Electric Scooter Company Uses Technology to Go After Dangerous Riders
kpbs.org
kpbs.org
Such injuries used to be tallied as "other", because they were rare. SF General has started keeping statistics on small powered vehicle accidents.[2]
The emergency medicine people are saying "helmet". They can fix most other injuries, but not brain damage.
The high-tech solution to this comes from Hovding.[3] They make an automatic inflatable helmet that inflates like an air bag if you fall. It's available in Europe and Japan, but not the US. €299. It's impressive, but not as good as a hard helmet. It fails US helmet tests.[4] Good idea, needs more work. Startup potential.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Injuries-are-the... [2] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/08/411406/scooter-safety-ucsf... [3] https://hovding.com/ [4] https://www.helmets.org/hovdingcommenttocpsc.htm
These two factors, planning ahead, and carrying the item for the entire time you're not home, still exist with a Hovding. Carrying is easier for a hovding, but the use case of spontaneous use is still not satisfied.
Edit: And not a negative comment to OP. Just curious the market for this.
* Breaking traffic laws(blowing through stop signs)
* Riding in the streets and through intersections without paying attention to traffic
* Riding quickly through parking lots without paying attention to traffic
* Riding unsafely on sidewalks
* Riding without helmets
Generally, being oblivious to any safety responsibility. I witnessed a guy the other day riding down the sidewalk with one of those long skinny beer packs across the deck flopping around and sliding off with something else in his arms.
It's super stressful operating a vehicle around the hot spots with this erratic, illegal behavior going on however I have yet to witness a vehicle plow them.
As well, a scooter will casually accelerate very quickly up to 15mph which is not a casual cycling speed for most people; it's a beginner training speed and rarely seen in parking lots and other space constrained locations.
Lane splitting is not legal in my state, and scooters seem to be much more likely to zip between cars and between cars and curbs including through lights and stop signs. Typically, surprisingly, cyclists will actually full stop behind cars at lights and not go around them to the front.
I would contest, but be open to, it being a sampling biases. I would posit the scooter riders and my area are a much higher accident liability than cyclists in large part due to their own actions. Cycling is reasonably prevalent in the area I live at in my city.
I think I can sum it all up with one phrase: "Carte Blanche"
It also seems to me that Americans would be happier if every single sport activity had helmet. It is treated as something between magical make me safe item and moral requirement.
The statistics tell the story, and your brain is the number 1 thing you should worry about protecting. Just look at the long term impacts that even light concussions have in a sport like Football. You can seriously screw your life up in something like a scooter accident when you go down hard head-first onto concrete.
For #3, it's not that cycling is dangerous. It's that roads and car culture are dangerous. No activity exists in a vacuum.
And as for #1, the reason you wear a helmet is because the one time that you do fall headfirst onto concrete, the damage is life-long. It's not the frequency that you're protecting against, it's the inevitability of a fall and the potential lasting consequences.
And finally, I'd like to add that I'm speaking from a San Francisco point of view.
Even in a 15-30mph zone when a scooter rider blows out in front of a car with the right of way..
This is not a panacea, but there are some pretty good-seeming folding helmets out there: https://closca.com/products/fuga-helmet?variant=53832191509
The solution is better driving and riding training for both drivers and riders. Much of the riding skills taught in motorcycling classes are meant to increase the likelihood of drivers seeing the rider, and how to take percautions against inattentive drivers.
I doubt there are the resources to provide bicyclists and scooter riders the same training, and most probably don't want to shell out $50-$150 on a riding class. But that's really the only feasible solution.
American roads are extremely wide so there is plenty of space.
- Speed Limits
- Stop Signs
- ...
"Can we make sure that if you’re going down a sidewalk and you’re going bump bump bump because you hit everything on the sidewalk — that the scooter knows you’re on a sidewalk and really compels you get off the sidewalk," Ward said.
It would be interesting to apply this technology to cars, as well. Driving or parking in the bus lane or bike lane? "Really compel the driver to get out of that lane." Speeding in a school zone? "Really compel the driver to slow down." It would be nice if public transportation was faster (the point of bus lanes) and if kids could get to school without being mowed down by speeding cars. A much bigger problem than scooters, however annoying they may be on boardwalks.
We have played with such technology in NYC from time to time. One state Senator's vehicle has been caught going 36+ mph in a 25mph school zone 10 times and the same Senator is responsible for renewing the speed camera trials. Needless to say, he is opposed and the state Senate took no action:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/nyregion/marty-golden-sch...
This article ended up making the state Senate look so bad that the Governor apparently unilaterally extended the "trial" of the speed cameras, so maybe progress is being made. It still tends to be widely opposed by those in power (police officers are the other loudest anti-advocates); people do not like perfect enforcement of laws that they can't weasel their way out of with "do you know who I am!?" It's unfortunate.
Yeah maybe we could reduce accidents by 0.1% or whatever. But you just know the damn thing will go on the fritz at some point or gps will be wrong and you’ll be going too slow somewhere else, or you’ll be a rush in an emergency and be unable to get where you’re going...plus (and this May be unpopular) that world just sounds boring and crappy. I don’t want my life controlled by the cloud.
15 - 20mph is a pretty significant speed limit. At that speed a car - pedestrian collision is highly unlikely to be fatal. Much faster and the chances of a fatality increase quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
I would really like to see 20mph speed limits become much more common and strictly enforced. There's no reason we need to risk killing people just to get someplace faster.
Yeah. The top of a slippery slope that ends in skateboard insurance, bicycle licesnes the DOT setting up stings to catch overweight wheelbarrows. No thanks. The level of regulation that applies to mopeds is too damn high. The last thing I want is a precedent for regulating even smaller things.
Many speed limits are unreasonably low.
Many stop signs should really be yield signs.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/josh-barro-democrats-...
-- we'll never get the political support we need to solve them.
The leading cause of death for young people in many jurisdictions is not a tiny probability.
Vision Zero Principles, as stated in the linked Wikipedia article:
Vision Zero is based on an underlying ethical principle that "it can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system." As an ethics-based approach, Vision Zero functions to guide strategy selection and not to set particular goals or targets. In most road transport systems, road users bear complete responsibility for safety. Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that responsibility is shared by transportation system designers and road users.
This is the part I don't agree with. What makes it unethical that people die while choosing to participate in a somewhat dangerous activity? Sure, we could halve all of the speed limits and put speed cameras everywhere. We could also force people to wear face helmets and kneepads when riding their bike, and wear a life jacket while swimming. But I don't think we should do any of those things since people should have the freedom to take reasonable risks.
Using the streets and sidewalks to get to work and/or school is not an optional activity for most people.
Speed increases the severity of accidents.
Decreasing the probability while increasing the severity may not provide any benefits.
Moving towards zero deaths from road way transportation seems like a worthly goal
Re: I-270 Maryland
http://www.mikeontraffic.com/85th-percentile-speed-explained...
Portland is going through this right now. Dropped the speed limits on all the former 25 mph roads to 20 mph. The result is predictable. If the city wanted people to slow down on the small surface streets, they should make them narrow enough that it's somewhat challenging to fit two cars on side by side. Works every time, needs no more enforcement to make it work.
I think raising the barrier to get a driving license would be much more effective in reducing MVAs.
Judges throw certain speeding tickets out of court for being unreasonable. (Speed limit too low, fine too high.)
One of the jurisdictions local to me makes the yellow light 4 to 5 seconds long, depending on road speed, and puts a 2 or 3 second delay after one light goes red before the opposing signal goes green. They have no red light cameras for enforcement.
Another jurisdiction, adjacent to the first, has lowered their yellow light timing below 4 seconds, sometimes lowering it to the point where it takes as long to go across some intersections as the length of the time is yellow, assuming you are at the speed limit. They love red light cameras.
Until we remove the monetary incentive from enforcement, we have no business further automating it. Use points, remedial training, reduction in driving privileges, whatever, but the incentives currently benefit those who make the rules, and the result is not safer roads.
Unfortunately, assurances from lawmakers and police are worthless unless they're written into the law. No matter what they might say, you're still open to legal liability for going even 1 MPH over the posted limit. Worse, this attitude makes the problem more difficult to fix—once they get everyone used to going 10-15 MPH over the posted limits they can't very well update the signs with the real speeds since that would lead people to think they can go 10-15 MPH over what the new signs say.
Selective enforcement results in injustice. Any law which is routinely broken without penalty should be considered null and void. Either set the limits properly and enforce them strictly, or do away with them entirely.
many people want scooters (along with bikes and e-bikes). it fills an important missing middle between walking and driving. the better approach is to replace parking lanes on city roads with a grade-separated (from both regular roads and sidewalks) lane for these missing middle modes of transportation.
as for road safety, strict imposition of the kind of regulation noted in the article actually creates danger. the reason we have such powerful engines in our cars is to provide headroom to accelerate out of accidents (where braking out of them would be difficult or impossible).
i'd be all for much harder driving tests, where licensees show a mastery of control over the vehicle in difficult conditions, much like commercial pilots. i'd also support stricter enforcement of distracted driving laws (rather than speed enforcements). those would actually help reduce auto deaths.
People are quick to express frivolous concerns about pedestrians out of crosswalks, scooters on sidewalks, and cyclists ignoring stop signs, examples that are side-effects of a culture that privileges a transport option that kills and maims orders of magnitude more people every year.