tandempower

I agree with you that share scooters/bikes shouldn't litter sidewalks, parking lots, roads, highways, or anything else. I think the same about cars. I also have thought of ways for scooters and bikes to be stacked more neatly so they take up less space. I can't do the same for cars and trucks, because they are huge. They require wide lanes and parking spots that have multiplied due to sprawl-development. Still, I think there is a place for automotive transportation, even personal motorized transportation, but it will be easier to make it smaller once autonomous vehicle systems make people feel safer. Currently people want larger vehicles because they expect crashes. They EXPECT crashes! To reduce the volume of all this automotive metal and pavement, people have to become absolutely comfortable that they can walk or bike anywhere without the threat of being smashed by a car or truck. When that happens, it will be much easier to reduce the total volume of metal and pavement, just like it will be possible to reduce the mess of share scooters and bikes once they are equipped with folding handlebars and neatly-stackable designs so that ten or more share bikes/scooters can fit in docking stations every block or two, the same way shopping carts do.

Mobile 155

The simple point is none of the speculation on why people like cars or the size of the cars has anything to do with dock less E-scooters verses dock less E-bikes. Link after link has been posted stating the concerns of people living where this deluge of equipment shows up in the middle of the night and starts blocking normal bike racks, doorways and planters. It doesn't matter if the things are stack-able if people are not picking them up and dropping them off in the same places. None of the complaints people have posted about these scooters has anything to do with big cars and trucks, trains, buses or motorcycles. It has to do with them blocking public access or being parked on private spaces or of someone dumping a product onto the public without license or permission. It has to do with a bad plan. The public will decide how they want to get around town not a startup company that would be just as happy dumping candy flavored E-cigs at news stands. Yes that was hyperbole but I like the comparison.

It isn't like we aren't getting updates on these scooters almost every week.

https://www.cnet.com/news/electric-s...and-accidents/

linberl

They were all over Venice, Ca. when I was there and everyone was using them, kids, adults, even seniors. But they were transportation uses, not fitness. They're quick and fast to get you from A to B. Easy to ride side by side with friends to talk. As a cyclist, they were incredibly annoying on the bike paths where they were supposedly illegal. But in a flat city, I can totally see the appeal. Faster than walking, zero setup or issues with "fitment", zero skill required, and zero sweat. Most of the riders were very fit people who probably chose to get their exercise in ways other than cycling so scooters meet their transport needs and that's all they care about. And they were not in the way where they were parked, I guess their streets are plenty wide enough.

Dahon.Steve

You know what worries me about the electric kick scooter? The fact that you need more safety gear than a bicycle. Each year scores of people are injured and they are all over the internet. The reason I travel slowly on a kick scooter is for this reason. You need thick gloves, knee pads and a helmet because it's not if but when you are going over the fall.

I still think they need to establish a "docking" system similar to bike share programs. Also, information about safety equipment like gloves and knee pads should be required and mandatory! People think the helmet is mandatory but read all the stories about people breaking their legs and arms. Don't get me wrong, you should wear a helmet but gloves are also necessary.

tandempower

Cars and trucks have had a hundred years to fade into the background, but they actually litter public spaces more now than in the past because there are more of them and more pavement to drive and park them on. You know the old saying: "if you can't beat them join them," well that's what happened, but it doesn't mean they stopped being a problem.

tandempower

Unfortunately, the more safety equipment is required, the more users are deterred by the hassle. When they require helmets for everyone riding in cars and trucks to protect them from airbags, dashboards, and windshields, that is the day I will start considering the issue of requiring helmets for vehicles that go as fast as a person can run.

Mobile 155

That still has nothing to do with scooters and their acceptance by communities or becoming an eye sore like abandoned grocery carts. There is still plenty of evidence they are using a bad business practice that offends many communities. That was the original question of the debate.and an assertion that they would be even more popular than bikes. It has "nothing" to do with cars. It has everything to do with product dumping and community standards. The links addressing piles of abandoned scooters, impounded scooters and injuries caused because of scooters is the subject. Links have been posted to address the trepidation. All seem to be ignored so there is no real debate. Are you suggesting the problems should be ignored because a very small group wants them even if they are a problem?

dedhed

Do you anything about the public? There could be a garbage can on every corner and they'd still throw their trash on the ground. They aren't going to fold and stack anything.

tandempower

There is a general cultural bias toward automotive cultural norms because they have become so normalized through the last century. Complaints about them have always just been ignored for the most part because there was big money in expanding the fleet and the infrastructure to drive and park it on. Now, in an effort to find ways of making alternatives to driving available, these scooter and bike shares have come on line, so they should grow and reduce the number of cars on the road. They are basically motor-cars but with the minimum footprint possible, so they take up the least possible amount of lane space and parking space of any motor-vehicle. That is a good thing and it shouldn't be dismissed because it is difficult to find a place for them to operate and park relative to the current automotive-biased infrastructure in place.

The only reason some people don't want to use them is because they are biased in favor of driving. If driving wasn't an option, I guarantee you a lot of these people would choose e-scooters over bikes because they don't want to pedal or walk. It's only because driving is an option, i.e. the status quo option, that people react against new alternatives. You keep arguing in favor of maintaining ubiquitous driving as a standard, but you can only do that by denying all the problems that come with widespread automotive culture.

tandempower

If they get fined/charged for not doing it, they will; the same as they avoid parking in spots where they will get towed or otherwise fined.

Machka 

Well, that's wishful thinking!!

tandempower

People park cars in no-parking zones and get towed. Most don't because they don't want to get towed. Fees and fines don't work for everyone, but they do for the most part.

Mobile 155

Are you now promoting a designated parking and pick up place for these scooters? Like a docking spot?

tandempower

It depends on how cooperative local governments and businesses are to allow docks at frequent and convenient locations. If the docks are going to be limited and cause inconvenience to users, they are going to undermine the purpose of the share vehicles.

All I'm really saying is that scooters could be stacked neatly and their steering stems clipped together and bikes can have folding handlebars and pedals so they can be stacked neatly. Whether the stacking occurs at designated docks or whether users are just given a discount for stacking their share scooter/bike against another one nearby, either way it will keep them from sprawling out all over the place the way cars and trucks do.

Mobile 155

And the good news keeps coming: And not a car company in sight. https://slate.com/technology/2018/12...vandalism.html

tandempower

It's not necessarily the car companies organizing this vandalism. Do you realize GM just announced plans to close several plants? There are people who take note of such trends and get angry at alternative technology for causing what they consider as economic losses. That is totally anti-competitive market logic, but if they decide to retaliate by throwing scooters in lakes and come up with the pseudo-environmentalist idea that they can publish articles about scooters being lake pollution, that's their freedom of speech.

In reality, cars, trucks, and the pavement devoted to them have caused environmental harm light years beyond scooters getting thrown in lakes by pro-automotive vandals.

Mobile 155

tandempower

Cultural reactions against alternatives to automotive dominance render any growing form of alternative transportation subject to resistance. The automotive culture just needs to back off and allow change to take place. By pushing, as you do, for submission to biased public and government, you are asking the alternative transportation culture to fail until it gains acceptance. It can't gain acceptance as long as it is doomed to failure by public/governmental resistance.

You are just a fighter. You fight against enemies to protect the automotive culture. When are you going to stop that?

Mobile 155

You cannot force people to like what they don't like. You cannot force people to accept what they aren't interested in or they find objectionable. If people back off to the point of ignoring the system in still fails. If people back off and look to another solution the system still fails. Who do you think is resisting it in all of these links? If the public has to interface with the technology the public and not the vendor has the right to accept or reject as they see fit. Link after link list the specific objections by the very people the system in being foisted on. The reaction of the users is all that matters not the desires of the people looking for investors. And no I am not fighting against people opposed to the automotive industry. But I will resist many of the ideas you post as not relatable to me or my friends. That puts us on different sides.Looking at several months of posts I would say the sound of dirt hitting the top of a wooden box would be the first signs that I have given up disagreeing with your assertions. To be brutally honest most people I know are not interested in rolling down the street on a kids scooter. They might not object seeing others rolling up and down the sidewalk on one but it just doesn't interest them. Look up how people commute to work. See where the studies show Cycling, scooters don't even rate.


You view me as fighting for the automotive lifestyle. However I have been playing with the alternative to ICE since college. I view me as trying to see more people moving to a successful and comfortable life. I view you as a minimalist that wants to drag everyone down to that minimalist life. You have even stated that you believe we need to suffer more, in a post to Machka, where you said you found suffering necessary. I will not try to tell you what is the best way to live or what is best for the world. It isn't my place. I will defend successful living and human comfort as much as we can render to others and ourselves. .

jon c. 

I would certainly agree that any product which the public refuses to accept is doomed to failure. You aren't going to sell people what they don't want.

Mobile 155

There you have it.

tandempower

Who wants to force anyone into anything? Mass driving is a problem, so people can choose whatever alternative suits them. The challenge is making the alternatives readily convenient and available so people don't keep defaulting to driving, which they are forced to do, which many don't like, aren't interested in, and/or find objectionable yet still accept because they don't see any viable alternative.

People are trying to create alternatives so everyone won't be forced to drive.

When driving is not an option, do they choose to walk, bike, or ride a scooter?

Minimalism is as far as you can go to support sustainability and environmental restoration without sacrificing your health or life. You will never understand this because you don't seem to have the capacity to detach from non-necessities, nor the ability to reason why and how it can be a good and satisfying thing to do.

Mobile 155

If you have followed the general tone and direction of this thread and many others I think you will see which one of us is disconnected from what capacities more of the people want. From cities all over the country the desires and the direction of your fellow citizens is being expressed. You have not demonstrated a love people have for the new scooter movement. You have not shown a desire to cut back on what you neighbor is making or what they are spending their transportation money on to be scooter riders or according to the last national census has there been a giant leap in people commuting to work by bike. We have posted studies and even cycling is one of the least popular means of transportation. The difference between us is I don't care why. I live in a world where a person can ride their bike in their house if they like and take a helicopter to work each day of they can afford it because that is their right. I live in a world where my neighbors make up society and that society can decided what they want about transportation without my help. If they wanted to shoot themselves from cannons and get caught in a net that is what they should be allowed to do. But if their cannons or nets are ion my property or blocking my property I am happy if we as neighbors can decided to toss such impediments into the trash heap and charge the people using them the cost of removal. That is the world the posts on communities fighting back against scooters not ordered or asked for are living in as well.


The concept is simple, the scooters are being dumped into a lot of communities. The communities find them to be a problem. The community can object to the dumping of the scooters in their communities. The government should work to address the concerns of the populace with the dumping. And when the system works the scooters are fined, removed or banned until or unless they live up the desires of the community. I will vote with the community every time.

tandempower

If I cared more about majority culture than reality, I wouldn't LCF, would I?

In your mind, there is no moral responsibilities for individuals to make choices for any other reason than the desire to pursue whatever they want for whatever reason.

In your mind, people can rule with stupidity and resist even the awareness of their own stupidity as such. You fight against everything, including truth, reality, and self-awareness - in favor of people defining whatever they want however they want as long as they have the majoritarian power to resist anyone who dares to say otherwise.

The communities are subtly manipulated to banish these scooters. I guarantee you that the people in local governments where these scooter/bike shares are being suppressed are at some level in cahoots with local and translocal automotive interests. What I find so fascinating about it all is to see how vulnerable governmental authority is to suppression of liberty in favor of economic control.

jon c. 

There is absolutely no reason to believe this is true.