Scooters littering US city streets alarm: 'Unlock me or I'll call the police' | Hacker News Reader

Scooters littering US city streets alarm: 'Unlock me or I'll call the police'

theguardian.com

39 pointswallflower90 comments

Open articleView on HN

I don't really see the racism slant the article is trying to paint all over this stupidity.

That's because you don't view the police as a dangerous occupying force in your community.

I view the police as dangerous but recognize their danger as a necessary cost for effectiveness.

I'm afraid of the police, but I'm more afraid of no police.

This is a very US centric view of policing.

That's hardly the case; police consists of semi-educated goons all over the world. Perhaps not everywhere, but it's not purely concentrated in the US.

This is a very regional US centric view of policing.

I'm equally afraid of no police, and calling the police. Figure that out.

There are stories every month of police going out of their way to shoot people or with trigger-fingers turning a normal situation into a police homocide - mostly impacting people of color.

I don't think anyone in San Francisco does, either.

If someone was stealing your stuff, who would you call, then?

Let's assume for a moment that it's a good idea for the scooters to threaten to call someone. (It isn't, but let's bear with this). Who should the the scooters threaten to call? "I will call Reverend James from the parish down the street?" "I will call your mother?" "I will call the fire department?"

> If someone was stealing your stuff, who would you call, then?

Homeowners/renters insurance?

You'd first call insurance the moment you caught someone in the act?

So, let's get this straight: it would be an improvement for the scooters to blast: "Don't steal me, or else I will call the insurance company to be replaced".

Possibly!

First, in this particular case, I'd doubt my ability to determine if I'm actually seeing a theft in progress. I've used Starbucks mobile ordering and always feel like someone's gonna think I'm stealing stuff - it's a weird experience.

Second, calling the cops for a property crime like theft/vandalism is something I'm not 100% comfortable with. I've got insurance on my stuff, I think our prison system sucks and is frequently counter-productive, and I don't like the idea that calling the police can cause people to die for non-capital crimes (or complete innocence, like the swatting case a while back).

Surely you realize you adopt a more anarcho-libertarian stance than most people?

Also how do you weigh the risk that a criminal will do physical harm to you (or their next victim) versus the risk that the police do physical harm to them?

You'll need a police report to file an insurance claim.

Well let's take an easy example. If the scooter said "Unlock me or I'll call the KKK" we can all agree that's racist right? But even in this example it's not like the scooter is itself doing anything racist, right? It's just calling for help from a group of people who happen to be racist, it just so happens that calling racists to help you is probably pretty racist. So what does that give us? If you don't think the cops are racist then calling the cops isn't racist, if you think the cops are racist then calling the cops can be racist.

But aside from that I think the racism angle is a bit distracting. The real problem seems to me that scooter companies are allowed to push all these ugly externalities on us without paying for them. I see that there is a role for police in private property protection, but is there some point at which we ask a company to pay for a certain amount of their own protection? It seems to me that these scooter services introduce the possibility of crime to a level we don't normally see. Maybe they should pay for that.

Because there isn't a systemic problem with people who look like you getting shot for no reason when they talk to the police.

Scooters are litter?

Are parked cars litter? What about when a restaurants put a chair or table outside on the sidewalk?

Maybe a closer analogy is the other kind of electric scooter (as in the mopeds like Scoot). Never heard them called litter. So is being on the sidewalk vs the street what determines if it's litter?

Imagine if a company like uber bought thousands of smart cars. Parked them on all the streets. And said there ya go, now you can rent me! Meanwhile people who normally parked on the streets couldn't because these short lease cars were there. I would say that's littering.

Have you ever visited a city with car2go or DriveNow?

I understand that those exist, and fill the same role. My point was with these scooters, and rent a bikes, they get dumped on a city seemingly over night and the volume is vastly different than car2go.

> Are parked cars litter?

If you leave them outside of a designated parking spot, sure.

> What about when a restaurants put a chair or table outside on the sidewalk?

That probably depends on who owns the sidewalk.

> If you leave them outside of a designated parking spot, sure.

What if designate about a third of the city's public space as scooter parking spots? Would that be ok?

To me all the cars that fill my city, standing around being useless 90% of the time, are nothing but litter.

> Are parked cars litter?

You assume an answer to this question that not everyone agrees with.

> Are parked cars litter?

As in: are they in the way? Yes.

As in: are they useless from pedestrians' point of view? Yes.

As in: would the person who put the car there mind if it was towed and tossed away? Likely yes.

Where I live, I can't see incoming traffic from all the cars that <strike>are parked on the sides of streets</strike> are blocking the street view and constricting capacity. I would be happy if every single one of them would be treated as trash.

Disclosure: we have a private driveway. I walk and cycle, I don't drive.

> “This is not only an annoying noise, this is a threat to people. For black people, that can really be experienced as a death threat,”

This is so effed up it's beyond words.

> said Kaplan, who is crafting legislation to regulate the scooters and now plans to add a proposal to prohibit loud noises and threats.

Sure that's the right way to approach the problem of black people fearing for their lives every time anyone decides to loudly announce the possible need for involvement of government employees to conform with the laws.

These are two separate problems. Kaplan is trying to address one issue. That didn't mean the other issue isn't also being addressed. Even if you solved the issue of people fearing for their lives, the other issue still exists and needs to be addressed.

This is litter and vandalism. Why aren't people calling the police/city to remove this junk from the streets, and fine the owners for illegal dumping?

There seems to be no problem, however, with devoting a majority of most city streets to the abandoning of unoccupied passenger vehicles, and littering the sidewalks with signage of instructions to motorists regarding the lawful abandonment of their vehicles. That is more offensive than pay-to-unlock scooters on the sidewalk and should be addressed first.

>There seems to be no problem, however, with devoting a majority of most city streets to the abandoning of unoccupied passenger vehicles, and littering the sidewalks with signage of instructions to motorists regarding the lawful abandonment of their vehicles. That is more offensive than pay-to-unlock scooters on the sidewalk and should be addressed first.

This is a nonsensical, straw man argument that is propped up over and over in these threads. I pay taxes and registration fees to the state every year for the privilege of using public roads (and parking on them). I pay the city for parking. I pay CDOT to use the bridge. We have laws regarding the proper and improper usage of motor vehicles, with appropriate law enforcement to implement those rules.

None of this exists with these scooters. It's just another bullshit VC play at making money off arbitraging public safety and wellbeing in an environment they don't have to deal with. The hubris has become absolutely disgusting.

I pay my share of the burden for your bridges, roads, traffic cops, traffic lights, parking spaces, and the public health cost for your parking too. It's no straw man- the burden of automobile traffic on our society for the benefit of a few auto manufacturers is hugely out of proportion. I applaud any dent that any public or private entity can make into alternative modes of transportation. Is it a cash grab? Sure, in some respects. But if it results in a widened bike lane that scooters can share too, or a way for me to bike around the city without getting a car door to the face or worse, bring it on.

Dodging a parked scooter on the sidewalk is no more burdensome to me than having to step around every parking meter that crowds the sidewalk presently.

No it isn't. We give free space to cars, trucks and bicycles. Why not scooters? Is it because they are owned by a corporation? If so should rental cars and car shares be banned?

We, as a society, have decided to give space to cars, trucks, and bicycles, generally in a controlled fashion.

If I randomly leave any of them in the middle of the street or sidewalk, they'll be ticketed, towed, or removed.

> We, as a society, have decided to give space to cars, trucks, and bicycles, generally in a controlled fashion.

Exactly. To be fair though this was only after a fair amount of vehicular chaos.

In the last 24 hours I've had to dodge 5 illegaly parked cars in the bike lane. Only one had a ticket. If you randomly leave any of them in the middle of the street or sidewalk there are very narrow odds that they'll be ticketed, towed, or removed.

Typically individual people are limited to ~1 free car and bike space, and many cities treat commercial vehicles differently from privately owned ones. If you park your ten cars on the street, or if you park your ten cars on the street and start a car rental company, or if you park your commercial-plates delivery truck on the street overnight, you will quickly run into conflict with your city government. Rental cars and e.g. Zipcars have their own dedicated parking spaces, usually on private property, and docked bike rental companies rent curb space from the city.

Amortized over the full usership, each scooter-user is using far less than one-scooters-worth-of-sidewalk.

You want to treat any space hogging the same way you treat tail latency. Not as p50, but as p999.

So the question is not "how many people are inconvenienced on average?" but "how many people are inconvenienced during peak times?" If the second figure is non-insignificant, you have a problem.

Gamers and UX designers understand this. ANY latency peaks or waiting time hikes are detrimental.

I live in Nashville and the city just impounded 411 Bird Scooters which effectively caused them to halt operation temporarily[1]. While Tennessee the state is conservative, Nashville the city is quite liberal.

The biggest concern that citizens and the city has is the mentality that when your done with the scooter you can just leave it in the middle of the sidewalk or anywhere you please. Bird needs to be proactive about it, and start charging fines and fees to users who don't properly put the scooters away. Ultimately Bird needs to setup "nests" pod that are designated pickup and dropoff points to fully address the problem.

[1] https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2018/06/07/bird-scoote...

building off beenBoutIT's comment later on down the thread, someone in a city with an eager police force could maybe in theory - not giving any suggestions - kick over a stand of Lime scooters and run away, making them flood the police with calls, and irritating them enough to pull strings and make the city ban them. Just try to do it all at once, so the calls are bunched up temporally and interfere as little as possible with legitimate 911 calls.

Just in theory. I have no opinion on these scooters.

> Why aren't people calling the police/city to remove this junk from the streets

This is the Oakland police we are talking about here, who are recently coming off a number of major controversies including child sex trafficking. Getting them to show up for a robbery is a challenge. 0% chance they show up for dumping calls (there is a dumping spot a few blocks from our apartment people have been trying to get OPD to watch for months, to no avail).

For everyone curious as to what the alarm sounds like in person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsW4kIg4PQc

Anyone know if people have started to gather these scooters up and part them out?

Yep, it happens in SF. I've walked by several encampments and they're getting parted out fast.

Uber will end up winning by being able to lose the most scooters and replace them the fastest.

They'll lose money on every one, but they'll make it up in volume.

In Vancouver, these things wouldn’t last five minutes.

Do they actually sell them? Who is buying this from them? I've seen a few homeless with them, but assumed they were trying to strip them down to recycle the metal, not sell for parts. Anyone actually know?

I've not stopped to ask, I'm assuming that someone's figured out how to remove the proprietary parts so that the scooters can be reused at will. I think metal recycling is also probable. I've heard that some scooter companies will offer rewards for scooters that were "lost" then returned, so thats probably pretty lucrative.

I would love for someone to do an investigative piece on this, to determine the unit economics of shucking the scooter as well as talk to those doing this.

I don't understand the legal or ethical rationale that these scooters are different from any other items discarded on the sidewalk.

This is different from leaving your personal scooter for a few minutes while you shop, or from someone accidentally dropping their wallet or phone. If you intentionally strew things around in public and leave them there, why shouldn't anyone do with them as they like? How is this not littering for profit?

The reasoning of, "I left this thing on the sidewalk...I have no plans to come back for it any time soon...I hope someone comes along and wires me money to use it for a bit then drops it somewhere else...but don't you dare touch it unless you pay me!" seems specious.

That is not part of the social contract. No one has a reasonable expectation to use the sidewalk as an unattended warehouse or storefront for as long as they like. At best, this is gaming the question of what is or isn't abandoned property.

Almost a literal example of the tragedy of the commons, only with scooters instead of cows. Or privatize the profits, socialize the costs. I dunno, pick whatever metaphor fits you best, but it stills boils down to, "find a loophole in the social contract and exploit it."

Huh? In a high-trust society, you absolutely can leave personal or business property in a shared public area, with the vague expectation it will be moved/reclaimed "soonish" (such as "before nightfall" or "within a day").

In some cases, there are posted limits: 2-hour parking; 72-hour maximum; etc.

You can also often leave temporary signs/markings (like sidewalk chalk or "garage sale"/"lost pet" posters). You can hand out flyers/coupons or solicit signatures on the sidewalks. You can monopolize a public field/court for a temporary period simply by starting to play/picnic there with friends. You can leave boxes/deliveries/garbage on sidewalks and in parking-spaces for later pick-up.

How can there be confusion that a branded scooter, which squawks when moved without authorization (just like other laptop/vehicle/shopping-cart/shoplifting security devices), is "abandoned property"?

Further, both the proprietor's needs (to recharge/inventory) and typical usage patterns mean these scooters seldom stay in one spot for more than a few hours – the same commons impact as if they were widely-owned personal scooters.

So dockless scooters look to me like an innovative use of the commons, fairly analogous to other precedents. Sure, if specific negatives are detected, and outweigh the positive until ameliorated, new rules could then be required.

But in a free, high-trust country, the default should be permissiveness until harm can be shown. It's obtuse to shoehorn something new into the category of "litter", when that's clearly not the intent of those responsible nor the practical impact.

Sounds like a lone drifter ambling about could kick down a row of these and execute a DDOS attack on whatever emergency lines the scooters are wired into.

As the article says, they don't seem to actually call anything.

> Repeatedly touching a scooter for 10 minutes in Oakland on Wednesday afternoon did not result in a response or call to police.

Looks like the company doesn't even make a call, probably to avoid the high fines for nuisance calls.

Oakland has a shortage of police officers and calling the OPD generally wouldn't result in a response in 10 minutes. I've heard stories of waiting several hours for officers to arrive.

This article says the word "police" is racist.

>Built-in alarm sparks anger from city officials amid concerns over racism and policing: ‘This is a threat to people’

Unfortunately, until we have a secondary form of law enforcement that is what you should do if someone is stealing...

You could also choose to not leave junk in the street to yell at people.

Who is stealing? It sounds like this is essentially abandoned property in city streets?

Just like a parked motorcycle or bicycle right? You can just throw it on your van because it's abandoned.

how long can you park your car somewhere before it is ticketed and eventually tagged as abandoned and towed away? Almost all parking is time limited. Does the company even care about that?

A while, and then its removed by law enforcement, not the general public. "Theft by Government" is wholly different.

If you're walking off with someone else's property without their permission to use it, its not abandoned and is stealing.

I think the law is not so clear on that as you seem to think. How long can the scooter sit there? Eventually it could be considered abandoned if they are not coming to pick it up ever.

If it was truly abandoned, maybe. However if the scooter is alerting that its being stolen its probably not abandoned... We're not talking about sitting somewhere for a week, more like a couple hours, I doubt you'll find anyone who reasonably thinks thats abandoned.

I don't think you understand the scale at which these scooters are left.

I live in San Francisco, I understand the problem well. The scale is irrelevant to the property issue.

No, it doesn't.

No, the article says that it's a threat to people. The racism comes in with the way that many white people presume a benefit of the doubt for interaction with police that many black people never experience.

For example, I'll presume you've never lived in a neighborhood where a black man got shot by police while literally laying on the ground motionless with his arms up. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna74...

Black people in general actually appreciate the police and are thankful for them and their work. The "systemic racism" allegation against police has been proven false, yet race hustlers like the author of this article, continue to try to promulgate this false accusation.

I'm white, yet when I'm near police, I feel anxious. Does that mean that police are racist against white people too?

https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/black-white-blue-americans-a...

> Blacks and whites have very different perceptions of how much police are held accountable for misconduct. In a December 2014 poll, over twice as many whites as blacks said that they were very or somewhat confident that police are held accountable.

> Whites today are more than twice as likely as blacks to say they are confident that the police in this country are adequately trained to avoid the use of excessive force.

> 37% of blacks, compared to 17% of whites, say police in their community make them feel mostly anxious instead of safe. Only 38% of blacks give their local police good or excellent ratings for controlling crime – the same proportion as said back in 1969 that the police in their neighborhood were doing a good job. Nearly seven in ten whites today give their local police excellent or good ratings.

That said, this bit is kinda fascinating given the above:

> When asked about preferences for police presence in their local area, blacks are 20 percentage points more likely to say they would prefer a larger police presence, indication that many blacks see underpolicing in their communities as a problem. Blacks and whites are equally unwilling to decrease police numbers in order to lower taxes.

Anyone have a recording of the audio played? A quick cruise to YouTube came up empty, though perhaps your search terms will be better than mine.

The Guardian video has it, although it also has muzak playing over it ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Ly1aArYjU

Found someone uploaded it to YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsW4kIg4PQc

Thank you, perfect.

No publicity is bad publicity I guess?

Where's the outcry over cars littering the city?

Lol no police officer is going to give a fk what happens to one of these scooters.

They should all be launched into the sun.

Kick these NARC scooters to the ground or throw them in a dumpster.

Move fast, break things, litter, threaten to jail people - the new agile startup manifesto. I would be curious to hear the backstory of how this decision was made. Someone had to propose the idea and someone in charge had to approve. Then nobody around them chimed in with "hey this is a bad idea". Granted they were already planning on dumping their trash on the streets anyway so ethical considerations were probably not at the top of the list...

Yeah, it's a genuinely baffling decision.

A polite "Hey! Looks like you're checking out our scooter! For more info, head to example.com - use COUPONCODE for $5 off your first ride!" seems like it'd be equally effective at getting the message across and far less off-putting.

Maybe they are experiencing really high levels of theft and are desperate to do something to stem the loss?

An actual thief is probably going to laugh and roll their eyes at the idea that the police will respond to an automated 911 call from a scooter left on the sidewalk.

Isn't it the case, in SF, that police do not even respond to actual automobile break-ins when their very owners call to request police aid?

If a smashed window + stolen laptop (total loss: ~$2,500) can't convince the SF police to lift a finger, I doubt a scooter (~$400) will. Sad situation all around.

I agree, they would never respond to such a call. Moreover if it actually flooded the dispatch with calls they would probably be in big trouble. I am sure it is an empty threat.

Maybe they shouldn't litter them on random sidewalks then.

You have to be fucking kidding me

Just from reading the title you know this is a CA startup because the scooter threatens to call the police. If it were a TX startup the scooter would threaten to defend itself with force in proportion to the threat. (In case you were wondering, that's a joke).

The city has all sorts of tricks it uses to make life easy for people on it's side and hard for its perceived enemies.

If the city cared about resolving this it would do these (or similar) things because that's how government works. It makes a bunch of rules that are insane when followed at either extreme, normally runs near the middle and then picks and chooses which extreme to apply for situations it thinks warrant special treatment (when the government is bad at choosing this is called corruption).

They can impound the scooters without due process and then just say "oops" when ordered to return them. If you're a big enough jerk (as defined by the city's opinion which doesn't necessarily correlate with the truth) to be known to the traffic enforcement people this is probably exactly what would happen.

Alternatively they can just make a big show out of not prosecuting people for stealing them.

Clearly this isn't really a problem as far as the city government cares so they're just letting it run its course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com