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Comment by dcosson | Hacker News Reader

Wait til you learn about cars!

People literally leave them all around the city, for hours or even days at a time. Completely unencumbered as well, and taking up prime public space that could be used by the public in so many other ways. You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them.

(Obviously sarcasm, but as a non-car-owner I get a kick out of people freaking out about these scooters taking up public space. Meanwhile every street in the city is full of cars with one person in them and has two lanes of free or heavily subsidized parking. It's clearly a massively less efficient use of public space, and no one ever talks about that).

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As far as I'm aware, your parent's question is fundamentally in error -- the legal reason you can't take Bird's scooter is that it belongs to Bird. This is the same reason you can't take anything else; there's no conceptual difference.

Whereas with cars, there is a special legal difference which allows tow trucks to confiscate random people's cars even though the cars are neither the property of the tow truck owner nor abandoned. Cars do not enjoy any special privileges. They are the subject of a special legal burden.

To take possession of a Bird scooter, you'd first need to establish that it was abandoned property, which seems like it would be difficult to do. But maybe it's easy! Consult your local law of abandoned property.

Cars are explicitly licensed by the government (for a fee) to use the government-owned roads and resources, and specific laws exist about leaving a car parked on one of these roads (where and how long). Similarly cars left on private property need to be left there with permission of the property owner. Otherwise fines and removal occur, and yes, eventually you DO lose ownership of the vehicle.

The same roads that everyone else also pay for via taxes (car owner targeted taxes and fees are nothing comared to road costs) and can use freely with any vehicle. Vehicles that are more or less taxed.

Try a bike. Try a skateboard.

The roads are not there for cars, they existed prior, and the car owners are not what is paying for our roads.

>>(car owner targeted taxes and fees are nothing comared to road costs)

This is actually false if add all taxes related to cars (which would include sales taxes on cars, repairs, and parts)

When most people say that they only account for gasoline taxes, often even excluding the Fuel taxes collected by the Commercial Fuel tax programs as they are accounted for differently.

Yes Gasoline Taxation on gas does not equal road maintenance, but all taxation on cars does meet and and often exceed the road costs

Car owners pay registration fees and and gas taxes for the privilege to use the public roadways. Bird and the like just dumped their property (which makes them money) on public right-of-ways without paying for the use like every other industry does.

Yeah, parent comment neglected the fact that drivers are paying via taxes and fees. Those may not be sufficient to pay for external costs, but that's how the roads are typically paid for.

By this logic people shouldn't be able to walk on streets, nor ride their bicycles, nor drive in places we haven't paid taxes?

If it were correct. The overwhelming majority of road costs are paid through property taxes.

You might be paying taxes and fees to license them but you could well have paid nothing to that city. I can drive through your city (unless you have tolls or entry passes, but the vast majority of cities don't have those). I can just use your streets for free.

State routes? You probably are driving on a state route to/from that city. Also, cities can get funding from the state for road projects, so they do get access to this pool of money.

There are federal, state and local taxes on transportation fuels. So sure, if you drive through the city without filling up your car there then you got a free ride on that city's roads, but not the state and interstate highways leading to it. But that's one of those things that averages out due to large numbers, and where it doesn't there is usually some rebalancing of revenues by government entities.

Roads are paid for, in large majority, by property taxes. Gas taxes and registration fees don’t even come close to half.

in Austin they (Bird/Lime/Uber/Lyft/etc...) pay a license fee to the city.

I've heard this argument before too that Bird is a private, for-profit company. The company itself isn't riding around on the scooters, real people are riding them to solve real transportation needs. I don't see why it matters what kind of payment plan they're on for their transportation. Should leased cars not be allowed on the road either?

Not sure where to start about taxes, but for one thing we came pretty close to repealing the gas tax in CA a few months ago so that doesn't seem to be a necessary condition. And some people just happen to pay almost no property tax at all because they got here first (prop 13) but they still get access to all the same schools and fire and police services. Taxes are paid by the public at large, to benefit the public at large, you're not paying for the specific services you're using when you pay taxes. In fact it's exactly the opposite, these things are public goods.

In addition as other comments mentioned, the scooter companies are paying registration fees and taxes. At least in some cities, and I'm sure if they stick around it'll soon be in all cities.

> but for one thing we came pretty close to repealing the gas tax in CA a few months ago

That was a recent increase to the gas tax that was up for repeal, not the whole gas tax.

That is not so easy to say, the division of taxes/cost vary by jurisdiction. Where I live, gas taxes go to provincial government which maintains only highways. Municipalities have to build/maintain urban roads, and their only funding source is property taxes (which are paid by everyone, regardless of car ownership (or scooter club membership))

where I live, a car, even a large one, is like $200/yr to register. If you want a bedroom the size of a car? you'd pay more than $1000/month.

so while they are licensed, they are certainly not paying market rates for the use of these right of ways.

This is why it is so much cheaper to live in a roadgoing vehicle than to live in a similarly sized rental room in spite of the hugely lopsided maintenance cost difference between the two options.

> Obviously sarcasm, but as a non-car-owner I get a kick out of people freaking out about these scooters taking up public space. Meanwhile every street in the city is full of cars...

I don't follow...these things aren't comparable. Cities have developed a common infrastructure over decades to facilitate car ownership and usage in everyday life. While they may do the same with rental bikes and scooters in the future, they have not yet done so.

We also have a rich body of legal literature pertaining to car ownership, storage, usage and property laws. Likewise, we don't yet have those precedents for rental scooters stored on sidewalks. What we do have is a rough patchwork of sidewalk and property laws we can try to extrapolate from. How's that for efficiency?

That you get a kick out of peoples' dissatisfaction about this, for the reason you stated, suggests to me that you don't actually understand why they're upset. I don't think most people are strictly concerned about how literally space-efficient the scooters are; rather that they have a tendency to be parked on a sidewalk. People would get pretty upset if cars were suddenly parked on sidewalks without oversight too.

If you don't like the car analogy, how about bikes? After all, kick scooters are parked in the exact same section of the sidewalk that bikes are (the "furniture zone"), and are frequently even locked to bike racks.

Bikes are parked on bike racks, which is to say, in a place designed to store bikes. Scooters are parked — rather, strewn — across the side walk chaotically with no regard for those of us actually trying to walk there.

Sometimes scooters are parked on the side of the road. Sometimes scooters are parked in a ditch beside the road. Bikes rarely are.

Bike racks? Really? I've never lived in a town that had them until my current city - and even then, there are really only in areas with enough traffic for them.

Scooters can be parked at bike racks. Are there enough bike racks to park the scooters at the bike racks? would the situation be similar if all of those scooters were bicycles or if bicycles were as cheap as scooters?

Isnt it the job of the government to make sure there is infrastructure in place for bicycles and motorcycles? That is what they did for cars after all.

> Bikes are parked on bike racks, which is to say, in a place designed to store bikes.

Speaking from my experience in Shanghai, where bicycles are common, there's no such thing as a bike rack. (Well, I have seen racks for rental bikes. But none for individually-owned bicycles.)

Rather, supermarkets, university buildings, apartment complexes, and other places which are likely to receive a lot of incoming traffic have bicycle parking lots, and if you're somewhere else, you park on the sidewalk.

The bike analogy seems more applicable, yeah.

Visit the Netherlands, a society where bikes dominate, and you'll see how that is handled.

For example, in many cities once every week every bike parked in a public area is labelled with a little color ribbon. The colors rotate according to a fixed schedule, so that it can be verified if a bike has been parked for more than two, three, four weeks. If a bike has been left unattended for more than N weeks (where N can vary) it gets towed away. They all get stored someplace out of town, and once a month the bikes that haven't been reclaimed for M months get sold for cheap.

In other words, there are systems for how long you can leave your property unattended in public before it ceases to be your property.

I'm curious about the dominance of bikes in the Netherlands from a different direction.

The primary reason there's no system for handling abandoned bikes in the US is not that nobody uses bikes. Bikes aren't especially common, but the issue of an abandoned bike isn't going to come up -- ever -- because of the extreme frequency of bike theft. An abandoned bike will quickly be stolen, just like a non-abandoned bike. Bird's scooters don't have this problem because they're tracked. But the background reality of bicycles may contribute to jzl's (false) impression that you should be legally able to just take scooters that aren't locked down.

How much of an issue is bicycle theft in the Netherlands? How long would you expect to be able to own one before having it stolen?

Years ago I saw somewhere that an estimated two million bikes are stolen each year on a population of (then) fifteen million people. So that averages out to once every seven years if everyone rode bikes, but if we remove the really young and old that's probably closer to once every six years.

This does not represent my experience at all, I've had bikes stolen once every three years on average. It won't surprise you that students learn to buy very cheap second-hand bikes with very big bulky locks really quickly here.

On the plus side, I've never been worried about junkies mugging me. They steal/sell bikes for drug money instead, and I honestly wonder if that is a uniquely Dutch thing.

On the west coast, bike theft is common. Junkies and/or homeless people steal them and sell them for parts. Or change parts around and paint them so they can't be identified.

Also, there's supposed to be organized rings where bikes stolen in Portland are trucked to Seattle (so they're much harder to identify as stolen) and vice-versa.

Don't the scooters generally get rounded up to recharge every couple days? That sounds like a good system but I don't understand how it's relevant.

I wouldn't know, I'm not in a place where Bird operates. But it was just an example - if it is like you say, it sounds like a different type of system should be put in place instead (probably some form of licensing).

Stealing is stealing, regardless of whether the property is unattended. There are legal procedures for abandoned property however.

I'm not talking about stealing. I'm talking about the commenter's perspective I quoted.

>Obviously sarcasm, but as a non-car-owner I get a kick out of people freaking out about these scooters taking up public space. Meanwhile every street in the city is full of cars

There are laws for cars including but not limited to federal highways laws, state/city/county/municipal traffic laws and parking laws. Those laws authorize what you refer to as “leaving them around the city”, you can only leave your car around the city if it’s in compliance and authorized by the law, the Law often specifically penalizing leaving your car in certain situations (ex. in front of fire hydrants; in handicap spaces without permits; in traffic lanes). Their are no laws blankety authorizing scooter companies to adbadon and/or sell their products/goods/services on public sidewalks or roadway. Generally speaking most states/counties/cities/municipalities will have laws specifically prohibiting the same subject to various penalties without prior authorization, permits, etc... consider the number of stories in recent years about kids lemonade stands being shutdown and fined for operating without licenses.

Depending how old you are you might remember pay phones, phone booths, or coin operated newspaper stands...definitely you are probably familiar with atms and vending machines. What if a “tech startup” just started cluttering streets and sidewalks with those. That too would be illegal and not at all similar legally to cars being “left around the city”. Maybe another example is farmers markets, think if a “tech company” just started setting up farmers markets wherever they wanted without prior authorization.

> You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them.

As anyone who has had their car towed when it was legally parked (buddy of mine once got towed from his own assigned spot) this is pretty much spot on. The difference is so far Bird isn't ransoming their property back.

If people were leaving cars on sidewalks and beaches I could see similar levels of outrage.

If you park a car at a random spot it will get towed. Are there really scooter parking spots put up by the city, and are bird paying parking fees?

> If you park a car at a random spot it will get towed.

As I point out in another comment, this is not because being located in a random spot is sufficient to establish that an item is abandoned property. (If it were, the tow truck company would be legally entitled to keep your car!)

Rather, there is legislation which specifically allows towing of cars in certain areas, subject to certain rules. There is no such legislation for scooters.

It's great that you don't own a car. Cars are a part of modern day life. Some of us don't want to go without one though. The non-car owners will just have to deal with it. All the cars are in legal spaces. I don't even really have a problem with the scooters either, they're kind of fun to tool around on the weekend when I park my car somewhere downtown and want to run around and experience the city.

The parking spaces for cars are specifically marked by the city.

Your sarcastic analogy would make sense if people just parked cars anywhere they wanted without repercussions.

I would have no problem if the city took away parking spots for cars and said park them there.

I wish I could give you more than 1 downvote.

> The parking spaces for cars are specifically marked by the city.

Is that true in the US?

In Ireland, by default you're allowed park on the side of the road. There are exceptions, ie you can't cause an obstruction to traffic, block an entrance, park where road markings prohibit it, or within certain distances of a junction. However, if none of the above apply, you don't need to find a marked parking space - you can just park.

Of course it is true. The curbs are painted colors to let you know if you'll get a ticket and signs are posted.

Most cities in the US make big money off parking violations.

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