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Comment by throw__away7391 | Hacker News Reader

"Road Users" is an interesting euphemism here.

This is completely wrong. Scooters are a fantastic method of getting around a city, particularly in hotter months, and somehow I find even riding in winter a much warmer experience compared to biking. Personally I prefer using my own scooter, but often take the scooter-share anyway because I am worried about mine being stolen and it's very convenient to be able to grab one anywhere and go directly to where you're going, especially when combined with a metro trip.

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They're great when people are on them, not so great when they are strewn across pavements or knocked over at cycle stands.

I do not get how people can be totally chill with cars and blow a gasket over scooters. In my experience (mostly in Santa Monica, but also plenty of European cities) you will pass block after block of scooters parked correctly. Perhaps in a week you see one in a bad spot but hardly impassible nor a big deal but oh man people flip out over this. In my experience it's been 100% people who's central frame of reference and primary means of locomotion is driving their car around in the city who then start looking for reasons they dislike them. The arguments they come up with sound ridiculous compared to the damage they do with their cars.

I might depend on where you are. In Milwaukee scooters being parked improperly (really, ditched on the sidewalk) was a huge problem (they’re not back yet this year). Even the scooter companies would set them out blocking walkways, bus stop exits, etc.

It got better when the city finally started designating scooter parking areas on the streets last year, but they were too spineless to remove parking spaces in business districts so it was still a problem in those areas.

IMO the scooters would be great if we could designate parking areas on every busy block and have a system to strongly encourage parking there, but until then (as someone who doesn’t drive in the city) I don’t miss them that much.

I'm a cyclist in Stockholm and I hate electric scooters. They are commonly dumped in the bike lanes, sometimes standing up across them and, worse, on the ground right on the bike path.

I have to constantly get off my bike during summer months to move them away from the bike lanes, not only for myself but due to the danger to others less agile than I am. I even had a close encounter to one strewn across the ground right after a blind turn (due to summer vegetation) on a bridge crossing, if I didn't react quickly I'd have simply blasted over it going 20+ km/h... It'd be dangerous to any old person going downhill from the bridge.

It's a fucking disgrace that people feel they can just dump them on bike lanes, I can't educate everyone to set them in a proper place and I never had issues with bikes strewn across the pavement before, so electric scooters are a new danger on the road for me.

And I hate cars.

Why apply that standard to scooters and not to cars? Parked cars are strewn all across the road, taking up much more space. Some sit in the same place for weeks.

The road outside my house is about 3x car widths across, there are private cars parked on either side (2/3rds of the total road space) for the full length of the road. Only one car can fit down the road at once, and pedestrians have limited pavement.

Why get so upset about a few scooters on the pavement, when there are cars literally everywhere in the way

> I am worried about mine being stolen

I am curious where you live. It seems surprising that a city that's well-off enough to have scooter ride shares has a legitimate risk of theft of said scooters from public parkings.

Really? I don't think there's a single major European city that I'd leave a bike ( or scooter, if I had one) unsupervised.

Really? Amsterdam has literally millions of bikes left unsupervised. Paris is fine in the most parts. I'm fairly certain some German cities should be fine too.

A quick google search says that in Amsterdam there are 850k bikes and an (estimated) 50-80k bike thefts. Seems like a lot to me.

I could just be biased though, I've had my bike stolen while in Amsterdam.

I live in Bangalore and I don't think twice before leaving my scooter in any parking space in the city. I am sure there are such areas where I would be reluctant to do so, but certainly the majority of markets and commercial areas are absolutely fine.

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