"Bird acquires San Francisco scooter permit"
I've never felt corruption before moving to San Francisco. There's money everywhere you walk, but there's the largest concentration of homeless people in the street (and they're not just homeless, they are junkies as well). Rent is completely absurd, and that's because no buildings can be built anywhere (if you look at the population of San Francisco 10 years ago, it hasn't moved). Public Transport is absolute shit, which makes it a hassle for a lot of people to live here because they need to commute every day to suburbs.
Backwards in what sense? As a rider of the Muni I'm personally tired of stepping over scooters near Folsom/Embarcadero and regularly almost getting side swiped walking on the sidewalk. I think scooters are a viable mode of transportation but my safety isn't something I'd like to risk due to Bird's lack of willingness to work with the city and provide a safe deployment.
Also, I'm not sure exactly what you're point is. It seems you are conflating homelessness, high cost of living with Bird's scooter transportation.
My point was that the city council here is doing so many bad things it's not even funny anymore
I live in a city much smaller than SF that just got beset by these stupid, worthless electric scooters and people drop them literally everywhere. I can't imagine SF is somehow /better/ about this.
Most cyclists ride on the pavement as it's not really safe to ride on the road. They are lots of potholes and drivers aren't really aware how to share the road with cyclists. Maybe scooters can help change this, but anyway.
At pedestrian crossings, cyclists are required to dismount and walk their bike across. The majority of crossings don't explicitly stop traffic, but require traffic to yield to pedestrians. There are a lot of junctions with traffic lights where if you turn off the main route, as you turn you need to yield to pedestrians. If a bike is coming at 15km/h towards the crossing, your chances of seeing it are a lot less, hence the law. Scooter riders of course don't follow that rule, and at night with their dim lights (which may be coming from behind you, so in your blind spot) you aren't going to see them.
Once I was driving along a fast three lane road. The speed limit is 40km/h, but most people do 50-60. There were two scooters coming the wrong direction in one of the lanes - there was a perfectly useable sidewalk that they could have used.
Another time I pulled off from a red light, going straight across a junction. A scooter drove across the pedestrian crossing parallel in the same direction, then at the end swerved right in front of me, switching from the pavement to the road.
I think part of the issue is that you pay per minute. It causes people to rush and act irrationally, rather than taking their time and being safer. I've seen the same happen with car sharing schemes where you pay per minute.
Well, while you were typing this comment somebody probably got killed by a car in your city. Why are you concerned about an imaginary problem that hasn't even happened yet? If everyone rode a scooter or a bike instead of a car there'd be much less road fatalities.
My impressions are generally the same, people simply can't act safely on scooters. I commute by bike every day to work and just this week I've seen:
- Two teens riding one scooter, going in and out of the bike lane in one of the heaviest traffic avenues, they got out of the bike lane around a bus stop and fell. Right in front of a bus that was stopping, the driver managed to stop the bus less than 30cm away from the duo.
- A tourist riding a scooter on the wrong way of the bike lane got out of the sidewalk and into the bike lane crashing head first into the cyclist in front of me. I had to stop and give assistance as the tourist guy hurt his wrist quite badly and the cyclist hit his knee on the pavement.
- A scooter ran through the red light on the bike lane by a pedestrian crossing and hit a girl on the crossing, nothing major but, again, completely unsafe.
This is JUST THIS WEEK, I've seen similar egregious behaviour of some riders for at least the past 4-5 months... It needs to be fixed somehow, I wouldn't like a ban but this can't keep going on this way.
Even more as this happened in another city here in Sweden just last month: https://sifted.eu/articles/voi-under-attack-from-swedish-age...
When you first ride a motorbike you get very distracted by the way the throttle and brakes work, and their position.
Probably same story with scooters. Or they're just idiots who don't understand basic traffic rules.
Also, there's plenty of accidents happening with conventional bicycles. Tyres get stuck in tram rails, car doors swinging open ... I once fell on an oil slick on a round about in front of a bus. Not a reason to ban bicycles.
“Good morning," said the little prince.
Good morning," said the merchant.
This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need for anything to drink.
Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week." And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
Anything you like..."
As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”