A scooter nightmare for cities might look something like this: Thousands of unused, rickety twists of metal and tire, sprawled across sidewalks. No walking, no wheeling: Just private companies’ private property, littered across public space.

Of course, no American city really looks like that, even though the scooter-share craze has reached well over two dozen major urban places. And many do want scooter-share to work: Scooters might be a tool in the fight against car traffic, emissions, and sedentary lifestyles. But how to get the mobility without the mess?

Well, today, San Francisco-based Skip Scooters rolls out a new feature. The addition, to be honest, doesn’t look like much: a retractable, 28.7-inch, high-strength steel wire, covered in a protective vinyl wrapping. At the end is a latch. Pull the steel wire out of the new, bright blue casing that surrounds the scooter’s stem, loop it around a bike rack, and click it back into the side of the scooter.

Et voila: A purpose-built tool to keep scooters from tipping over on the street and blocking walkers, wheelchair users, and stroller-pushers. It’s a shiny, steel wire olive branch to the cities that ultimately control the shared scooter industry’s fate.

Skip's new 28.7-inch retractable steel wire acts as a scooter lock. The startup hopes it will help its scooters stay upright. Halie Chavez

It makes sense that Skip, of all the startups that have spilled onto city sidewalks this past year, would be the first to build in a bike lock–like mechanism that allows riders to secure its shared scooters to a bike rack. The startup has built its brand on two tenets: First, that unlike those who launch first and ask permission from City Hall later, it will work hand in handlebar with local government officials and community groups. And second, that Skip’s custom-designed scooters will be better than everyone else’s. The company says its scooters were designed for sharing from the get-go, with dual suspension, adjustable handlebars, and headlights, taillights, and brake lights. Skip gets its gearhead-y bent from cofounders Sanjay Dastoor and Matt Tran, who also founded Boosted Boards, the electric skateboard company.

Those two things—the form of the scooter and the way the company works with governments—are tightly related, says Dastoor, who is also Skip's CEO. “With scooters and bikes with locking mechanisms, you see a different response from how scooters have been received in the past,” he says. “A big part of that is the way you talk to the community, but another part is building technologies like locks that are actually mitigating those problems, and not just assuming they'll go away.” As with models, sumo wrestlers, and airplanes, shape is destiny.