A coroner has found that Lime removed and dismantled the e-scooter a 23 year old Auckland man fell from before police were able to inspect it, leaving permanent gaps in the evidence about why he died.
Coroner Alexander Ho released his findings this week into the death of Toben John Hunt, known to family and friends as Toby. Hunt came off a rented Lime scooter on Westhaven Drive, near Auckland’s city centre, about 6.10pm on 16 September 2019. He was not wearing a helmet, suffered head injuries and died at Auckland City Hospital four days later.
Nearly seven years on, the coroner said he could not pin down what actually caused the fall. Roughly three hours after the crash, Lime remotely disabled the scooter, then collected it and took it apart as part of what the company described as its usual post-incident process. By the time investigators might have wanted to examine the machine, it no longer existed as a single piece of evidence.
“In the case of a serious crash, such as this one, it would have been plainly preferable for the scooter to have remained on scene,” the coroner said, as reported by 1News. He said he could not determine “the proximate event in the chain of events which caused Toby to fall off his scooter”, and that “it will never be known whether the missing inquiries might have shed material light on the cause of Toby’s fall”.
What the inquiry was left with was witness evidence. The best of it came from a driver travelling behind Hunt, who described it as though the rider had turned the handlebars too quickly, which may have swung the front wheel around 90 degrees to the direction he was moving. Hunt was doing about 25km/h at the time. The coroner found no direct evidence the scooter had malfunctioned, but said he could not exclude a mechanical problem either, precisely because the machine had gone.
Toxicology results were also part of the findings. Hunt was close to four times over the adult legal driving limit for alcohol, and cannabis was detected as well. The coroner listed alcohol slowing his reaction time as one possible contributing factor, alongside the ease with which the scooter could be oversteered and evidence that Hunt had looked over his shoulder shortly before he fell.
Hunt’s family told the inquiry the company “should have left it at the scene for the police to examine”, and argued that scooters involved in fatal crashes should have to be preserved intact before an operator is allowed to pull them apart.
Lime said the disassembly followed “standard post-incident safety and maintenance protocols” and extended “our deepest condolences to Toben’s family and friends”, according to the New Zealand Herald. The company also said it would support making preservation of a scooter after a serious crash an industry wide standard.
That is the practical outcome here. The coroner referred the question to Auckland Council, which licenses rental scooter operators in the city, and to the New Zealand Transport Agency, for them to consider rules requiring a scooter involved in a fatal crash to be left alone until police have looked at it. It is the sort of gap that only becomes obvious after the fact. A car involved in a fatal crash is not driven away and stripped for parts by its owner the same evening. A rented scooter, which belongs to a company with its own maintenance systems and its own commercial interest in the answer, has until now been treated differently.
The coroner also made two recommendations aimed at riders rather than operators. He said helmets should be mandatory for e-scooter riders, and that people should not ride while intoxicated.
Helmets remain optional. Under the transport agency’s low powered vehicle rules, an e-scooter with a motor no larger than 300 watts and wheels under 355mm is not classed as a motor vehicle, so it needs no registration and no licence. The helmet law in New Zealand was written for bicycles and was never extended to scooters, skateboards or the rest of the micromobility fleet that has arrived since. The advice from officials is that riders should wear one. Nothing obliges them to.
Meanwhile the injury numbers have kept climbing. New ACC claims involving scooters rose 55 percent between 2022 and 2025, and the corporation paid out almost $16 million for scooter injuries in 2025, about 10 percent more than the year before, RNZ reported from ACC figures. Young riders carry most of it. Under 25s accounted for 47 percent of new claims in 2025, up from about 40 percent in earlier years, and claims for 10 to 14 year olds tripled between 2022 and 2025. Most injuries are sprains, bruises and lacerations. Fractures and head injuries are the smaller and far more expensive tail.
Seven years is a long time for a family to wait for an answer, and in this case the answer is that there is no answer. Hunt may have oversteered. The scooter may have had a fault. Both are consistent with what is known, and the one object that could have separated them was taken away and taken apart within hours. Whatever comes of the referral to the council and the transport agency will not change that for the Hunt family. It might change it for the next one.
Should scooter operators be required to leave a machine untouched after a serious crash, and is it time helmets became compulsory for e-scooter riders? Tell us what you think in the comments.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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