Illustration: Lu Ting/GT

Where else in the world but Shanghai are motor scooters allowed on sidewalks? I've done my due diligence and it seems that only in our city are motorized vehicles tolerated on sidewalks.

Not even in Mumbai, Bangkok or Hanoi, which are some of the world's most scooter-congested cities, are drivers let on sidewalks. And yet Shanghai, for all its modernity, traffic laws and surveillance, does nothing about the swarms of scooters taking over its sidewalks.

Shanghai sidewalks have become downright dangerous, with express delivery couriers on e-bikes plowing their way through pedestrians just to make their drops on time. They honk at us to jump out of their way - as if pedestrians had anywhere else to walk - or sometimes they will try to maneuver around you, clipping your elbow or toes.

But the traffic police here do very little. Why? Because even though motorized vehicles legally are not allowed on sidewalks, the phenomenon of scooters taking over sidewalks is so new and unique to Shanghai that it has not yet created enough outrage among local residents to prompt officials to draft new policies strengthening and enforcing the old laws.

In the past year, Shanghai experienced an unprecedented surge in scooters, a result of China's booming express delivery business. Overnight, thousands of delivery boys were handed the keys to fleets of scooters and unleashed. In order to avoid traffic police, red lights and vehicular congestion, these delivery boys took over the sidewalks as their own private bike lanes.

Just stroll down any downtown sidewalk and count how many uniformed delivery boys on e-bikes or motorized scooters zip past you in a matter of minutes. These are not experienced, highly skilled drivers - they are teenage boys or middle-aged uncles straight out of the countryside with no urban driving training, which makes them even more deadly than any car.

A few weeks ago, a young scooter courier working for food delivery service Ele.me struck and killed a man. Not any ordinary citizen, but Li Mouqiu, who co-founded the emergency departments at Shanghai's two major hospitals, Ruijin and Huashan. It's very sad that such a brilliant member of society lost his life just so some kid on a scooter could avoid a small fine for delivering some office worker's lunch box a few minutes late.

According to an August report by thepaper.cn, Li's family felt that Ele.me and its parent company, Alibaba were indifferent about the fatality, perhaps due to the sheer frequency of accidents caused by their delivery boys. They get their insurance company to throw some compensation money at the problem and then continue on as usual. The company finally apologized to the family.

In Shanghai, delivery drivers were responsible for a crash every 2.5 days in 2017, according to Shanghai's traffic management authority. Nine people were killed and 134 injured in 117 road accidents involving mail and food deliveries in 2017 in the city, according to Laodong Daily. Based on the report, over 40 accidents were caused by couriers from Ele.me, followed by Meituan Waimai, whose drivers were involved in 29 accidents.

China is now the world's biggest food delivery market. By the end of 2017, over 1 million scooter drivers delivered 27 million orders every day for Ele.me, Baidu Waimai and Meituan Waimai, the three biggest online food delivery platforms, according to media reports.

Disturbingly, private scooter owners also feel that they too should use sidewalks instead of the streets in order to avoid traffic laws. A 2016 Global Times article titled "Scoot Over" about expats in Shanghai who have hopped on the moped trend. The report quotes a scooter-driving Frenchman here who had the audacity to say "many pedestrians pay no attention to [scooter] drivers and seem to suppose all drivers would give way to them."

That is exactly the selfish, dangerous mentality of Shanghai scooter drivers that needs to be reversed. But to do so, the municipal government must strengthen the law that bans all vehicles from sidewalks. And then dispatch traffic police together with volunteers to busy intersections to actually enforce those regulations. Not just with warnings or small fines, but full confiscation of their scooters. It's time for Shanghai pedestrians to take back their sidewalks from scooters!

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.