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Comment by lumberjack | Hacker News Reader

Because these scooters do not have infrastructure designed for them, they might as well be more dangerous than cars, both for the rider and third parties.

For example, in the Netherlands, this is indeed the case, and in the Netherlands there are bicycle paths, although I am not sure if that helps or increases the amount of accidents or their severity.

Data: https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/road-deaths-n...

What is the risk of a fatal crash in Dutch traffic for different modes of transport?

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There's a graph at the bottom of https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/maatschappij/verkeer-en-vervoer/tra.... It's in Dutch, but should be understandable if you Google Translate and click "Show table".

Basically, bikes are not very dangerous except for people over 60.

>they might as well be more dangerous than cars

this is dumb. cars weigh 1000x more than these scooters.

A dumb teen isn't going to try to drive a car on the sidewalk. I've seen teens drive scooters on sidewalks. You can't lane split with a car, you can with a scooter.

Cars have a greater ability to be dangerous, but maybe scooters are more dangerous because of how they can be and are used. I do not actually know, I've never looked into numbers.

The fact that scooters can be used in such ways is not a compelling case that they're more dangerous than cars. If anything, what strikes me is that a scooter on the sidewalk seems outrageous to some people, by contrast, largely because it's just a banal fact we're all accustomed to that cars kill people by the tens of thousands every year.

The exact same can be said for bicycles. They go the same speed, they have to be used in the street and not the sidewalk, and bicyclists can be just as careless and oblivious on the road. Yet there is no age restriction for riding a bike on a roadway; you can bike down a 45mph road perfectly legally the day you get your training wheels removed.

The problem is not the scooters and who rides them, it's the danger posed by cars. Cars have to be physically separated from other forms of transport. Buses should get their own lane to beat car traffic, bikes and other lower speed vehicles like scooters or even runners should stay in the bike lane. This is a transportation issue, not a scooter issue, and you can't fix it with an age restriction.

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