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Comment by MichaelCollins | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> [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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

1. Not downhill.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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