Madrid bans hired e-scooters over safety concerns | Hacker News Reader

Madrid bans hired e-scooters over safety concerns

lemonde.fr

31 pointsjmsflknr47 comments

>ban all rental e-scooters from October because of the risk they pose to pedestrians

>injury-inducing street litter

Do cars next, I dare you.

> injury-inducing street litter

If you abandon a car in the middle of the road across two lanes, you'll fairly likely see relatively hefty fines, possibly lose your car. This hurts you, the abandoning party directly.

If you abandon a rental e-scooter in the same way, you'll most likely have no repercussions, and at worst the cheap e-scooter is forfeit which doesn't impact you, the abandoning party at all, and not really the e-scooter company either since they're most likely on a VC funded mission to try to flood the market with cheap e-scooter rentals until the competition drowns.

There's some seriously skewed incentives at the root of the rental e-scooter plague.

This. It's a wild west with these e-scoots, and unlike cars they're everywhere. My city has only 100k people and even here they're a huge nuisance.

They are super convenient. Cars are the nuance. We will figure out how to deal with scooters the same way Asian cultures figured out theirs. And the same we we figured out how to socially deal with cell phones.

Straight banning them because a bunch of fuddy duddies who never took one don’t like them is pretty short sighted.

>We will figure out how to deal with scooters the same way Asian cultures figured out theirs.

They did? When? Here in Tokyo, they've only very recently allowed e-scooters to be used.

China?

This seems trivial to address. If you misuse HN, you get your account banned and can no longer post on HN. If you mistreat an Uber driver, you get your account banned and can no longer hail a ride. What stops this system from working with e-scooters?

Suppose you rent a scooter, park it "properly enough", I come by and move it a few feet into an improper parking place. Do you want your account banned for that?

If not, this might not be as "trivial to address" as you first think.

The scooter has gps as well as your phone and they require a photo anyway. The company can check that you ended your ride correctly, what happens after that isn't your liability.

GPS won't help you here, though the photo will. GPS simply isn't anywhere near accurate enough to verify you placed the scooter in spot X, and not 1-2 meters away from spot X where it's now a hazard.

A gyroscope on the scooter and location awareness of the renter’s device seems to take care of that. If the scooter’s gyroscope indicates movement after the renter has returned the scooter and left the premises, then assuming the renter didn’t move it seems pretty safe.

> This seems trivial to address.

Yet it is not.

Cars don’t drive randomly around pedestrians on a sidewalk. Thanks for the concern though, I got knocked out by one of these things and it wasn’t pleasant.

Plus, these things usually stand right on a sidewalk, right in the way of pedestrians.

Good riddance. Hopefully more cities follow.

Why ban them instead of incentivize better behavior?

How. You can’t fix stupid.

Edit: I can think of a way. These things move in a regular traffic. To drive a car, I had to do a driving license. 40 hours with an instructor, a theory test, and a practical exam. How come any clueless chimp can get one of these and ride in traffic? They are dangerous to themselves and others. It’s a celebration when they wear a crash helmet.

So here are my ideas:

1. Require a license for these things.

2. Collect and remove illegally parked scooters. Rental companies know who rode one, they can claim the cost of a scooter removal fee from the rider who parked it illegally. If they are concerned about people randomly moving scooters into illegal parking positions… well, come up with dedicated parking areas where the rider has to bring them back and lock them.

Until then: ban them.

A license for an electrical scooter... It's like getting a (hypothetical) license for a bicycle. Completely unnecessary. No special skills are needed to ride one of these, it's super simple. You should try it sometime. A license won't fix stupid anyway, you just said so yourself.

I don't tell people what they should be doing. Everyone so entitled to tell others how they should go about their lives. But there you go: you should try to understand my argument about these things moving in between the traffic.

But it's interesting you mention a bicycle license. In the 1990s I did one in Poland as a young teenager. It was called "karta rowerowa". Not exactly a license but it taught me about traffic rules and probably saved me from trouble. It was worth it. Some cyclists in Aachen could make use of something similar, maybe they'll know that cycling 5kph in the presence of the StVO VZ 277.1 just aggravates everybody.

Furthermore, I have learned today that in Poland until the age of 18 one is required to have the cycling card (karta rowerowa), or a moped driving license. „Karta rowerowa” is a one day training where one learns traffic rules, signs, and proper technique in navigating the traffic. Of course barely anyone checks for it. But if one gets involved in an accident, there will be financial and insurance consequences.

You don’t need special skills to drive a car.

A big part of licensing is that you can take it away. Cyclists and scooter riders often ignore traffic controls that apply to them. We ignore it because the likelihood and impact of injury to others is low.

Unfortunately, 2 cannot make the difference between a renter who parked illegally and a renter who parked well but a random person kicked the e-scooter on the ground. I see this a lot with e-bikes in my neighborhood.

People lose the ability to read to the end:

> well, come up with dedicated parking areas where the rider has to bring them back and lock them

I did read to the end but in large European cities those dedicated parking spaces are in contact with the sidewalks and the other parking spaces. Apparently some people enjoy dragging all the nicely parked e-bikes into the ground.

> lock them

I think GP mean lock them to a solid pole, as a bike. Make the pole deliver electricity (non trivial) and you have a recharge station.

That’s what I meant, yes.

Makes sense. I do think that would change the game entirely but the margin of operators goes mmmmmm…

Yes, the profit opportunity before legislating the hell out of it.

In Aachen these things stand right on the sidewalk, often sideways. I’m still young and can easily walk over them but a mother with a stroller or a person on a wheelchair doesn’t have it so easy.

Not having a license is crazy.

I walk daily for exercise and have almost been hit several times by some kid doing crazy things on them.

I would say it is at least once a week I see someone do something stupid on one.

Without needing a license there is nothing to lose for driving stupid.

Comparing these to a bike is obvious bullshit.

The simplest solution is to let scooters have priority in the streets. Aggressively police the aggressive vehicle drivers that are pushing scooters onto walkways. Especially as the car drivers already have a license system.

Imagine how much nicer cities would be if most people drove around on e-bikes and e-scooters instead of cars.

Sure you might have the occasional delivery truck or car but it would generally be much safer and more pleasant for everyone.

It'd be quite ironic if the US pulls this off in their cities and European cities become car-infested urban jungles.

They appear to be well underway:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18568456

This is a measure to encourage EC, not ban cars at all.

In certain areas of the city, no motor vehicles are allowed to enter, ICE or EV or hybrid. Only pedestrians

This happens in other cities too. Sidewalks, parks, and squares, right?

A short-sighted solution to the problem. You have a fleet of remotely controlled vehicles, information of driver profiles. Limit the speed for beginners to 12 km/h, based on telematics data for careful drivers, outside of busy areas - to 15-20 km / h. Develop bike lines infrastructure.

A complete ban will lead to more people buying their own scooters, which are not limited in speed, as a long-term result - more serious incidents.

The article said this:

> because of the risk they pose to pedestrians

I took it to mean cluttering the sidewalks, not crashes.

Is it about crashes?

City could allocate dedicated areas for parking scooters with white line around it on the floor. Usually you can park 30 scooters in the area, used by a single car. Basically, Krakow implemented this. Parking areas are enforced in the Application (fine would be collected for parking in a random place though the app). You still can park your own scooter in the regular bike parking areas though (I think?). Scooter parkings are pretty much near each bus stop in the city center.

So, basically, no need for a ban.

I don't live in an area with scooters. I never got why the parking/littering was a problem. They know who rode the scooter last = who parked there right? Couldn't they fine the people leaving them in the middle of the sidewalk/dumping them in rivers/whatever?

I ride a private escooter but really detest these rental ones, based on the experience in Melbourne. We'll be banning them too soon.

Private scooters are a thoughtful purchase. Riding them is a thoughtful decision. Most people riding them are not first-timers. So generally those I see on private scooters have helmets and follow the rules.

Rental scooters? Nobody is wearing a helmet, they're being ridden dangerously on footpaths, putting pedestrians at risk. Even at slow speeds they're a danger to pedestrians in a busy city.

It's pretty bad, you just walk around Melbourne on any day and you can see idiots without helmets swerving around pedestrians on Bourke St (a pedestrian only shopping area).

> which are not limited in speed, as a long-term result - more serious incidents.

In the EU they are. Of course 25 km/h is significantly higher than the speeds you mentioned

Here in London, at least in Greenwich where I live the only real problem is how this scooters and bikes get nonchalantly dumped in the middle of the pavement, sometimes on the road or cycle lane. It's absolutely horrible especially for people with mobility problems. Judging by how common this is a third of people who ride these are selfish anti social assholes. There are no punitive measures against this so my town is littered with ebikes and scooters. I'm surprised people here have no problems with that.

How many people have these scooter riders seriously injured per Km ridden? How does it compare to cars?

I am personally concerned by the dozens of people that car drivers kill every year in my city, but we are so accustomed to that carnage that few people even question it.

Just gonna put this here…

“BiciMAD is a bicycle sharing system in Madrid, Spain. It is currently provided by the Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid, a public company owned by the City Council of Madrid.” [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiciMAD

If you are implying that the city banned e scooter rental because it competes with the bike sharing company you are probably wrong. I live in Gent, Belgium, and there is no e scooter sharing, while we have several bike sharing companies.

From what I’ve read Spain has been renaming streets to erase history and over extended on the financial payouts required from divorces. Banning e-scooters sounds like a likely continuation on poorly thought out yet surprisingly strong handed rules.

I have no qualm either way let me know if I’m wrong. I’m constantly surprised by things all over the world I’m not picking on Spain - lovely place.

Ordinary things did a good (slightly comedic) brief history of the scooters a couple of years back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9aeMccUPY0

The simple solution is that e-scooters and other powered vehicles need to face the same enforcement as cars.

If not for tickets, plenty of drivers (including me) would take more liberties on the roads.

Licence plate, fine if you don’t have one, fine if you’re naughty. If only everything were as easy to solve.

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