College Station city council decides to have a future workshop to discuss regulating electric scooters and bicycles

This podcast contains comments from the February 12, 2026 College Station city council meeting.College Station city council members wrapped up Thursday's meeting (February 12) with a decision to hold a future workshop on possible regulations for those who drive electric scooters and bicycles.The idea followed comments from fire chief Richard Mann, who showed a chart that in the last five years, the number of auto-pedestrian collisions...mostly involving the two wheel vehicles...has risen from 20 to 100.The chief believed it will take a combination of actions to reduce the number of collisions.Mann said policy changes by the council could include banning nighttime use of what he described as "micro mobility" vehicles, banning operation when wearing earbuds, require wearing helmets, and restricting operation to college campuses.Mann also suggested increased enforcement, possible safety enhancements such as adding bike lanes, and discovering technology that could improve conditions.The chief showed dashcam video of a CSFD truck driven by a battalion chief who was involved in what the chief described as a "close call" on December 1, 2025 at 6:42 p.m. at Harvey Mitchell and Holleman. The battalion chief, who had the green light, was driving at 21 miles per hour when the driver of the scooter locked up his brakes and fell over before striking the truck.The workshop suggestion came from councilwoman Melissa McIlhaney, who said she "was very intrigued by what (the) chief was saying about how we might could influence the craziness of our different multimodal transportation units by possibly requiring some policy changes with regards to headphones, night riding, helmets. As someone who repeatedly brings this up in our transportation group it's the wild west out there."