed to do so, there is no appropriate plan of amount. Moreover, our compatriots haven’t built up the basic bicycle etiquette yet in general. As a result, we can still frequently see that the bicycles are parked not on motorcycle parking spaces appropriately and also in an inappropriately way, as be abandoned on roads at will. The situation above particularly happens to dockless bike-sharing. Let us think about the situation that a pedestrian falls down because he/she incautiously kicks a bicycle while walking in a dark orrainy day with unclear sight. When the accident happens, whom the pedestrian is going to lodge a claim with？ Who should take the relevant liabilities for compensation？ Are bike- sharing industries under the obligation to maintain and manage their own shared bikes and take the liability for compensation or not？ However, the bike-sharing industry must take the responsibility. But, will the unsure limitation of liability, causing unpredictable risks,makes the enterprises take too much risks, which holds Green Industry back and obstruct the development of bike-sharing？ Therefore, it is worth for us to think deeply about how to strike a balance. Rather than traffic accidents of bicycles ridden on the roads, this thesis’ study area focused on the situation that shared bikes parked on public roads cause damage to pedestrians, in which whether the bike-sharing industry has to take the liability for compensation. In other words, who should take the liability for compensation for the danger of inappropriately-parked shared bikes causing damage to pedestrians, the bike-sharingindustry or the lessee(bicyclist)？ Can their property bear the liability for compensation tosatisfy the victim？ It matters to the trilateral balance and protection between the bike-sharing industry, bicyclist and pedestrian. If the irregularly parked bicycles belong to the bike-sharing industry’s operating risk, bike-sharing industries reorganize it and work on it. Then, the effect on inside enterprise autonomy shoud works than on outside governmentalban. It may be more helpful to solve this problem. But, does the bike-sharing industry have any technique to manage bicyclists’ behavior of parking randomly？ With an eye on the uncertainty and uncontrollable of bicyclists’ behavior, if the bike-sharing industry takes toomuch liability for compensation and duty of care of bicyclists’ randomly-parking behavior, it is afraid that the enterprises under the extreme company risk can’t afford it. In order notto obstruct the innovation of business model and not to strangle the existence of bike-sharing, is there any method to decrease the risk or control it reasonably？ This is also one of points in the thesis.