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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

'E-scooters have safety risks, let's encourage people back into 2-ton fossil-fuel-burning cars instead!'

If we want a future of EVs, we need to figure out how to include personal light EVs, not just very expensive full-size-car replacements for the wealthy.

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> 'E-scooters have safety risks, let's encourage people back into 2-ton fossil-fuel-burning cars instead!'

You somehow believe that the only options on the table for personal transport is either "2-ton fossil-fuel-burning cars" or the miraculous selfless service sold by a couple of multinationals.

It must be hard to intentionally ignore all the public transportation services in all shapes and forms, like railway, bus services, metro, trams, ride share, and even municipal bike sharing services,

and also ignore other personal transportation modes such as motorcycles, bikes and personal scooters

and also ignore e-car sharing services

and also ignore ride share services like taxicabs and etrikes.

For you, the only choice is either a gas-guzzler or the glorious service provided by a multinational.

Most scooter-haters don't differentiate between personally owned scooters and rental scooters, and personally-owned scooters (likely to be better maintained, more sensibly driven, and not abandoned in the street) will get caught up in the bans.

> Most scooter-haters

Please don't.

There is no such thing as "scooter haters".

Companies like Lime are criticised for their abusive and antisocial business practices of dumping crap on the public space without any concern, criteria or care, and pretend everyone around them to just suck up the externalities to validate their business model.

No one cares if you ride your whatever on roads or bike lanes. People care when you dump your crap all over the place and get them in the way of everything. You'd hear the exact same complains if instead of escooters you dumped washing machines.

Grind that axe in another thread.

Youths in Berlin are NOT riding 2-ton cars. The minimum age for unrestricted licenses in Germany is 18.

In Paris and Berlin the alternatives are probably bikes, metro, or walking...

The 'Bicycles are fine but e-scooters are awful' argument comes up a lot, but doesn't make much sense. E-bikes are often ignored or just effectively invisible.

(I'll agree that rental scooter services have unique problems, but we shouldn't allow personally-owned scooters to be banned along with them)

The big question on whether e-scooters are great or awful really depends on what they're replacing. Bikes? Then they're awful. But cars? Then they're fantastic. But which is it?

In Amsterdam, my impression is that fat-tired e-bikes have become the standard replacement for mopeds, which I think is an improvement.

My read of the article is that it’s only about rental scooters. Personal scooters aren’t covered, and remain allowed.

This is good.

In the UK, personal scooters are still illegal, and the problems with rental schemes seem to be being used to keep it that way :(

So sad that metro workers go on strike so frequently.

"e-scooters" produce an ungodly amount of battery waste.

Nothing compared to what a world of full-size EVs will produce when they start piling up on scrapheaps in more significant numbers. (Ideally we need recycling solutions for both)

But moving people around on 20kg electric scooters has got to be a lot more efficient than doing it in 2000kg electric cars.

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