How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Electric Scooters
nytimes.comI live in SM/Venice and the rise of e-scooters has been amazing. The only problem is that they can't keep up with the demand and as a result, sometimes deliver a poor experience (hunting for a working/charged one after 5pm can be tough).
The problem that people have with e-scooters is that they're new & different. So many people (and local governments) hate change and do what they can to control it. Officials and luddites alike complain about the problems that cars cause (like congestion, pollution, drunk drivers, etc). However, when the free-market offers a solution to the problem that consumers (locals and tourists alike) love, the folks who want to run our lives and tell us what we can and can't do, try to regulate them as much as possible (potentially killing the business or hurting the adoption).
Like most things you can get to the bottom of it if you follow the money (aka taxes). Cities (like SF) will offer e-scooter licenses (aka medallions) so they and their cronies can make these companies kiss the ring, limit the supply and take a big cut of the profits (which will ultimately hurt consumers... aka us).
The problem that I have with scooters is that I can't push my baby's stroller down the street five blocks without running into one left flopped in the middle of the sidewalk. I can't imagine what people in wheelchairs are going through.
New and different is fine, inconsiderate and inconvenient is not.
Indeed. The scooters are fine. The bad manners are a whole other thing. At least once per week on my walk to work I’m pulling scooters off the middle of the sidewalk or out of a handicap conveyance.
A lot of the bad behavior on the road is the same as cyclists in the area, except these scooters are a lot faster than the beach cruisers and fixies you regularly see.
Yea, we can solve this the same way we solve just about every other minor problem, by making it a social norm. We should say something to people who leave them in this state (plus they should design the scooters to stay standing more easily, but these companies are likely as incentivized to do that as scooters that fall break and need repairs).
Side note, sidewalks are generally pretty terrible for people in wheelchairs... cars pulled in across in driveways, curbs without transitions (think of anytime you put the front wheels of your stroller on the curb and lift the back up... how does someone in a wheelchair execute that same move?... they can't), roots, the general disrepair that many sidewalks suffer (terrible in Venice).
Easy fix. Allocate a few percent of street parking spots to dockless scooters and bikes.
Those already exist in Santa Monica. The “dockless” part is what drives the issue. The docked bikes usually end up where they should. The dockless scooters and bikes are put anywhere and everywhere, even if appropriate parking is available. The solution Bird came up with was to pay people who capture their scooters more for challenging returns.
Sorry, I guess I meant have way more spaces for dockless options than we have for docked bikes. Just like dockless cars can park in many different parking spaces.
Could be a reputation system implemented, I'm guessing each scooter has a unique identifier, folks could report a scooter left imporperly. This would hurt the user whom left it there's score.
Heck, it's already halfway implemented in China.
Hm, is not the problem that scooters should be on the street, not on sidewalk? Licenses will be needed only because of impolite drivers.
This isn't safe in all areas. Besides, if an area has a bike path and the scooter is travelling slowly enough (or if it is really an e-bike), this is probably the best option. If you are going vehicle speeds, the road should be fine.
However, this does not solve the problem of parking. It would seem prudent to make sure there is clearly marked parking for the scooters, with fines or whatnot when folks don't follow it. This would be made a great deal easier if scooters have to be registered with plates, and more work without it - especially if you want to confiscate the bike.
Riders are fraidies, though.
> There is no doubt that scooters could be safer if helmet laws were better enforced and basic safety training was provided before riding.
Helmet laws arguably does not work very well for bicycles.[1][2] Don't make the mistake of thinking it will work better for scooters (if you can't back it up).
Still not sure why I'd chose this over a bicycle. A bicycle gives me daily exercise and doesn't need a battery to operate. Also, it runs well on ice and in 20 cm of snow when winter commuting. I guess that's more than you can say about scooters.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWhMEkMtLy0
[2] https://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5720762/stop-forcing-people-to...
Can you go to a bar and leave your bike inside?
I do that all the time with my scooter. (I don't have an electric one, just a normal push scooter).
Portability is a huge advantage that scooters have over bikes. I take my scooter literally everywhere I go, anywhere in San Francisco. It is actually 100% of the time.
And If I don't want to scooter home, I just call an Uber and put it in the back.
> Can you go to a bar and leave your bike inside?
That's a good thing. But leaving it locked outside and walking ten meters into the bar works fine.
> I don't have an electric one, just a normal push scooter
How far do you commute on that thing? Yesterday I rode 15 km to a lake to meet some friends. When leaving I felt like riding more so I took a 30 km detour to a natures reserve before I began pedaling home. The freedom bicycles give me is why I truly love them so much. No electronic black box with limited range stopping me, just simple mechanics and my legs.
Another great thing is that it can carry the things I need to take with me (usually a lot). Racks and panniers are awesome and takes carrying the load off my body.
And yeah, I get to exercise while having fun.
Yeah, I had a folding bike but it was still really heavy.
Also a folding bike is a much worse riding experience than a full size bike but bike theft is absolutely endemic in my city.
Maybe I should try an e-scooter, some of my colleagues have them.
I can’t find any electric scooter DUI records on a quick skim. I wonder how this will play out?
Same for me but replace “scooter” with “27in longboard”.
> Helmet laws arguably does not work very well for bicycles.
Yeah, the evidence is actually pretty compelling that requiring bike helmets is a net negative to society. It's unfortunate how little it gets questioned.
I'd love to see some data-backed analysis of this, links would be appreciated.
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5720762/stop-forcing-people-to... is sprinkled with sciency hyperlinks.
That article is light on actual data, lots of lines like this:
> Many people also suggest that wearing a helmet makes cyclists themselves less cautious in their riding, increasing the chance of an accident.
So if you are willing to believe a data point like that, then clearly helmets make people less safe.
Having been in a high speed accident, a helmet saved my life.
The article also states that walking is no more dangerous than riding a bike, though physics disagrees.
>> That article is light on actual data, lots of lines like this:
> Many people also suggest that wearing a helmet makes cyclists themselves less cautious in their riding, increasing the chance of an accident.
That very sentence linked to http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/2/89.full , which indeed lacks data.
There's are points to be made (with some data) though, like: http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf
> Having been in a high speed accident, a helmet saved my life.
I'm glad you're alive. If you're in a serious accident a helmet is a very good thing to have. No one argues that. The point is that serious accidents are very rare. People seem a lot less likely to ride a bike if they need to wear a helmet—I wear a helmet 95% of the time and I do not understand why—and the health benefits from cycling far outweigh the risks. The article even says: "Helmet proponents are right about one thing: If you're in a serious accident, then wearing a helmet makes the odds of a head injury significantly lower — by somewhere between 15 and 40 percent."
> The article also states that walking is no more dangerous than riding a bike, though physics disagrees.
I believe that is because stats are by "per kilometre travelled" (at least the 2012 British study). People usually bike longer distances than they walk.
Another alternative is a https://hovding.se/. A lot of people in Stockholm wear one, but they are quite expensive.
My problem with biking during the (work)day is the sweating. I'm all for getting the exercise but 1) I don't have a shower at the office and 2) my co-workers wouldn't really like me smelling like a football team. I think it really depends on weather conditions, location and distance.
So much this. All of the people on reddit that are like "I commute 25 miles to work on my bicycle" and all I can think is "so you're the asshole stinking up the office eh?"
You must be doing something wrong. IF you have problems: Ride at a steady pace, not high intensity. Wash before riding and wear merino (not synthetic garments). If there are still problems, change your shirt on the bathroom when you arrive. If you're still stinking up the office, I'm afraid I can't help. :)
And oh, 41% of Copenhagers ride their bikes to work, yet I don't find that the city stinks.
The common joke about buying a motorcycle is that "buy honey I will save money on gas" but it suffers the same issues for most that bicycles and scooters have which you mentioned.
This isn't about cities not favoring alternate modes of transportation but the realities of our daily lives. From distance to job, some time cause by having to change employers, to have so many things to do and little time to get them done. So once you start adding on the weather, the needs to carry stuff, or changes to your schedule, alternate modes quickly fall by the way side.
my issue with escooters is not the tech but the items highlighted in the article but I am not nearly as forgiving. I am not sure I want them in the bike lane and you know someone will ride on sidewalks. throw in no helmets or enforcement of requirements for one and its a recipe to hurt both riders and pedestrians. plus when people don't own it they don't respect it. not for all people but there are more than enough who just act out wrongly. there are stories of people dumping them in rivers, dumpsters, and even just breaking them. In a perfect society...
Body odour is caused by the bacteria that colonize your sweat. By taking a shower just before you leave, you knock those bacteria back far enough to give you quite a few stink-free hours so that you should be able to make it through the work day.
Secondly, make sure you wear natural fabrics. Lycra and polyster and all of the artificial fabrics stink a lot worse than cotton or wool.
> Lycra and polyster and all of the artificial fabrics stink a lot worse than cotton or wool.
^ This is the line to remember. Synthetic garments indeed make me smell like a football team. Cotton or merino = no nothing (verified by GF and coworkers).
That depends on you commute I guess, I spend about 50 minutes on a bicycle, and it's enough to just have a change of clothes, but I do shower before riding a bicycle and wear clean clothes after the bike ride.
Take shower right before the ride.
> Also, it runs well on ice and in 20 cm of snow when winter commuting.
That's the one time when I won't use my bike. Rain worries me as the rim brakes on my city get really weak, so I slow down a fair bit, but I am scared on snow and ice. Fortunately we don't get much where I live.
> * Also, it runs well on ice and in 20 cm of snow when winter commuting.*
I've biked to work in ice and snow quite a bit. It does run, but I wouldn't say it runs well. I usually opt for the bus if the weather is that bad.
Ice, no problems at all with good studded tires. We usually have icy conditions for up to 5 months. A bit of snow just slows things down.
I like riding in the winter because the bike roads are usually less congested. :)
The biggest complaint about these scooters seems to be that they are left in the middle of sidewalks/etc.
This is my biggest complaint about shopping carts too. That they are left all over the parking lot in parking spaces, propped on curbs and so on. You don't even have to walk back to the store! Cart racks are never far away. It's a huge pet peeve.
But I've never blamed shopping carts or thought we shouldn't have them because of it. I blame lazy/inconsiderate people. How do we solve this problem?
Here in Spain shopping carts require a coin (normally 1 or 2 euro) to be taken. As a result, almost everyone leaves them at the cart racks (because they don't want to lose the coin). Having "scooter racks" that worked in a similar way could probably help, but then you'd need to walk to a nearby rack to get a scooter, increasing the probabilities of having to walk longer distances to get one.
When I parked my lime scooter the other day (before they were all removed from SF) it asked me to take a picture of the scooter to help others find it. I think a similar coin return situation (ie a small credit for their next ride or discount off of current ride) could be implemented with this picture taking. Show them where you parked and then if they can see that you parked it inappropriately they can start tracking bad actors and do something to intervene. This would most likely take the form of banning certain people by phone number or drivers license.
Norway also has the coin system at most places. So does Aldi grocery stores in the states - and their carts almost always get returned. It works.
And it sometimes brings out the good in folks as well. I've often given someone smaller change for their freshly-emptied cart and had folks simply pay for my cart when I was searching for change. (This was especially so in the US as I don't use the metal carts nearly as often here).
UK carts commonly have a wheel lock that engages when the cart rolls out of bounds. That stops the casual seepage of hardware. Won't work for scooters, alas.
Some also have small cash deposit (routinely spoofed with a similar-size token, but that doesn't matter, the tokens cost about the same as the coin). Maybe adding one of these and a reward prompt ("Did you park nice? Well done!")?
How do we solve this problem?
When I see people leave a cart in the wrong place I pick it up and put it where it belongs. Hopefully they'll be watching me. Sometimes you can only do what you can do in that moment.
Why not ask them to do it? No need to be confrontational. "Hey, could you put that in the rack just down the street? It gets in the way of disabled people, families with strollers, the elderly... Thanks."
In the U.K. (where I don’t live) the supermarkets used to have you put 1 or 2 pounds in them, which you got back when you took it back.
You would be amazed what people will do for a small amount of money.
Jeez, what is it with the fiat proclamation of dorkiness?! First the atlantic and now nytimes. Like I commented on that article, this must be a coastal thing.
This article goes even further to declare the aesthetics dopey. really? they look just fine thank you very much.
It must be a literary habit to latch on to some minority negative opinion, so as to establish trust, then to argue the positives.
Someone is doing some really good submarining. Bird, most likely.
Not as dorky as a segway, but definitely dorkier than a bike. Scooters have a long history of dorkiness, see razers in skate parks.
That's a fascinating idea. Since reading PG's essay I've thought I was quite good at spotting submarining, but that wouldn't have occurred to me.
Promoting a negative opinion seems risky though. After all, isn't the dork factor widely regarded as being what killed the Segway?
Do you have any examples of when the "negative submarine" has been done successfully?
The segway died because it was trivial to tip it over without a lot of practice and training, which is not ideal for adults, and it cost thousands of dollars to purchase.
The total outlay for a 1.5M Bird trip is a buck 90, and you can use one if you've ever ridden a push scooter or bicycle as a child.
Here in Singapore they have a very bad reputation after some nasty accidents with pedestrians.
They're banned from the streets and sidewalks are a joke locally. I think they would be an awesome way to commute if you have bike lanes to share?
Yeah, I can see that for sure. This week I came about two inches from serious injury. Some yutz was riding one of the new powered rental scooters downhill on a narrow sidewalk. He was easily doing 25kph. I was talking with a friend as we waited outside a restaurant; he brushed past me just as I was stepping back. If I had done it a second earlier, I would have been right in his path with nowhere for him to go.
Bike lanes could be a better place for them. But a lot of the riders I see are tourists or scooter novices. A busy urban bike lane is not the right place to learn a new mode of transport.
I don't understand the thought process around scooters and ebikes here in Singapore. They say they want a car-lite society and then make decisions that guarantees to make this difficult.
I agree. The city feels _designed_ for cars. There are lots of streets that are more or less not crossable in CBD without walking forever into one direction and try and find a pedestrian crossing.
Drivers are aggressive to the point that I nearly got ran over on zebra crossings multiple times.
Sidewalks are okay for pedestrians, but the (nice) "tables outside" culture paired with the (arguably nice as well) "everything is sheltered from sun and rain" attitude leading to lots of pillars/narrow ways it's nearly impossible to ride a bike/scooter.
Seeing as most roads are 2 lanes each direction i think they should just reappropriate one of the lanes for bikes, ebikes and escooters. They would only need to do that on core routes which are already catered for cars by expressways. They should also introduce a test and license that let's competent riders ride at more practical speeds than the 25kmh. I already ride my bike at speeds of up to 40kmh on the flat under my own power.
I wonder how much of the bad rep locally is the special kind of FUD that sometimes accompanies new technology, and how much of it is a mix of bad actors and inadequate law enforcement. A lot of these accidents were cases of assholes riding escooters.
The escooters aren't banned from sidewalks, but I don't know what the alternative is here. They're too slow to be on the roads and like you suggest, we don't have dedicated bike lanes throughout the island.
That said I know of people who can commute to work through the PCN and I'm so jealous of them.
I'd say it's a bad local situation (no bike lanes to speak off, narrow crowded sidewalks) and bad attitude.
The joke is that a scooter comes with a Bluetooth speaker, playing EDM music at full volume.. and that joke is somewhat based on the situation here.
There were a number of really bad accidents as well, those scooters can be really heavy. Run over a kid or an old woman, bonus points for driving off afterwards, and the bad rep is hard to avoid.
I like the tech, the climate here would be quite ideal for these things. Unfortunately there's no good place to ride them so far..
I would say, that's because a few people ride them like they are super badass, blasting loud shitty music and going at indecent speed on the sidewalk (which is totally not badass).
The one in the article are limited to 15mph, a colleague of mine rides one limited to 60km/h (37mph).
Dupe: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/elect...
Not really, but yeah: it's "native advertising".
The article really undersells criticism #2 (they block sidewalks). In their short time in SF I saw scooters laying down in the middle of sidewalks, blocking bus stop curbs, left in tight construction corridors, left in front of building entrances and leaned in front of muni turnstiles.
People also take a wide berth around the scooters so they congest sidewalks even if leaned to one side.
If they come back I hope they do it by replacing the stupid bike docking stations with scooter docking stations. Scooters are a better fit for that model. Pay homeless ppl to return them to the docks and solve two SF problems at once
I suppose it depends on your neighborhood, but I don't recall even once being hindered by a parked scooter in SF.
The sidewalk hazards I _do_ encounter (in the Mission), are tent encampments, open drug use, and (occasionally violent) crazy people.
I'd much prefer we prioritize those issues.
Yeah but those are hard... Snark aside, the demographic of this problem will be important I’m sure.
It seems to me kinda played out to make a title "how I learned to stop worrying and love X".
I think the phrase is used a lot in the tech world, that might be the joke here.
It's a reference to Dr. Strangelove (1954)
I mean, the reference is 54 years old now. /s
I own one because I had hurt my foot and decided it would help for some of the longer walks during my daily commute.
I love it.
They will be outlawed if people ride them on the sidewalks. If not, I’m confident they’ll catch on everywhere.
I ended up ordering my own when I realized that the $1.75 I was spending on each trip adds up fast. I ordered it 11 days ago and it's still not in stock.
>I downloaded the Bird app, entered my driver’s license and credit card information, agreed to some basic terms (no riding on sidewalks, no riding two to a scooter, no speeding downhill) and scanned a code on the scooter’s handlebar.
Right after the bit about how he agreed to the terms, we see a photo of the author riding the scooter on the sidewalk.
I think depending on the city, sidewalk laws are different. I think in Denver I saw that you had to stay on the sidewalk, the road was off limits. Not sure though.
I rode a few in cities in China, Shanghai is great as it has bike lanes everywhere we can use. Other cities make us use the sidewalk and won’t let us use the road which IMO is more dangerous than just allowing road use. The scooters here are supposed to be limited to 30km/h but I’ve seen some that go 100+
Here in the Netherlands these things are currently forbidden. We have about the safest road infrastructure for bikes and potentially these scooters in the world! You see some people driving them nevertheless, but the fines are up to $400. Once the legislation changes I'll buy one in a heartbeat.
They are not forbidden. They count as a "speciale bromfiets". You need a license, insurance, a license plate, and working lighting.
True, but you're not able to set up a license plate on these things (e.g. Xiaomi M365) without making modifications. They basically go the same speed as bikes (< 30kmph), so I think the difference in legislation is a bit weird.
Oh yeah it's entirely over the top to demand license plates and a license IMO, and understandably the scooters aren't made to carry license plates. Just stating that the post I was replying to is mistaken.
EDIT: Not to mention that your scooter has to be RDW-approved which basically means none exist.
Do you think they'd be allowed on bicycle lanes?
It’s unlikely. They’re currently in the process of getting mopeds off those.
Surely this will burst when the cost of the scooters lowers to the point you can easily afford one? If people hunt around for them, surely owning one would be preferable? I'd more than likely just fall off and hurt myself.
What's with all the nytimes links ? And this one is more-or-less reasonable, but their "science" ones are wtf-bad. I'm seriously thinking about just adding nytimes to my bullshit detector.
I ride a kick scooter to work (cheap Razor A5). I do wish I had an electric scooter, but my commute is so incredibly short as is (half a mile) that it's an unnecessary luxury for an already brief journey.
Where do you ride it? IMO these don't really fit anywhere (at least in the current built environment in U.S. cities). Too slow for the roads and a nuisance on the sidewalks.
Why do you need a scooter for a half mile? Just the extra speed?
Not OP, but it could be a sweat issue. For me a half mile is plenty far, especially in direct sunlight and/or if I’m wearing a backpack, to work up a sweat walking at just a leisurely pace. If I had to hurry, I’d be visibly sweaty by the time I got to my office.
Why this toy and not an e-bike? I dont get it
Much easier to fold and store, for one
I don't need them for commuting but I just ride them around parks all the time for fun. They are really a blast.
what's the state of the art of augmented vision and first- or third-party safety measures?[0],
I mean, the mods quit Brighton beach (UK ( so I've not seen a excess of rear view mirrors lately. (the used market may still be saturated..) [1]
phones are beacons, [2]
potentially we could be broadcasting centimetre accurate position and velocity
I like the idea of roadside computing cabinets downloading local trip data and doing the hard lifting but basic stuff like flow scheduling
how about this beacon tells you its stopping distance, driver reaction time, gear and acceleration limits and expectations of driver style?
I am convinced that there's so much more to learn about elementary ergonomics, about human vision not computer vision and about what open the market will pay to attach devices to vehicles that already challenge budgetary constraints for most new purchasers.
I absolutely would pay say $500 device capable of displaying correctly where I am regarding the other road users and their intentions or probable because they're on the work run same as always. for a glance
[3] I don't drive any more, but I would have claimed in my twenties that I drove to work at a incredibly predictable pace. I doubt it could be so smooth with the traffic today, but in suburban and rural areas, well a big pothole at a dirt crossing sure will affect the movement of hazards. Where LIDAR may not travel, "local pilot's license knowledge" I reckon could save a great number of lives. The sudden steering wheel input and deceleration and acceleration around a big pothole would well warn fast coming vehicles to not take that lane as free, if not then used for turning right across a middle lane, so stay on the hard shoulder instead)
I want to glance at the road between my handlebars at a projected map of data,
(only when i am glancing down. The other day I saw the Canon Eos 1-v 35mm film camera linked being discontinued. This and the wonderful Eos 3, had eye focus point tracking. I remember reading the brochures and thinking BS, but nope, I remain convinced that you are going to get better results if you have dark eye colour, not pale blue like mine
[0] my brother is a professor of transport research, whose tutor literally created the formal discipline (kinda Djikstra for transport, but sadly despite his traffic following equations being important, my brother and I should have either subscribed to better peace pipes, or lived when computing wasn't infant and so our interests not so separated. he is a Cambridge alum, I'm just either the commercial enemy or PPE impenetrability, oh i i did my best to not get the green corduroy jacket and lecture physics on Open University... I go on because I know nobody deserving a real professional commercial successful (meaning completed, delivered, used. I honestly think the nearest he came to a product launch was resolving traffic light sequencing in Tokyo in the early eighties, if you wanted to hire genius safe in the certainty should suddenly genius demand credit, the last thing you ate was poisoned, to my bro you go. I think it is because the litany of failure is so incredible. once he started reciting funded closed European programmes and projects. long minutes in, i realised he was reciting alphabetically by the conurbation and chronologically since, well he knows or once did, each and every one.
I couldn't plug my brother enough,
byt my excuse for doing so here, is the fact that I can write books how to get value from him of the order Google was paying for some feted guys tangled up in that uber unpleasantness. The fact may be that cases like that keep my always almost retired brother out of big business. AFAIK his refusal rate is in immeasurable range off p=1. I would drop my life to move that needle and get the world itself a result. (at least I can't imagine deaths in my brother's vision of transportation future) Not would, I guarantee you devotion, as far as the best alignment of a exceptional pitch with what makes a exceptional mind tick that has resisted professional commercial scrutiny for half a century. I would do anything to have him on my board if I was in the field. Not being funny, were the closest in a combined century, but I receive nothing. Silence. Zero... the air itself approaches 0K if i broach commercial transport research. Sure he could be just under NDA. Just NDAs I know displease his academic mind how rattle snakes regard dingoes. But you can take my limitless effort to broach any possibility as my word. Any time. Whilst age permits,be ideal..
[1] as in mods and rockers, see Quadrophenia, especially if you haven't, especially for
[2] this immediately worries me about"throwies" and how much this matters for potential unintended regulation consequences
[3]
CANON EYE TRACKING I WISH TO CONTROL ON STREET HUD OF ROAD USERS A series of tiny infrared LEDs (light emitting diodes) shine harmless infrared energy onto your eyeball as you peer through the viewfinder. Light sensors record the infrared reflecting off your eye and calculate the focus point. A computer in the camera then examines this data and decides which of the focus points is closest to that point and selects it. If the camera is in AI Servo mode then it will also adjust focus automatically based on that selected point.