Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexB138 | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't at all surprised to see the ban. The way electric scooters were handled in Atlanta was an absolute nightmare. They littered every sidewalk, blocking pedestrian traffic in already crowded streets. 100% of people riding them rode them on the sidewalk and collisions were pretty common. People were getting hurt, and were very afraid of getting hit.

It's really unfortunate it went this way, because Atlanta badly needs alternative transpiration options. We would likely have been better off with heavy enforcement around proper storage and riding of scooters, but so many people absolutely hated them due to how it was handled that I'm not surprised to see a ban instead.

The poor handling of how they were rolled out did a lot of damage long term to fixing transportation. Now there will be an uphill battle against a ban passed in reaction to the mess they created. Disappointing all around.

View on HN

We have a rental scheme in Bath which seems to be working pretty well. You are supposed to leave them at designated spots around the city (I think you get a discount) and on the whole people seem to be pretty good about where they leave them.

While I don't personally like the idea of using one (I prefer a bike or walking), they have been really popular.

One of the interesting effects is that along with a huge surge in ebike riders, scooters have made drivers much more alert to non-car road users. Cyclist friends have told me that cycling around town feels much safer, with drivers giving them more room, and fewer moments where it's obvious the driver just wasn't paying attention.

Your second point is huge - pedestrian fatalities go down the more pedestrians ignore "traffic rules" - partially because the pedestrians are more alert (not assuming a crosswalk will save them, because there may be none) but also because drivers are more alert.

The unexpected is always going to be dangerous just because it's unexpected.

That's not an Atlanta thing, they are a major annoyance everywhere. The people that use them just don't give a shit.

Exactly, and the only people surprised by this are those who assume that everyone is perfectly ethical and empathetic, just like them.

The companies operating them seem to actively encourage users not to give a shit. They're dockless, you can end a ride anywhere, if the battery dies or you get bored you're just supposed to leave it wherever and let it be someone else's problem. The companies running them all seem content to just proliferate scooters all over the street with no regard for expense or the non-scooting public since they're all trying to out-compete each other.

Here in the DC area I have a particular love for Capital Bikeshare because they're extremely affordable and (mostly) use dedicated docking stations.

Here in London they’re pretty strict about parking them in designated marked spots, not leaving them littering streets randomly.

The apps will remind you repeatedly to park correctly and will fine you if you don’t, which I’m pretty sure they’re required to do as part of their licensing conditions.

Yeah, all of these problems just come down to local politics. If your city’s political class values pedestrians, they’ll make the companies liable and it’ll magically turn out that they are actually capable of enforcing where their GPS-tracked devices are parked.

No, it's down to companies exploiting lack of regulations to get away with as little as possible ("free market"). Ideally they shouldn't be assholes, but failing that, local authorities should restrict them.

That’s just restating what I said. If the city has political will, the regulations will be enforced. Letting companies ignore the law is a policy choice.

As a thought exercise, any time we see widespread lawlessness ask whether it’d still happen if, say, a random citizen could get $100 by sending a video to the city (ala NYC’s truck idling law) or if the city employees like cops or parking enforcement had similar incentives. There are downsides to that kind of thing and I’m not suggesting it as the ideal general policy but I think it is important to remember that most of the time these are not problems we don’t know how to fix but rather problems people don’t think are their job to fix.

Doing so would also require the city to provide parking spots for them - which is the real reason for the bans. Drivers aren't interested in losing any parking spots to scooters/bicycles/???.

It's shooting themselves in the foot (because people driving less results in less congestion and competition for car parking spots), but as this thread demonstrates, there's no shortage of counter-productive thinking around non-automotive transportation.

Nobody has a right to city-subsidized on-street parking. In most cases there is considerably more off-street parking than needed, not to mention easy opportunities to park within transit/bike/modest walking distance, and removing street parking removes a significant portion of congestion and pollution because you don’t have guys driving around for 20 minutes looking to save a couple bucks, or blocking a traffic lane while they spend 5 minutes trying to inch their Denali into a Camry-sized spot.

> Nobody has a right to city-subsidized on-street parking.

In theory, you are correct.

In practice, drivers feel that they are entitled to it, to the exclusion of parking for all other vehicles.

Very strong agreement on that. I'm hoping that this is changing, especially with younger generations having less financial margin to soak up the cost of private vehicles. The amount of money we spend trying to indulge that 1940s commuter dream is unsustainable.

Scooter parking takes up very negligible street space. You can fit a huge number of scooters into the space occupied by one car.

If London can find plenty of space for scooter parking (and it has), I’m sure any North American city can.

> They're dockless, you can end a ride anywhere

This is, for me and my wife, the entire point. We had a docked bikeshare system in Seattle and the docks were never where we needed one, particularly since Seattle's topology--a city known internationally for being incredibly flat and dry--meant that the docks on the bottom of a hill would be perpetually full and the ones at the top of the hill were always empty.

But these things are an absolute godsend for someone who can walk, but can't walk far, or who has the occasional struggle with hills. The bus or train can't go everywhere, but a scooter can get you between the spot where the bus let you off and the spot where you want to go. That's how my wife and I use them and they're amazing and, frankly, I hope they never go away.

> The companies running them all seem content to just proliferate scooters all over the street with no regard for expense or the non-scooting public

This is probably true, but I think a lot of people just don't see themselves as "the scooting public" except for the brief time they might be using one.

It's the same problem with cars, just downsized a great deal. We're incapable of building separated infrastructure, mostly due to cost, partially due to fear of loss from space given over to cars. We try these bandage workarounds, like scooters, but because we've half-assed everything except the infrastructure for cars (and because people's expectations are so high around the new idea), we wind up with a situation where everyone is frustrated because no one's needs feel met even though there are clearly uses for them.

Are the scooters powerful enough to take you up Queen Anne hill?

Much could be done to "fix" the scooter issue by working with the city rather than antagonistically against it, for example, on streets with parking (almost all of them) the first parking space on each block could be a designated "scooter pile".

Then modify the app to charge you a $10 "you're a dick" fee that is refunded when the scooter detects that it was thrown in the scooter pile, or similar. If you make it more advanced, let anyone with the app claim the fee if they return a scooter.

> Are the scooters powerful enough to take you up Queen Anne hill?

No, but the 2 or 13 are and then a scooter can go where we want if that's not close enough or if it's a particularly bad walking day.

> Much could be done to "fix" the scooter issue by working with the city rather than antagonistically against it

I completely agree! However...

> for example, on streets with parking (almost all of them) the first parking space on each block

...this is astoundingly difficult to pull off in Seattle because people who drive cars have a very high fear of loss, as a general rule, and vehemently oppose efforts to turn car storage areas over to areas for other vehicle types. It's why we've wound up with painted-off areas that get used for refuse bins instead (blocking off where the scooters should go).

> Then modify the app to charge you a $10 "you're a dick" fee

The two apps we use require that you take a picture of where you left the thing when you park it and both of us in the past few months have gotten an email, one apiece, saying "you parked wrong, next time it's $25." (They were right, we didn't leave enough space, we've gotten more diligent.)

they're amazing and, frankly, I hope they never go away

You might want to preemptively contact your city councilmember and share your thoughts with them. Or go one step further and attend one of the meetings to speak on mic about it. Remember that they're far more likely to hear from people who complain, and it takes just a single council session to ban them.

> This is, for me and my wife, the entire point. We had a docked bikeshare system in Seattle and the docks were never where we needed one, particularly since Seattle's topology--a city known internationally for being incredibly flat and dry--meant that the docks on the bottom of a hill would be perpetually full and the ones at the top of the hill were always empty.

I can't speak to Seattle specifically, the DC area is quite hilly in some places so I've seen the same problem, exacerbated by the fact that DASH buses are free which means people will happily CaBi downhill and DASH uphill. I'm not sure how dockless fixes this though except for the fact that dockless bikes are always e-bikes which are easier to take uphill. But docked e-bikes can get you the same effect as long as there are actually docks at the tops of the hills. I find that Capital Bikeshare is really good about placing docks at bus stops and train stations and having a high enough dock density that you'll rarely need to walk more than a couple minutes from the dock to reach your destination.

> This is probably true, but I think a lot of people just don't see themselves as "the scooting public" except for the brief time they might be using one.

The scooter companies may perceive everyone as either a sometimes-scooterer or a potential convert to scooting but I don't know how true that is in reality. On top of that, people who ride transit, ride bikeshare, or ride a bike for their daily needs are typically quite happy to self-identify as such. I personally don't ride scooters but am a daily user of CaBi and one of the local bus systems (DASH).

> It's the same problem with cars, just downsized a great deal.

I can and do agitate for taking space from cars and restoring it to people. It's just frustrating that what little space is available for scalable mobility like walking and biking has even less to work with because of scooters and bikes cramming up already narrow spaces (like the 14th St. Bridge between Arlington and DC, whose pedestrian passage is already uncomfortably narrow, has several bikes and scooters abandoned there at nearly all times.)

> But docked e-bikes can get you the same effect as long as there are actually docks at the tops of the hills. I find that Capital Bikeshare is really good about placing docks at bus stops and train stations and having a high enough dock density...

This is an entirely reasonable point and that's likely where Seattle's bikeshare system failed. The operator was borderline incompetent, but also siting docks in Seattle is very difficult because of the propensity for car drivers to vocally oppose any efforts at space reallocation. It's getting very frustrating, especially now that they got a Mayor elected and a head of the Council's transportation committee who are both quite pro-car.

> The operator was borderline incompetent, but also siting docks in Seattle is very difficult because of the propensity for car drivers to vocally oppose any efforts at space reallocation.

Sadly, this happens in all US cities. Motorists in and around cities are extremely territorial and want the right to use many times more public space than is allocated to other forms of transportation, in addition to huge portions of private land via parking minimums. Successful bikeshare programs like DC has, while they still have a long way to go, are so valuable in showing what could be in this country.

Most travel modes have a downside. For example, car and suv drivers routinely speed through pedestrian crossings and kill large numbers of pedestrians.

Scooters may be annoying, but at least they aren't deadly.

It may not be as deadly but it does still produce minor and major injuries that send the riders and people they run into to the ER.

Please stop whitewashing incidents and the behavior of the scooterists.

Just because you've banned scooters doesn't mean the morons operating them went away, or stopped traveling.

And I'd much rather deal with a moron on a scooter than a moron in a car. I'd daresay that statistics on both deaths and injuries caused by alternative modes of transportation are with me on this.

I mean, I get it. Scooters are a little scary and annoying and take up space. People don't like them.

All these same criticisms apply for cars, but dialed up to 11.

Damn, I wish I could upvote twice.

You could say the same thing about cars. In fact it's far more common for cars to be parked on pavements blocking access than it is for e-scooters. You just don't notice because you're used to it.

A major reason that scooters were banned in Atlanta was because cars (and a bus) kept accidentally killing people on scooters.

A bus can never kill anyone, it's public transportation and is therefore infallible. Cars are heavy killing machines remember, but busses and trains are perfectly magical and never harm pedestrians at all.

(Sarcasm, for the uninitiated.)

Largely because the people on scooters ignore traffic laws. I'm in an area of Atlanta where they are still allowed, and the riders regularly run stop signs and red lights without checking if a car is coming.

Wow, they sound almost as bad as car drivers.

It all comes down to infrastructure. They’re not a big problem here in DC compared to cars because we have wide sidewalks and a growing number of protected bike lanes. People driving cars are responsible for 100% of the fatalities, almost all of the injuries, and almost all of the blocked sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. and that’s where the focus should be.

What I would like is basically rebranding bike lanes as low-speed mobility lanes. Take the parking and/or right lane full-width, put up bollards, and zone it for vehicles with a max speed of 20mph (bike, scooter, trike, hoverboard, electric wheelchair, who cares - if it doesn’t pollute and takes up about as much space as a person, it’s welcome). If space allows, add protected parking spots for pickup/drop off and handicapped parking and tell everyone else that they need to pay market-rate for parking.

Make it 3D instead of taking space from cars and I agree.

Cars are dangerous and the best engineering solution is to isolate pedestrian scale speed and mass transfer from multi-ton industrial equipment. So go 3D, give cars their own isolated layer, give pedestrians and slightly faster moving exposed humans their own layer.

Wouldn't the path of least resistance here be giving cars the surface layer?

Vehicles also include construction cranes, dump and garbage trucks, etc. Those might have unlimited height, but weight is also a factor.

I'm split between an idea like Tokyo's underground mall areas (which work really well with climate control) and just over-specing several stories above ground for a platform layer that can be level across the whole city and completely free of non-emergency moving vehicles.

This is sort of what Boston tried to do with the big dig[1], where several highways were buried under the city. It ended up costing billions and took 15 years to complete. Also, while the RFK Greenway is nice it is also regularly bisected by busy surface roads and on/off ramps so it sometimes feels more like a grassy median than a real park.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

Money well spent. We put excrement underground, might as well do the same for cars.

On a side-note, I was in Boston this summer and it's so much more of an airy and accommodating place than I remember from 10-15 years ago. Lot's of the COVID traffic calming and patios still in place. Awesome, go Boston!

I moved away from the DC area long before electric scooters were a thing. Does metro PD still give jaywalking tickets to pedestrians being loaded onto ambulances (this used to be a thing)?

No - they basically went on soft-strike during the BLM protests. You can run a red light in front of them and unless you hit their SUV it’s unlikely they’ll react.

Just in case anyone is believing this, take my word for it, don't believe the hype.

DO NOT run a red light in front of a cop in DC. I'm just putting that out there as kindly intended advice. If you go to DC thinking it's free reign, you're likely to be disagreeably surprised. Especially if you're in the parts of the city that I'd imagine most of the people on HN would be likely to be in.

And Heaven help you if, well, other agencies watching DC misinterpret your red light running. You may be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find yourself trying to explain that to people who, as a general rule, don't believe in coincidence.

Yeah. Just don't draw that kind of attention to yourself in DC. That leads nowhere good.

I mean, yes, I’m not saying you _should_ do it but I see that happen almost every day and it does not get an official response.

Is that just SE of the Anacostia or the touristy parts too?

Scooters arent a big problem in DC, but it's definitely not problem free. Bike racks are sometimes taken up by nothing but rental scooters. People sometimes leave rentals in highly inconvenient places that block the path (supposedly there's some process for telling companies & they have to move them, but I've never tried this).The scooters mostly say "don't ride on side-walks" in huge letters at their base, but tons of people do.

I wouldn't say there are big problems at all, it mostly works ok. I'm glad there are new options. But infrastructure alone isn't enough. Like the parent, I do think there are low-quality users who don't give a shit & act bad, in a way I'd never see from for example a bicycle user. How problematic is that? So far it's generally not so bad. But bad users, bad parkers, and full bike racks all take their toll. It seems unlikely a lot of these things will get better over time.

The people that use them ride on the sidewalk because they will get maimed or killed by distracted or belligerent drivers if they scoot on the street.

It's not the scooters that are the problem, it's a city environment that encourages aggressive and careless driving.

I own my own escooter and I do give a shit. Don't lump us all in together. I think people who own escooters are far more conscientious than people using rentals, and I believe a better solution is to incentivize private ownership.

> 100% of people riding them rode them on the sidewalk

A few months ago I saw a man in Seattle die while riding an electric scooter on a street going down a hill. He was going way too fast, probably trying to keep up with the cars I think, started wobbling, fell, and bounced his head off the street. Dead on impact. Two points:

1. These scooters are not stable enough to operate at road speed safely. The wheels are too small for it, the dynamics of controlling one at speed are all fucked up. They are substantially less safe than even bicycles.

2. Rental scooters don't come with rental helmets. I think a helmet would have saved his life. But the whole supposed convenience of the scooter rental scheme assumes no helmets, since virtually nobody leaves home in the morning carrying a helmet on the off chance they may want to rent a scooter.

I saw helmets on rental scooters recently - they were green and maybe in Miami? If provided people might use them but I bet we could make a technology that would prevent the scooter from moving unless the helmet was attached properly. At that point people would "know" you have to wear them so it wouldn't be terribly uncool.

I'd be grossed out wearing a helmet someone else wore that wasn't cleaned.

I might do it anyway to save my life, but it would definitely be a deterrent.

Also heads come in sizes, so a single helmet would not really work - you'd need "helmet stands" where you could get one that fits, and that give them a disinfectant spray between customers (likes shoes in a bowling alley).

Maybe Amazon style lockers?

You could get “helmet adapter caps”, similar to the rubber ones you wear in swimming pools. It would be much more compact than a helmet, and could solve both the hygiene (by virtue of being hermetic around the head) and size (by “padding” the head to some standard dimension so the helmet fits well. Then the helmet could tighten.

(Disclaimer: Just an idea.not sure how practical it would be)

Where I live people who want a helmet but not something on their head use an inflatable that triggers on falling. I presume they can be used with scooters.

A scarf style thing is hopefully not as gross to share as a helmet.

https://hovding.com/

People really, really, really do not like helmets. Seattle has a bike helmet law which is considered to be one of the failures of the old public docked bikeshare system (there were free helmets offered at each station IIRC).

To be honest, I think helmets are good, but a mandate has its own issues. I think usually the culprit is extremely bad infrastructure for not-cars; few places have bike lanes which are safe and comfortable to use and in good condition. Or bike racks which might be a logical place to otherwise put scooters. Sidewalks are usually not a good substitute, and even where they exist often they may not be ADA compliant in terms of ramps or width, they are bumpy due to tree roots etc. displacing the sidewalk panels from their original position and creating unsafe bumps, etc.

I don't think the issue is that people don't like helmets (although, I'm sure some people do not like wearing them, similar to some people that don't wear seatbelts). The issue is that it hasn't been made convenient or hygienic enough to wear them.

Two issues:

You have to bring your own, which is a relatively large thing you have to remember to bring and store. Either people forget them, or can't be bothered... because the whole point of the scooters is ad hoc transportation if needed when it isn't expected.

You get one provided (on the larger ones that include them), but now you have a singular helmet which may have just been used by a sweaty gross human. And it just got put away into a sealed box.

The only thing I can think of to alleviate both of those fears (and still allow Scooter sized things to exist..) would be some sort of helmet vending machine with a 'used helmet' return box. It'd require way more helmets and some sort of cleaning mechanism, but at least that would solve or alleviate the two main concerns. It does immediately mean you now need scooters in close proximity to vending machines though...

One other option would be a decent collapsible helmet, which would remove the bulk issue.

For people to actually carry one, it would probably need to pack up to the size of a tote umbrella.

Personally I would rather walk than share a helmet with N other scooter riders, especially in a climate like Miami's

1. How would you get a helmet that fits safely?

2. How is cleanliness handled? Maybe I’m an outlier for sweat, but I don’t think many people would be ok with wearing my used helmet.

They are blue, and yes - in Miami. The company is called HelBiz - and they're the only game in town right now.

However, there are a few issues with helmets, one of which is that a lot of people think it's gross if they have to use a helmet someone else just used, especially in a city where you're bound to sweat profusely when outside no matter what time of the year it is. Imagine putting on a helmet that's covered with the sweat of 2 or 3 people that have also rode the scooter in the last 2 or 3 hours? Yuck!

Requiring helmets is a great idea - but a crux of the issue is that people will ignore requirements as much as they possibly can and will try to spoof the requirement every chance they get. There's a moped company in town called Revel that operates a bunch of moped rentals similar to scooters. They require all riders to wear the provided helmet, and even financially incentivize other users to report people riding without helmets. That hasn't solved anything, and I see people riding those things without helmets on multiple times every single day.

1. The speed can be governed

2. Agreed. Crazy to me that people ride these without helmets. There's also foldable helmets for people annoyed by the size of regular ones. Protected bike lanes also improve this.

That said, banning scooters is a step backward.

1. Not downhill.

Why not? The same brushless motors could be also used to brake the scooter could they not?

I haven't run the numbers but at that size I would expect them to get very, very warm.

Couldn’t they just do a controlled spark at high enough voltage?

1. Regen braking

Sure, up to a certain grade. But regen braking isn't working down hills like the ones in SF.

All the ones in Sweden use the electric motor to govern the speed downhill, limited to 20 km/h.

I've tested this. The fastest I could get a Voi scooter in Germany to go downhill was 27 km/h. They're limited to 20 km/h on level ground and gradually start braking if they exceed that speed downhill.

It might be possible to find a hill steep enough to overcome the braking force, or one that results in a strong enough braking force to make the scooter difficult to control, but it should be obvious to most people that attempting such a thing is dangerous.

> The speed can be governed

You sure? Applying brakes to someone rolling downhill can make them fall because their body is still in motion, and now the scooter isn't moving at the same speed, and they were not prepared for it.

I think they meant the scooters have firmware which can limit the top speed of the rider.

Ideally the brake is applied to limit speed, not reduce it. To keep you capped at a safe speed, rather than allowing an unsafe speed to be reached then slamming on the brakes to reduce it.

They do it through the electric engine. It's a bit of a jerky motion, like allowing 1-3 km/h over and then braking down to 20 km/h. After a while you do not even notice it.

Rental scooters are like if we lived in a society where everyone rode horses and then suddenly you could rent a Ford Model-T to drive without any lessons or a driver's license and no cultural standards of safety or infrastructure built for cars.

Banning e-scooters wholesale rather than figuring out how they can be part of a safe mobility culture is like banning combustion vehicles at the onset of the invention of cars.

I will agree though that safer electric PEV like e-bike or e-tricycle are likely safer, as are those with speed governors, and add in dedicated protected lanes.

> Rental scooters are like if we lived in a society where everyone rode horses

Speaking of.. the Amish use scooters fairly extensively, but not typical scooters. Their scooters have very large tires by scooter standards; tires meant for children's bicycles. I think these would be much safer than typical small-tired scooters.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=amish+scooter&iax=images&ia...

Yeah I actually have a 'kick-scooter' aka human powered that's got a larger wheelbase than the standard children's kickscooter and pneumatic tires as well as suspension, not nearly as large as those in your link though, it's still dangerous to ride over larger cracks in sidewalk pavement with it. It's an Oxelo Town7 EF I believe (from Decathlon). I found it to be a nice vehicle for trips in Brooklyn that would normally take 15-30 minutes to walk if I wanted to get there more quickly and it's legal to ride a kickscooter on the sidewalk in NYC unlike an e-scooter. Also much lighter than e-scooters.

I got the thing because I loved e-scooters so much but I felt like buying an e-scooter was an unacceptable action given how much it would increase my probability of lifechanging injury or death. But ultimately I found myself stopping using it. I think its still slightly too heavy and unwieldy and its still not got large enough wheels for me to entirely ignore pavement quality. If I was doing it again I'd try the lighterweight Xootr with no suspension.

> Banning e-scooters wholesale rather than figuring out how they can be part of a safe mobility culture is like banning combustion vehicles at the onset of the invention of cars.

Plenty of cities did just that, after a rash of pedestrian (and equestrian) deaths. What resulted was a multi-decade lobbying effort that redefined the "street" to mean a thoroughfare for combustion vehicles.

Plenty of cities are now walking back that effort and are once again banning combustion vehicles in their cores, or at least are not dedicating the space entirely to cars and trucks. A ho-hum example is Kaiserslautern, Germany, where you can drive in the city core, but it's just much more efficient to park in a lot outside the core and walk.

In the process of typing this comment, I discovered that I agree with your overall point, but I would suggest ditching the "protected lane" part and simply take away the dedicated space for cars.

I was on travel to San Francisco last week, 20 mph down the Presidio through GGSP and I would have loved a helmet but I didn’t pack one in my carry on! You are really putting your life on the line without one - both from the flimsiness and speed of the device, and city roads and traffic. The people I saw with helmets clearly owned their scooters.

The scooter forces users to go 20mph? You’re talking about the stand on scooters not the mopeds right?

10mph is more than enough to kill you if you hit a curb.

Rental scooters here (Tel Aviv) often come with helmets. They click into the front.

> [Scooters] are substantially less safe than even bicycles (Emphasis mine)

Bicycles aren't unsafe in themselves, see lots of cities where cycling is a very common and safe mode of transportation. Scooters on the other hand are indeed a lot less safe due to their small wheels, short wheelbase and awkward stance of the rider. That said, it's the urban planning that makes cycling unsafe in many places, not the device itself.

Ordinary upright/city bicycles have significant controllability problems at high (>50 km/h) speeds compared to e.g. cars. I think that's where "even bicycles" comes from, in this context.

(Why am I using >50 km/h as the benchmark? Because that's the sort of speeds you easily end up at if you try to keep up with cars downhill.)

----

Edit: it seems that people are missing critical words in my comment:

- "Ordinary upright/city bike" means "not road/touring/etc bikes". They are constructed differently and comfortably do well over 50 km/h.

- "Downhill" means significant gravity assistance for a few seconds up to a minute, and not "sustained under pedaling power alone". I'd be impressed if you regularly did 50 km/h on the flats with one of those bicycles.

> Ordinary upright/city bicycles have significant controllability problems at high (>50 km/h) speeds compared to e.g. cars. I think that's where "even bicycles" comes from, in this context.

Who on earth is using ordinary city bikes at 50km/h near cars? Even class II e-bikes are limited to 20mph/32kph.

Class III are limited to 28mph/45kph but are forbidden from bike paths.

[edit] 50kph under your own power is the average speed at the Tour de France.

I used to commute from Bellevue WA to Kirkland WA, the mainly way across the freeway was either to go down this road over the freeway that didn't used to have sidewalks https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6393386,-122.2032674,17.25z or go 2 miles out of the way and up a huge hill. The right lane is where people wanted to go to get on the freeway at the time. It was easiest to just get in the left lane and do 40mph down the hill which is what cars did speed wise. People gave me plenty of berth if I was moving at car speeds. If I went slow on the right I got tailgated.

My bike was quite stable at 40mph.

No I wouldn't go that fast on a bike path, this was only due to the power of gravity.

As I mentioned in sibling response, it is somewhat easy to get those speeds in any hilly place. Keeping them for extended times is, of course, out of the question. And my return commute has me well below that. Again for obvious reasons. :D

Now, I fully agree with the spirit of your post. Even the spots I'm talking about are short bursts.

>Because that's the sort of speeds you easily end up at if you try to keep up with cars downhill

Not many people will do >50kmh even downhill (even with disk brakes), and on the few occasions I've done so, I absolutely would not say there are "significant controllability problems". In fact, quite the opposite.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN6Z8UgVOuw Nb - these were shot in the days before the 'supertuck' (sitting on the crossbar) was banned.

I easily hit 35-40 mph on every commute to work with my bicycle on one of the downhills. Just 30mph is trivial to get to on any of the downhills with my bike, and is just slightly faster than many of the ebikes go with very little effort.

To be fair, if you're holding a professional cycling race, you should probably close off the roads to other traffic.

A helmet has probably saved my life several times when riding my bike. In all cases, it was only me, my bike, and my idiocy involved, no third parties. All it takes is a little bit of loose gravel where you don't expect it, or a wet stone in the path that's a bit slippier than expected.

Bicycles with helmets are fairly safe. Without helmets? No way, I'm not riding without a helmet. But scooters without helmets are much worse, I wouldn't dare go much more than 10mph on a scooter without a helmet.

Don't forget wet leaves. I was riding my bike well after it had rained, and most of the path was dry, but there was a shady spot under a tree that still was wet and I basically lost all traction on it. Only time I ever "used" my helmet.

Or half buried campfire rings (aka a repurposed truck wheel rim) hidden by the grass on the side of a hill.. I think I must have done about two flips in the air after hitting that. At least in that case I don't think I hit my head hard, I landed in the same grass which cushioned my landing, but if there had been something else hidden in the grass I might have lost more than just a bicycle wheel.

Hmm, What kind of bike at what kind of speed on what kind of surface?

It's entirely possible to ride a bike in a way that actually doesn't require a helmet. It's VERY boring :-P , but nevertheless practical and doable.

Probably about 15 to 20 mph. Once on a country road going down a hill in a bend; I slipped on loose gravel and had to replace my helmet. The second time, about the same speed but on a country bike path (flat land, next to a canal). I slipped on a large wet stone embedded in the path and again had to replace my helmet.

I've fallen a few other times besides those two, but those are the worst two and I think without a helmet I would have been seriously injured if not dead.

I ride without a helmet and essentially never go beyond about 12 MPH, and more often in the 6-8 range. I take sidewalks generously, stay out of mixed traffic, and frequently stay in low gear, and this is still over twice as fast as an average walking pace.

I think it's all relative to how much you're approaching it as "road cycling" vs "urban commuting". If you keep the seat high, lean forward, and pedal near your limits, you definitely need protection even if the road is empty. But if you're going at a pace and a posture that lets you stomp your foot down easily, the dangers come down to total loss of control(e.g. downhill, failing brakes) and unpredictable traffic.

The biggest danger with electric mobility going forward lies in blurring of the distinctions. When they're brought up to highway speeds, what you have is an underbuilt motorcycle with no safety features or licensing requirements.

> Rental scooters don't come with rental helmets.

There is one company I'm aware of that at least operates here in Canada called Neuron, which has helmets attached to every rental scooter. You're told by the app to put it on.

That's cool. I wish this would be a thing here in Europe, but I don't think it would be workable because of hygiene.

That is, sadly, the main reason I've found people choose not to wear them. The one time I rode with that brand I didn't either, because it just looked...gross.

I'm buying my own e-scooter for when the snow clears. And a helmet.

Tier in Germany did have helmets on some of their older scooters, however it seems like they replaced them with newer ones which don't have them anymore.

There are plenty of people who suck at them, just as there are people who suck driving at cars and motorcycles. I might be OK to having a permitting system, but as well all know people still crash. Having an outright ban on scooters I think is stupid. Making all of society behave like the lowest common denominator is not a great policy.

Sounds like you need segregated cycle lanes for then to ride on.

We’ve started to get some in Atlanta, but only in the center of town. I live out in the suburbs. I haven’t been able to try them out yet because the every time I’ve ridden into town the lane was filled with half a dozen delivery vans.

> The way electric scooters were handled in Atlanta was an absolute nightmare

Is there an example of a city who has handled them correctly? Your description describes every implementation I've seen thus far.

Paris and rome are great examples from my perspective.

> Paris

With 2000 escooter accidents and 20+ deaths idk if we can call it a great example

Now do car deaths. If 20 is the threshold for failure then get all those cars off the roads immediately.

Well, yes go ahead I won't argue against that

edit:

I checked the numbers, ~6000 accidents, ~40 deaths

Knowing that it includes escooters as they're motorised vehicles, and given the number of cars vs escooters I'd say you're muuuuch more likely to get wrecked on a escooter than anything else you could use on the road. Bicycles have the same deaths stats as escooters but in Paris we have

450k+ cars 500k+ bikes 15k escooters

Wow, I'm surprised the annual car deaths in Paris are so low. Your vehicles are much better behaved than they are in the US, where car deaths are rampant. NYC for instance experiences >200 deaths caused by cars/trucks every year, and that's a relatively low rate relative to our population size compared to basically any other large American city (all of which are much more car-dependent).

Wow so e-scooters in Paris are net negative for society.

Over what period of time? In a year, those numbers don't strike me as terrible and would need to be compared against the alternatives to draw a directionally valid conclusion.

Zurich and to some extent Paris. The key is to have bike lanes and designated areas where the scooters can be dropped.

Chicago has both of these, but it doesn't stop people from still riding them on the sidewalk and acting terrible.

They don't seem to be an issue in Chicago at least from my perspective. It wasn't a free for all though, they had two pilot programs and they are banned from the downtown/Loop area which is the highest density area of the city. Scooters must be attached to a fixed object like a light pole/street sign/etc. Also it helps that Divvy (Lyft) retrofitted their bicycle docks to allow scooter docking as well.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/05/10/electric-scooters-ar...

Seems basically fine in Liverpool. I've not used them, but they don't seem to block pavements and I've only ever seen a few driven by loons. Certainly never felt at risk as a pedestrian or cyclist by one.

Their popularity has killed off a previous bike hire scheme, which is a bit of a pity, but they are a lot handier...

Same thing happened in Miami - it was a great idea to have them because it really did help relieve congestion amongst the downtown and financial districts.

Then they got banned because people are idiots and rode them idiotically and left them everywhere.

The city then brought them back, put caps on their speed, forced them to be rode only on streets and financially incentivized people to leave them in predetermined drop-off areas. It lasted about 2 weeks before that was shown to not work, because, again, people didn't really pay attention to the rules (and some of the rules, such as banning them from sidewalks, are outright dumb due to the fact that dangerous wild driving on main roads is celebrated in Miami).

It really is unfortunate just like you said - because they were a real asset to public mobility.

What I don't understand is why its so hard to have designated drop off points every block or so. The scooter vendors should be responsible for putting them in appropriate places (which might mean renting the space if needed).

Then use some geofencing to fine people who fail to park/etc them properly.

Sure, allowing people to drop them off in the middle of a congested sidewalk is easy on the asshole doing it, and the companies might have a bit less revenue because its inconvenient to park them properly, but so what. They might be able to make some percentage of the fine back if people still refuse to comply.

The sidewalk is public space, they have _LESS_ rights as a corp to be there trying to profit off it than the citizens walking the sidewalk IMHO.

The ire towards Marta in Atlanta would be significantly less if there were cutouts for buses (Ubers or delivery vehicles) at all.

From a visitors perspective, I flew down for two days at the state capital, and used a scooter liberally riding around downtown, and the campus of Georgia state university. I did not see the littering of sidewalks at all. I saw people riding scooters in the street, and on the sidewalks, but even with a lot of people I didn’t see anything of what you’re speaking of.

Scooters are great, they are low-cost easy way to get around. I think anger in Atlanta towards the scooters, is similar to why Marta will never go up 75.

To be fair, the issue is probably not going to be as evident downtown. Go over to the east side in old fourth ward or inman park and I think you'd have come to a different conclusion.

The minimum outcome (after deaths) should have been that Crescent and N Highland bar districts closed to through traffic weekend nights after 9 (and after sporting events), and all public transit buses get 360 degree cameras.

Instead, we have bars (RiRa and Hand In Hand were unable to afford leases pre pandemic) shutting down, street drifters, crime, and significant amounts of drunk driving.

Ive always wondered how electric scooters would fare if they were speed limited. Something like 6-9MPH (~15km/hr) . It's still much much faster than walking, but still about 1/2 the top speed currently observed.

This is pretty much the case all across Europe, where they're limited to 20-25km/h.

This seems like a good general solution. Cars should be capped to similar speeds in dense areas! Especially given their large mass.

That was the case when scooters were brought back in Miami after initially being banned.

It was a terrible idea, because the city had 2 mandates to allow them to come back - 1. Speed caps (10mph), and 2. mandating that all scooters were banned from sidewalks.

If you know anything about how terrible Miami drivers are, you'll quickly realize that those mandates were designed to make the scooter idea fail. Forcing someone to go 10mph on a busy multi-lane road known for bad drivers is a death wish.

There’s very little pedestrian traffic in Atlanta so the sidewalk riding didn’t bother me.

This is also a city where the police have done nothing to stop people riding go carts and stuff on the streets disrupting traffic and hurting people. Or tent clusters on sidewalks and off ramps.

So it was weird they banned scooters and allow things with no benefit to the city.

There’s also an angle that the city is really big on pushing their boondoggle public transport streetcar project and didn’t like cheaper and more environmentally friendly options available for the public.

I think Atlanta banned the scooters because the companies didn’t pay off the right locals. They could have tried to fix the issues and work with the scooter companies.

> pushing their boondoggle public transport streetcar project and didn’t like cheaper and more environmentally friendly options available for the public.

Yeah I wish more people would recognize this. Many "transit activists" are basically just lobbyists for the regional MTA/MTDs and want to minimize competition.

people are still throwing them wherever they die.. I feel awful for the workers that go by at night to find/recharge them when I see them strewn in the most inexplicably-off-sidewalk locations in piedmont park, etc.

Why do you feel awful for the workers, particularly? I assume they are hired to do exactly that? As jobs go it doesn't sound too terrible.

The son of my best friend face planted and had to have facial reconstructive surgery after a crash.

The year before the pandemic I spent each day on my walk to/from work arguing with scooter drivers about them being on the sidewalk and how dangerous it was. A child was hit by one in my area and seriously hurt.

You can say each of those things about cars and it is equally true. You're just acclimated to it.

  Parked on sidewalks: yes
  Blocking crowded streets: yes
  Collisions common: yes
  People getting hurt: yes

Cars/trucks do an extra special addition though: park in a lane because you're delivering something, or, ya know, doing something outside of the vehicle.

I've reported hundreds of cars parking in the bicycle lane this year alone..

Has anything happened from it?

Some news articles from me and other activists doing stuff has led to it becoming a higher priority in the department. So twice as many ticketed for it this year than earlier years in my city.

Still, the problem is that it's possible. Paint isn't infrastructure.

Do cars collide with people on sidewalks that frequently?

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/08/03/two-pedestrians-are-k...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/09/18/slaughter-of-the-inno...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2013/11/11/three-killed-by-curb-...

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2013/11/04/charles-hynes-brings-...

Now show your work. Give me all the fatal electric scooter crash stories.

I was questioning the claim that cars hit people as frequently as scooters do on sidewalks. It seemed unlikely to me, but I don't live in a major city. I appreciate you taking the time to share links. I read each and they're sad stories, particularly the one involving a child that was hit by a vehicle pulling into a driveway. I think it's pretty undeniable that car accidents will be more fatal than electric scooters, but that was never really a question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com