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Comment by twelve40 | Hacker News Reader

but... nobody seems to be talking about banning bicycles?

I work in Paris but live in the suburbs (I wasn't asked to vote). I use neither scooter nor bikes (I walk and use public transport).

My anecdotal experience is that those scooters (as in "trotinette" in French, not what we call "scooter" in French) where a plague, drivers are completely careless and dangerous and despite the law, they where always parked in the middle of the street at annoying places. I have no such griefs against bikes, even if they are much more numerous (I have other complaints again those, like the fact they don't respect traffic lights, but it's far from being so annoying).

The overwhelming support of Parisians to remove them is not a surprise (they would get a huge backlash if they wanted to do the same with bikes, which kind of prove the fact that they cannot be put in the same boat).

Also there is the ecology argument which Parisians are typically somewhat concerned with (those crap scooter were fragile - so they had a short life expectancy despite having a large impact to build because of the battery and electronic - and the operators had no infrastructure to charge them cleanly - which means that overall they were probably much more ecologically harmful that even cars)

They are banned from sidewalks.

Yet I see people riding bikes on sidewalks, usually on busy roads without bike lanes. Doubt the police bother ticketing them anymore than they do people riding scooters on sidewalks or without helmets. At least where I’m from.

In the U.K. out of london the vast majority of vehicles on sidewalks are cars. They are explicitly banned from driving on them except to enter adjacent property, yet nothing is ever done, and dozens are killed every year by those drivers.

E scooters are just as banned from sidewalks as bikes?

There's scooters and scooters. It's a bit of a misnomer but there are electric scooters that are like a Vespa scooter ('Absolute beginners') and there are electric scooters that are the ones that your kid would ride when they're 5 or so (plank with two wheels, you stand on the plank and 'scoot' with your other leg). The e-scooter of the latter variety is what is of concern here, ~20kg + rider moving at ~20kph (sometimes faster).

The former is definitely banned from sidewalks (though they are often parked there), the other is used on sidewalks quite frequently, in spite of that not being legal. They have shitty small wheels and are pretty dangerous for both rider and pedestrians.

if 20km/h is a problem, why can't they just mandate a lower limit city-wide. Shared e-scooters are already heavily limited and regulated, physically can't go faster than 10km/h in large chunks of the city center already. Unlike cars or regular bicycles, shared e-scooters can be physically limited to any desired speed with one flip of a central switch. A total ban seems like looking for a scapegoat.

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