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Comment by kcorbitt | Hacker News Reader

I'm extremely excited by this type of electric scooter. If you're interested in the options currently on the market in the USA, Electrek did a recent roundup here: https://electrek.co/2018/06/07/electric-mopeds-use-is-boomin...

You can get an imported Cirkit electric moped with a top speed of 35mph and 40 mile range for $1,200. It can't totally replace a car for most Americans, but it can probably replace 80% of car travel for most commuters. You can go right around traffic, maintenance and electricity costs are a penny or two a mile and these things are fun to drive!

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They're fun, but extremely dangerous and commuting regularly on one increases the odds you'll get hurt. There's some risk with bicycling too, but I think when there's an added motor it's easier to be going to fast and hit gravel without really realizing it.

I have commuted via bicycle and Vespa scooter and I feel so much safer on the Vespa. I can keep up with traffic, I have proper mirrors and signals, and I am wearing better safety gear.

In UK a moped is 50 times more dangerous per unit of distance than a car. In EU 10 times:

https://ethicalhaydonism.wordpress.com/2018/02/04/micromorts...

A lot of the statistics on The danger of mopeds/scooters/motorcycles do not differentiate between a commuter rising to work on a 200cc scooter and a bar-hopper riding home on the freeway on a litre sportbike.

In the US, anyway, half of motorcycle fatalities involve drunk riders.

> half of motorcycle fatalities involve drunk riders

Really? I did not realize this at all! I suppose this should make me feel 50% safer on the road as a non-drunk motorcyclist.

One time I was out with friends and I'd ridden my motorcycle. As an experiment, I had one beer and then rode home. Just that one beer that wouldn't have mattered at all in a car was very noticeable when riding my motorcycle, and I vowed no alcohol ever again when riding.

> I suppose this should make me feel 50% safer on the road as a non-drunk motorcyclist.

Potato paradox, you're way safer than that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_paradox

(assuming there's more sober riders than drunk ones, which I hope is the case)

The only appropriate ABV for two-wheeled travel is zero.

I've commuted on both and feel safer on a Vespa too, but realized that led me to more dangerous behavior. For example, taking busier roads, riding when it's dark and rainy, etc.

I used to ride motorcycles and while it's true you have more control thanks to your speed & signals, and you have better safety gear, you have to ride in traffic like a car. IMO that's a huge risk cyclists don't contend with. I don't think "oncoming car turns left into rider" happens to cyclists with nearly the same frequency as it happens motorcycles, for example.

Bicyclists deal with turning traffic running into them from all directions. Go faster than "normal" and everyone underestimates your speed and thinks they can slip in while completely disregarding your safety. A narrower profile and being outside the attention cone make bicycling in traffic much more problematic than on a motorcycle.

big difference between these and a vespa .. vespa you likely also had a license for, had insurance for, and there were likely rules about equipment (helmet for example) that you had to wear. Also like you said you could keep up with traffic and there were regulations on the mirrors etc required.

Ebikes have NONE of that.

Most Americans have to drive on a highway to get to work.

As long as they aren't highway-legal, they are a non-starter

I'm having trouble finding US-wide data for average commute distance, but Appendix B here https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Srvy_Jo... breaks it down by metro area. It seems like most people in most places commute 8 miles or less, which matches my intuition. At those distances a 35mph scooter will generally get you where you're going at least as fast as a car, unless you've got a straight shot on the freeway and there's little to no traffic.

It doesn't matter if your commute is as short as 2 miles - when one of those miles is a freeway. In a few urban areas, you can take side streets to avoid the freeway, but in much of the country, this is not an option.

For me, for example, avoiding the freeway adds 17 miles to my commute - turning it from a 10 mile one, into a 27 mile one, adding over 100 intersections to it (Compared to the 12 intersections that my regular commute has).

I'm going to have to pass on that.

For cities like Austin, a lot of businesses are on "frontage roads", like my company. So while its not a question of highway legal, these are roads with 55+ MPH speed limits and I suspect going 35 MPH will disrupt traffic enough to be dangerous.

Yep. In Atlanta pretty much every business is on a 35-45 mph road and people do not take kindly to you driving the speed limit, let alone 10mph below it. But that shouldn't even be an issue -- real, street legal mopeds have existed for years and can actually go at reasonable speeds. Not sure why anyone would buy one that's capped at such a low speed instead.

ACS survey (2012-2016) by the census puts mean commute at 26 minutes, industry-specific averages ranging from 21 minutes for military to 33 minutes for miners.

[0] https://www.census.gov/search-results.html?q=commute&page=1&...

How does it do in the snow?

Not bad, actually.

http://ridetowork.org/files/baroninwinter/index.html

As long as Americans insist on living a ridiculous distance from where they work, no solution will ever work.

I live close to work. It's 4 miles by bike. But living close to work is great until...

1. You have a 2 income household

2. Throw kids and their schools into the mix

3. One or both members of the household change jobs

All of those things happen to most families.

Now it becomes a complete toss-up, and you have to be extremely lucky if both or even one of you can work close to home, school, etc. My spouse and I are in that category, so I know it's possible, but I also know we're lucky.

Things might change if there was enough of a safety net, that it wasn't vital to cling to full time employment at all costs.

I'd move closer to the jobs if they weren't so far away from affordable housing :( I loved it when I lived .7 miles away from work.

The value equation would tip a lot more if Americans paid a fair price for automobiles. Everything, from oil, to roads, to the cars themselves, are stupidly subsidized.

Of course that would just make both houses and cars unaffordable.

I think that was the point...

(1) Drastic increases in gas and car taxes would be highly regressive, and disproportionately affect the poor.

(2) Housing prices are rising in large part due to foreign investment / money sheltering. I doubt that you could plausibly increase gas and car taxes high enough offset this, and it would be outright dystopian if you did.

It really seems like we should be able to directly tax the foreign investment in order to improve public transit... I don't have any good ideas on this however.

This is a function of US business management eschewing remote work by and large, and even further, insisting on locating most work opportunities in more prestigious, more expensive areas of metro geographies (which are already more expensive per unit area than suburban, exurban, or rural areas), than choices by employees to live "a ridiculous distance" from those opportunities. Take away the massive subsidies to the FIRE sectors, drop real estate closer to 10% of after-tax income to compensate for the US' inefficient health care system (then as we wring out those inefficiencies, rebalance the allocations back towards 20-25% of after-tax income to housing), and employees will flock towards city centers.

I've read all the calls for Americans to give up their ginormous houses and lots, etc. That is tone deaf to the dynamics of the business of residential development markets in the US, again excessively skewed by FIRE sector subsidies, with runaway municipal development fees and processes and bank financing herd trends adding unhelpful vectors. Before John and Jane Doe even pull up to the highway exit leading to the housing development, their limited choices were already baked in for them by other, far more monied and powerful actors.

Incentives matter.

Well there is a solution in some far away (mystical?) countries, which is called public (omg communist !!1!) transportation.

I also live a longish way from work (30 km) but I've got like 12 trains an hour doing this in 20 - 25 mins.

[Thats like 2.12e2 furlongs in 1.45e-2 fortnites for you non metrics.]

Great for people without kids. Unfortunately due to the untrusting and inadequate public transit network (read: no more meaningful bussing) in the US, I'll be ferrying my kids daily for another decade+, requiring a car that seats > 2.

Looks like most of that list is a non-starter due to extremely low range (yes, 40 mile sounds good in theory, until you realize these are lead-acid batteries that should not be deep discharged, realistically this is a 20-mile range)

Those scooters should come with lighter Li-Ion systems and at least a 50 mile charge.

The only thing that looks moderately attractive there is the Onyx RCR in terms of range and speed, but what's worrisome is that it doesn't seem to be built for the speeds it's advertised for. I'd be scared to go over 30mph on something that looks like that.

You can go right around traffic

Don't do that.

Most European cities where scooters (mopeds) make up a seizable portion of traffic (e.g. Paris) would come to a standstill if you "didn't do that".

The issue is more that drivers in the US aren't used to sharing the road with these vehicles.

In Paris, drivers naturally drive far left and far right on roads that have two lanes per direction to leave a corridor for the scooters in the middle.

Then 'going around traffic' is less of an issue for everyone involved.

It's legal to split lane in California.

Last I heard, it was actually "not illegal" to lane split in California.

It was officially legalized in 2016 and went into affect January 2017.

https://www.motorcyclecruiser.com/california-lane-splitting-...

There's a range of ways to do that. Weaving through flowing freeway traffic at 100mph? Pretty damn dangerous. Filtering up between lines of stopped cars at a stoplight? Not terribly dangerous & reduces traffic for everyone.

That's literally want you're officially meant to do according to the highway code in most of the world.

> according to the highway code in most of the world.

Was there some article written on this? Can I get a link?

Struggling to find anything more official, but http://www.motorcycle.com/features/where-is-it-legal-to-lane...

For example here in Spain, most stop lights in cities have special areas at the front where motorcycles are expected to filter through to, e.g. https://goo.gl/maps/JRvxvtVZ8vL2

It actually reduces one's chance of getting rear-ended when waiting in stopped traffic.

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