Scooter Madness (opens in new tab)

Imagine being gaslighted by the auto industry so hard that you think scooters are the problem here, not the car that actually hit and killed someone.

All of the problems that are discussed in this article are artifacts of a culture and cities designed around cars, period.

I'm just going to take a moment to remark how impressive it is that automakers have achieved this, that the roads are owned by cars and collisions are framed to be the fault of whoever was not in the car that shouldn't be on the road. Cars were invented first, and then Jaywalking (as a crime) was invented second.

In theory, you should evaluate these programs (and other programs like helmet laws) against the risk posed by cars, but unfortunately, when people take bicycles or scooters instead of cars, it frees up space on the road for more cars.

I don't have a particular angle here, I wish we could redesign our cities to accommodate better modes of transportation but that's expensive and there's little political will for it.

I've been walking to/from work for 23 years, and I've never felt less safe on the sidewalk. I abhor these scooters because of how the users of them disregard the safety of pedestrians.

The benefits of scooters are many: a single lane can accommodate many more scooters than cars. less emissions. faster than public for 1-3 miles. It's worth accommodating scooters.

A much more sane response would be to acknowledge the personal responsibility of a single individual who chose to take risks, and suffered the consequences.

Personal e-vehicles are one of the rays of hope in the fight against climate change - getting people out of cars, reducing congestion / load on transit. It is the most shortsighted thing to try and ban them.

1. Solid tires are awful. Harsh ride, unsafe/twitchy as hell on even slightly rough roads, and they don't inspire confidence for handling.

2. Motors that need to be kick-started in order to have enough torque to work are incredibly frustrating to use and don't have enough acceleration to get out of trouble.

Is there no question? Maybe we need to build fewer car dependent neighborhoods. Maybe the revolution is called "walking".

The article starts from a position that we have giant hunks of metal going at high speeds and anything that stands in their path must be banned or be destroyed. But car to pedestrian deaths happen with or without scooters. So why is there no talk of getting rid of the cars? Or at least creating a culture where drivers are more careful.

Scooters are very progressive for cities. I'm excited for anything that is quiet, efficient, and possibly takes cars off the road. Their popularity speaks for itself, but the nimbyism around them really is insufferable. People want to ban anything new that they don't themselves benefit from (gasp).

It's really gross that people think that they and their preferred mode of transport own the place. We need to learn to co-exist and be flexible about our shared spaces while the cities evolve (at a slower pace) to support us and technology better. Just be as respectful as possible and don't try to scare the bejeezus out of the grannies in the meantime.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-biz-scooter-...

> Less than 1 percent of the injured riders were wearing helmets.

I'm not sure why this statistic was included. All it could demonstrate is "people more likely to wear helmets are less likely to be injured". IE: cautious people are cautious.

This article reads like FUD. Along with scooters, people are currently free to go bungee jumping, skydiving, rock climbing, skin diving, and all other manner of activity which carries a higher-than-walking-around-the-block chance of injury. I don't want to live in a nerf-like society, where our available activities are dictated to us by...anyone.

There's a lot of victim blaming going on: we have giant weapons rolling around in broad daylight and when someone is killed by one we say nothing about the lumbering giants we allow to occupy so much of our space, not to mention time, money, and what little remains of the environment?

And why do people think scooters are street litter when cars aren't? Cars are left everywhere.

This is just classic luddism. "Roads were only for cars when I was young and that shall not change!"

However, just like with cars, banning scooters altogether is probably not going to be a widespread outcome. The reason scooters are so popular is because they actually do solve a crucial missing link for many cities, especially southern cities which often have terrible transit options and patchwork sidewalk and bike paths. Then you factor in the crazy summer heat and humidity, and it's no wonder that people are into the idea of a quick, breezy, ride that can navigate on either roads or sidewalks.

Here in Raleigh (which is a fraction of the size of Nashville to be fair ), there is a major problem of pedestrian unfriendliness the second you leave the downtown core or college campus area. The sidewalks are spread out thinly, often only existing along major arterial roads which are hard to cross, and then often only one sidewalk on either side. The back roads which would be safer to walk on in real cities normally (due to having less traffic), typically lack sidewalks at all. So you end up with your options being big empty, sidewalks with no shade or benches alongside cars going 50mph (on a road that doesn't usually have actual houses on it) or tighter roads with no sidewalk at all where people actually live (no benches, but more shade). It's a crappy time for a pedestrian either way and it's no surprise that most people don't want to make use of either option. However, I've found that on a scooter it's actually not terrible. The big empty sidewalks aren't so miserable because you get a breeze, and on the back-roads your scooter keeps up with cars better and has a light on it for visibility.

The issues with parking in bad places could be pretty easily solved with a some infrastructure for racks and geofencing to ensure riders end up there. The helmet issue can be changed by making helmets more portable and widely available. I bought a helmet for myself and my husband just to use the scooters. It's slightly inconvenient, but not a big deal. I can buckle it to my backpack. I'd prefer something that could fold up, or maybe a sharing model (leave a helmet / take a helmet at stations with scooters), but again I think that's something we can solve with regulation rather than outright banning. One thing I've wondered is if scooter companies could install a little camera facing the rider (or require you to take a pic with your phone camera) to verify a helmet is on before starting the ride using ML (like the "hotdog, not hotdog" joke app from the tv show "Silicon Valley").