Ban these fucking things or at least ban anyone under 25 from using them
These little assholes zoom around at light speed colliding into grandmas
Not sure what it is about electric scooters but people on them are way more reckless and less mindful than cyclists
half this thread sounds carbrained as fuck. folks if you arrive at the same position as the libs (excluding the tech bros on this one) maybe reconsider how you got there. These things aren't insanely dangerous or a menace to society fundamentally, it's just we've arrived at the intersection of "we can under no circumstances regulate any company in any capacity whatsoever" and "everything not a car gets to duke it out in the gutter" and turns out that shit don't work
None of the problems here are inherent to e-scooters, though, that's my thing. The current model is bad, absolutely and I agree, but the fact that they get tossed and replaced is a function of how they're managed, it's not like the technology in there is like inherently unstable. It's a scooter and an e-motor, that's pretty tried and true on all fronts.
I fucking detest the fact that takeout and such is often given in plastic single use containers when I'd be very happy to bring them some tupperware to put my slop in but that means I want a better take out world, not banning that shit.
And I fucking hate E-Scooters but that's me being a raging RETVRN guy on this issue specifically, just use a bicycle like a normal person (excluding people with mobility issues)
I guess I should mention I live in a place with pretty great public transit and biking infrastructure. I also recognise the obvious benefits electric scooters and other EVs have for people with disabilities or mobility issues.
They can just be a menace in the hands of annoying, mostly young dipshits with no thought for other people around them
They can just be a menace in the hands of annoying, mostly young dipshits with no thought for other people around them
at which point the problem is not the scooters, is it? We just gotta ban
rock musicdndvideo games(YMMV on this site, admittedly) e scooters so the youth stop misbehaving doesn't sound like a great concept.They can just be a menace in the hands of annoying, mostly young dipshits with no thought for other people around them
there can't be guard rails against thoughtlessness, such people use guard rails to slide down the stairs
half this thread sounds carbrained as fuck.
Also very "these dang kids with their damn skateboards" old man yelling at the cloud vibe.
I mean if you wanna regulate them or fix them somehow for the better then good but lots of "ban it" types in here. Reminds me of the people who were unironically happy about the US gov wanting to ban TikTok just cuz they were personally out of touch.
The genie is out of the bottle. The scooteres are here and I don't see them going anywhere, especially since younger people like them. Better to deal with it in a healthy, constructive way than to be boomer-brained about it.
If they're banned how can we harvest them for cheap batteries and other useful resources?
Please don't throw them in the river, though. The dumpster works just fine.
Agree. I was pretty annoyed when dozens of these things were in the middle of the sidewalk, and broken ones were lying in ditches and stuff, but this was incidental business insanity which has mostly passed now around here. Fundamentally (and in practice here where I am today), they're not actually more in the way of pedestrians than bikes. They legislated these things around here to be quasi-bikes. The only actual annoying thing about them sharing space with bikes is that they have high off-the-line acceleration but lowish top-speed, which means they tend to not flow great with bike traffic, but it's not that big of a problem really.
Cities and road design/rules/regulations definitely need to be completely reconstructed. It's awful how everything gets lumped to either being a car equivalent or a bike equivalent with almost no accommodations for bikes, and then how fucking awful it is to have to interact with the government for license testing, etc. on top of it.
Edit: So you have reasons to say scooters and equivalents show be treated more seriously. But to incentivize people using them others want them less government regulated than cars to get away from auto-centrism. Just shitty situation all around.
You're missing a whole angle here were companies are unilaterally, often illegally, enclosing one of the tiny amount of public space that still exists. They just air-dropped these things on public sidewalks in cities all over the world where they act as obstructions to basically anyone who needs any kind of mobility aid of any kind. And just claiming the use of public space for a private enterprise is bad all on it's own.
Do your part. Drag scooters down to the scrapper and tell them they were abandoned on your property.
You’re missing a whole angle here were companies are unilaterally, often illegally, enclosing one of the tiny amount of public space that still exists
Yes, and they have been doing this for decades with all kinds of things from advertising (like sandwich-boards), legally and illegaly parked business vehicles and a lot of other stuff.
If suddenly you find this detestable but somehow only in the context of e-scooters it doesn't exactly come across as a genuine concern.
:amerikkka: He’s injured, but the ambulance costs would likely be worse.
I was on campus and saw a couple riding one of these and slammed into one of those large dumpsters they use in construction sites. It was bad. I think she got a neck injury.
Those small front wheels are the real innate hazard of the scooters. Small bumps are far more dangerous than even the smallest wheeled bike.
they're illegal here
too fast to go on pedestrian footpaths, don't comply with road safety laws so can't be driven on the road
they also don't comply with the legal definition of a bike, so not allowed on bike paths
of course this is england, so only the road thing is actually enforcedTechnically, an electric scooter is a motorised two-wheel vehicle or Personal Light Electric Vehicle (PLEV). They differ from electric bikes not just because they don't have pedals but because they are classed as motor vehicles under the road traffic laws.
Not only do you see regular electric scooters here, there's also huge expensive ones that you sit down on that have big fat tires. They seem to be a popular expensive toy among a certain type of guy
Not to mention all the other wacky types like the amazingly unsafe looking unicycle wheels you stand on
Pretty much car-brain, but for e-scooters. Go on the e-scooter subreddit and its mostly people wanting bigger faster scooters.
I think e-scooters could be a good thing (Urbanist Agenda, NotJustBike's podcast, had a good episode on this), but governments have been way too slow to respond to their rise in popularity and what response they've been able to muster up has been paltry at best.
there’s also huge expensive ones that you sit down on that have big fat tires
at that point, why not just get a moped
cheaper, faster, can go further etc.I guess in general the dudes on the giant luxury scooters tend to be less reckless than the kids on rent a scooters, but like... ride a fucking bike, man
Big fan of the sur ron, an ebike with no pedals that was formerly illegal to use everywhere, up until they started issuing VINs for some of them so they could be used as non-highway motorcycles. That hasn't stopped people from riding them literally everywhere.
huge expensive ones that you sit down on that have big fat tires
I'm pretty sure those are just motorcycles 🏍️ with a step-through frame.
if you hate scooters wait until you hear about this thing called a "car"
The speed limiting of e-bikes and scooters always seemed weird to me, when cars can go 200 km/h.
Cars aren't typically swerving around pedestrians on the sidewalk
Yeah but cars kill way more pedestrians every year than bikes or scooters ever will
What I'm saying is that cars need to be speed limited too. Every day, as a pedestrian, I have to contend with aggressive or just plain distracted drivers on my commute. If a car crashes into me, I'll fucking die, but if a scooter crashes into me (this has never happened, ever) we're on even ground.
Cars pose way more of a threat to pedestrian safety than bikes or scooters ever will. The focus on speed limiting motorized micromobility devices misses the elephant in the room that is cars.
Cars shouldn’t be allowed to go over 15mph in cities and ideally should be left at the edge of town
I mean 25 would be fine if there was actual physical barriers between cars and pedestrians/cyclists. It's this low cost zero safety american bullshit that screws everyone.
Electric scooters? You mean free high capacity lithium battery dispensers?
I throw them in the street when they're on the sidewalk. People with mobility aids need unobstructed sidewalks. It's tempting to just take them to the dump but idk what the law is about picking up a company's abandoned property.
There are tutorials online on how to "domesticate" those rental scooters if you happen to get one from an auction. Also there are discord channels with people giving you tips if you're stuck doing so. If you know how to crack games and like to tinker with stuff it's actually fairly easy. At least it was like that when I got a lime gen 3. The first bird ones were the easiest as those were actually Xiaomi scooters and all you had to do was switch the motherboard which you could get from Aliexpress for 20 dollars.
Use search queries like:
Site:scootertalk.org [brand and version of rental company]
My understanding is that the manufacturers closed a lot of these exploits years ago, or at least made the hardware harder to access. But that said I encourage all attempts to find uses for litter inexplicably abandonded on public sidewalks, roads, and in people's yards. Otherwise all that lithium is just going straight ot the landfill.
Someone at my uni rode one around indoors and crashed into a chair, she went flying
Do these scooters even have bells?
I've never seen a single one of these assholes warn someone before speeding by, they'll literally bob and weave through a loose crowd of a dozen people with no regard for safety.
Often very small head and tail lights too(if they have those) and not much room for reflectors
The worst part about these things is that it's an old ploy of techno :libertarian-approaching:. They have something against walking. It's why they do bullshit like this or sell the stupid idea of a hyper loop.
I will never stop walking.
Fuck it anyone wanna go for a long walk today?
It's really hard to commodify, repackage, and privatize walking. You need a rivalrous and excludable good if you're going to rent-seek effectively.
Mfs will not let you walk in this country they think it's illegal I'm going to cook and eat these people under a bridge
It’s because they don’t walk. They likely don’t even remember how to drive or open their own fridge. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have someone wiping their ass like Puyi
It's an extra incentive for cities to invest in biking infrastructure. The more of them out there and the more their usage is normalised, the more people who don't bike commute need similar protection. I only find them obnoxious when they're left on sidewalks and block access.
We don't have rental scooters in my small city, but I've still almost killed a few scootybois when pulling into an intersection near my house that has poor visibility of the sidewalk due to big buildings on either side. It's easy to spot a pedestrian or even a runner coming, but I only have visibility of maybe 20 feet of sidewalk in each direction which makes it literally impossible to be prepared for someone tearing down the sidewalk at 20+ miles per hour. If you are going that fast, it's incredibly dangerous to be riding on the sidewalk and I'm shocked I haven't heard of anyone getting killed in my area yet. I've never seen someone wearing a helmet while riding one and some of these are definitely moving close to 30 mph.
In a just world, a folding electric scooter is a great solution to shitty suburban zoning and makes it a lot easier for people to get from their houses to the store or somewhere 1-3 miles away. Unfortunately it seems like the worst kind of people are buying them due to how accessible they are and the complete lack of regulation.
the cities should seize them & put them in transit stations as official last-mile doohickeys. make them bright, reflective, slow and embarrassing to ride & require their return to specific places. id prefer better transit that nothing of the sort would be needed but in the meantime making the ancillaries work with existing infrastructure instead of against would be nice.
edit: and just thinking about this reminds me about the bastards who are all supportive of the commercialized version who'd 180 and say they should be banned the minute a city started running it
