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Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

I remember when Segways came out, and I thought "This is stupid." Outside of airport and mall security, they are nary to be found.

When e-scooter-shares came out, I thought "This is stupid."

In the last several years, I've been to dozens of cities. Never saw anyone taking an e-scooter.

Haven't heard anything about Uber's 'self-driving' cars recently. Another total was of money.

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I think they make a ton of sense in certain areas. I was at a convention in San Diego a little while back and e-scooters seemed like the official mode of transit. It was a bit annoying since they were hobbled by the convention center to a dangerously slow speed (something like 8mph when you're riding in an unprotected bike lane) but to be able to walk out of your hotel, hop on a scooter and take it 10 or 15 blocks to get to the convention center, then grab another one and take it 5 blocks to lunch, then a different one to go the 20 blocks to the USS Midway all for a few dollars was awesome.

I was just at SD for Kubecon. Didn't see anyone riding a scooter to or from the convention center or anywhere else down town.

Interesting.. My trip was in July/August so I wonder if it's fallen off that much in the winter or just due to waning popularity.

Part of that November week was pretty nice weather. (There was also a lot of rain at least one day.) I agree that, if I saw any escooters, they certainly weren't out in any noteworthy numbers.

I do know one other city where there were lots of them when they were first introduced and six months later they seemed to be much less common.

There was one rainy like the 3rd or 4th day I was there. Otherwise it was in the upper 70's lower 80's. San Diego is known for it's year-round great weather.

San Diego actually passed an ordinance requiring scooters to geofence speed limits of 8MPH in many areas. See https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jul/01/dockless-scooter-regul...

It's a great idea and they should absolutely expand this regulation to cars.

Not sure why you were downvoted, the geofencing was necessary because of the beach boardwalks which lead to at least one death: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/24/man-dies-san-diego-boa...

Also - last week Lime announced they were pulling out of SD: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/jan/09/no-more-lime-scooters-...

I think 15mph makes a lot more sense having ridden at 8mph.. the Scooter is barely stable at that speed, but yeah limiting cars to a speed that's more like 2-3x that rather than 5x would make the slow speed much more safe.

Many of the areas that were governed to 8mph were very popular boardwalks, after many people were injured and an older guy was hit and died. The convention center is more nuanced, because lots of it is heavy traffic street. But there is no reason a scooter needs to go even 8mph on the boardwalk, imo. Often times people are on them in groups bombing by you, and if you're trying to just go on a walk and enjoy the beach with kids or dogs its kind of lame.

If it's being used to commute, you can go literally 60 feet inland and go as fast as you want.

Maybe I was just in an unfortunate spot, but much of my journey from my hotel to the convention center was limited to the low speed. Would require multi-block detours to get to full speed. I agree the boardwalk makes sense at 8mph (or anywhere that there's mixed pedestrian traffic), but whatever that main road is had the restricted speeds too which felt too onerous with the much higher speed traffic along side.

I was in Paris last summer: e-scotters rentals are everywhere (we used them). In Boston they're all over neighboring city brookline (In the morning I see them parked on the bridge to Boston where they're not allowed). People use bike shares all over the Boston area (I see them often on my bike rides). I think these going to be popular.

Segways continue to be silly..

It seems to be very uneven depending on the city. Combination of infrastructure, regulations, geography, weather, maybe even culture, etc. I was in Lyon a few months back and they were everywhere. On the other hand, another city I visit fairly regularly rolled them out last year. There were a fair number at first (and the escooters scattered all over the sidewalks). Last couple times I was there saw a lot fewer and very few riders.

E-scooters instantly dominated the market share of shared micromobility when they debuted in the USA in 2018. https://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/...

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