I live in a city much smaller than SF that just got beset by these stupid, worthless electric scooters and people drop them literally everywhere. I can't imagine SF is somehow /better/ about this.
My city has also recently got them. Parking isn't so much of an issue (there aren't that many yet, and our sidewalks are quite big so there is a lot of space) it's just how people drive them. Mainly I'm just concerned how long it will be until someone is killed, and then the city will most likely outright ban them even though they are a good idea.
Most cyclists ride on the pavement as it's not really safe to ride on the road. They are lots of potholes and drivers aren't really aware how to share the road with cyclists. Maybe scooters can help change this, but anyway.
At pedestrian crossings, cyclists are required to dismount and walk their bike across. The majority of crossings don't explicitly stop traffic, but require traffic to yield to pedestrians. There are a lot of junctions with traffic lights where if you turn off the main route, as you turn you need to yield to pedestrians. If a bike is coming at 15km/h towards the crossing, your chances of seeing it are a lot less, hence the law. Scooter riders of course don't follow that rule, and at night with their dim lights (which may be coming from behind you, so in your blind spot) you aren't going to see them.
Once I was driving along a fast three lane road. The speed limit is 40km/h, but most people do 50-60. There were two scooters coming the wrong direction in one of the lanes - there was a perfectly useable sidewalk that they could have used.
Another time I pulled off from a red light, going straight across a junction. A scooter drove across the pedestrian crossing parallel in the same direction, then at the end swerved right in front of me, switching from the pavement to the road.
I think part of the issue is that you pay per minute. It causes people to rush and act irrationally, rather than taking their time and being safer. I've seen the same happen with car sharing schemes where you pay per minute.
>Mainly I'm just concerned how long it will be until someone is killed
Well, while you were typing this comment somebody probably got killed by a car in your city. Why are you concerned about an imaginary problem that hasn't even happened yet? If everyone rode a scooter or a bike instead of a car there'd be much less road fatalities.
My city got scooters some months ago, they were rolled out slowly but now we got 5+ different companies on this space.
My impressions are generally the same, people simply can't act safely on scooters. I commute by bike every day to work and just this week I've seen:
- Two teens riding one scooter, going in and out of the bike lane in one of the heaviest traffic avenues, they got out of the bike lane around a bus stop and fell. Right in front of a bus that was stopping, the driver managed to stop the bus less than 30cm away from the duo.
- A tourist riding a scooter on the wrong way of the bike lane got out of the sidewalk and into the bike lane crashing head first into the cyclist in front of me. I had to stop and give assistance as the tourist guy hurt his wrist quite badly and the cyclist hit his knee on the pavement.
- A scooter ran through the red light on the bike lane by a pedestrian crossing and hit a girl on the crossing, nothing major but, again, completely unsafe.
This is JUST THIS WEEK, I've seen similar egregious behaviour of some riders for at least the past 4-5 months... It needs to be fixed somehow, I wouldn't like a ban but this can't keep going on this way.
New forms of transport surely need some getting used to. I remember reading a story about the very first demonstration of a train in the UK. People got run over cause they weren't used to things moving so fast.
When you first ride a motorbike you get very distracted by the way the throttle and brakes work, and their position.
Probably same story with scooters. Or they're just idiots who don't understand basic traffic rules.
Also, there's plenty of accidents happening with conventional bicycles. Tyres get stuck in tram rails, car doors swinging open ... I once fell on an oil slick on a round about in front of a bus. Not a reason to ban bicycles.
there are all over our streets, look outside your window. Your city has been designed so that huge cars can ride around. Don't you wonder why you have to walk so much to get from point A to point B? And risk your life every time you cross the street at specific crossing points?
When cars start driving on sidewalks or being parked on the same, you might have a case. Until then, scooters are nothing but a toy for obnoxioous hipsters with no concern for anyone or anything other then them being too lazy to move their nicely oiled beards two blocks using their feet, like all normal and decent people do.
There is laws for where and how you park a car
The scooters are dumped wherever the lazy riders decides to dump them.
They are a menace, My city has had them for less than 6 months and I have been run into twice and had other near missus.
They are ugly,and ridden by people who in most cases could do with the extra exercise. It reminds me of the book The little prince
“Good morning," said the little prince.
Good morning," said the merchant.
This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need for anything to drink.
Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."
And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
Anything you like..."
As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”
FUD? I live in downtown and these scooters were a plague on the downtown sidewalks until Bird was booted out. There is no FUD, just personal experience.
you live downtown? Don't you think cars and the smell of poop are more annoying than these practical and tiny scooters? The fact that you have to cross large streets because the main transportation system is cars?
Poop downtown, like from humans? I've literally never seen that tmk in 25 years. Which is to say it's not very annoying. Oblivious doofs are magnitudes worse.
You continually deflect my questions with each comment, it is clear you are not trying to actually debate the problem and want to just rant about whatever comes to mind.
My point was that the city council here is doing so many bad things it's not even funny anymore