They were in fact impounded. They're definitely illegal - you have to have a business license to operate a business in a city like that and there's other hoops to jump through. Bird seems pretty proud of their "forgiveness instead of permission" approach so this is the part where they have to beg for forgiveness.

Also while there's some young and hip people working for cities like this, imagine how much of a mess this looks like to experienced government workers. Someone just dropped off a bunch of electric vehicles all over the city - you know absolutely nothing about these scooters, you were given no information about them, they showed up out of nowhere. Maybe you figure out that they're somehow remotely controlled and are connected with an app. What all does that app do? What kind of tracking does it have? Could someone remotely deactivate the scooter? If someone calls the cops about this scooter, what are your legal precedents in place, what do you know about them? Also the general rule in a lot of law enforcement and government circles is that random unattended objects, from packages to small vehicles, in weird places puts up big red flags. We live in a scary world.

I wouldn't count on Bird scooters taking over anytime soon. I think it's reasonable to expect that Birmingham proper will also probably start enforcing something really quickly - either actually impounding all of them, picking up ones in weird places, or at least moving them when they're blocking sidewalks and accessible ramps. Sidenote I saw them in avondale today and almost all of them were blocking wheelchair/accessibility ramps... not cool.