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Comment by siffland | Hacker News Reader

I ride a motorcycle to work almost everyday (today's 47 degree ride was a bit brisk) and i have to say, drivers don't look out for bikes, and this is a major city (San Antonio).

My big issues with motorized bicycles are lanes to ride and rules of the road. I see people riding them on sidewalks, in streets, and in bike lanes. It is almost like people on motorcycles who ride in the break down lane or lane split (both of which are illegal in Texas).

We already had/have a HUGE problem with the escooters, people getting run down by kids on the sidewalks and riding them in traffic downtown.

I am for this 100%, but please put down infrastructure and some sort of rules of the road and enforce it.

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I'm in San Antonio as well and have switched to Currus NF [1] high speed electric scooter. For areas of San Antonio I believe it's totally feasible now and for others due to safety / lack of roads with viable route and 35 mph or lower speed limits it is not. I spend almost all of my time inside the 10 mile diameter area bounded by 410 on the north, 10 on the south, the AT&T Center on the east and Our Lady of the Lake on the west.

While the rented scooters downtown have been a mess during the roll out they have visibly reduced downtown auto traffic (much of which my hypothesis is was Lyft / Uber / Taxis).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsBCu-sSWII

> I see people riding them on sidewalks, in streets, and in bike lanes

Where are you suggesting that they ride?

Not on sidewalks. Pedestrians can and do change direction on a dime, and on a sidewalk, they always have the right of way.

Adding high-speed (i.e., greater than five mph) vehicles to that mix is a recipe for disaster.

There are some simple rules pedestrians can follow that make commuting easier for everyone. Move at a steady pace. Don't stop or change lanes without doing a shoulder check. Look both ways before crossing the flow of traffic.

This not only makes it easier to share the sidewalk with vehicles, it also improves the flow when there are a lot of foot commuters with different walking speeds.

I live in a city where pedestrians frequently share the sidewalk with both bicycles and electric mopeds. It works because people pay attention to what's going on around them and generally work together to try keep the traffic flowing smoothly.

That sort of rule of thumb works fine with an abled bodied sober and alert adult, but throw in someone with a disability, an elderly person, a toddler, and suddenly it makes far more sense to have the bike/moped on the road and just offer the gutter at the very least for a bike lane. A road bike can kill a toddler.

Usually the way it works here is if a rider sees a kid or older person then they will slow down to walking pace and only pass when it's safe. Pedestrians still have right of way, after all.

I am not against dedicated roads for bikes (although depending on the city's density, they can just end up as a second sidewalk), but I also think it shouldn't be treated as a prerequisite for developing a bike culture.

Again, the honor rule isn't a great rule for people. Most people are reasonable but we regulate for those that aren't. In my experience by shared bike/walking baths, if I see a cyclist in spandex riding a carbon fiber bike at 25mph, I barrel out of the way because they won't slow down, they will hit me, then they will blame me for being in the way of the bike.

For many years I rode and was in favor of "bike culture". Now that I finally live in such a place, though, it's quite clear that this experiment is a failure. Bicyclists ride as they like, without respect to laws or even likely tragedies, and there is no countervailing force to reign them in. I cannot walk a block without observing a bicyclist breaking a law or risking someone's life (often their own).

If bicyclists want this mode of transportation to be taken seriously, they need to start self-policing in a major way. So far I'm seeing not even a hint of that.

>We already had/have a HUGE problem with the escooters, people getting run down by kids on the sidewalks and riding them in traffic downtown.

How much of a huge problem is that that you have seen personally? I personally have found that everyone loves to complain about them, but I never find much evidence of people being run down by them (in what I've seen)

I have personally almost hit people riding in the middle of he road on multiple occasions (mostly near the convention center area). On the weekends i will drive around the downtown area wasting time and gas to now avoid that situation.

My wife drives for lyft and spends a considerable amount of time downtown and has almost had accidents with people riding escooters in the street, to the point we engaged our insurance agent and asked about liability (we were assured if hit in the middle of the road and not in a bike lane, crossing lane or sidewalk we would bee free of liability and she now has 3 cameras in her vehicle).

An last year at PAX south in downtown SA I was walking on the sidewalk and hearing people yelling to move because they were having all sorts of fun chasing each other and almost running people down.

So I am not complaining to complain. I assume you live in San Antonio and are downtown quite a bit? People leave them everywhere, they fall over in the streets, you cannot say you don't see this.

The answer should be protected bike lanes and separated bike paths/trails. But, US cities generally have very few of those, preferring to skimp by just using strips of paint.

Hence the situation you end up with here: some go into the meager bike lanes, some feel more comfortable taking the lane, and some feel safer on protected walk lanes, aka sidewalks.

It's not exactly easy to just "put down" infrastructure. In fact that is the single hardest piece of this puzzle. Technology can't defeat the will of the people, which is still firmly behind dedicating as much space as possible to driving and parking cars [in Texas and most of the US].

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