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Comment by H1Supreme | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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...

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.

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