Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

france24.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 571 posts

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#411

Post by dolmen »

Symbiote wrote: post #278
pharmakom wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so on weekends you can drive a car around but you cannot get the bus or a train? if so that's crazy.

The Outer Hebrides (islands) of Scotland had a similar situation. The ferry used not to run on Sundays, and there were protests when Sunday service began. However, the airport operated flights on Sunday, so if you could afford it you could still e.g. visit family for the weekend and return to the mainland in time for work on Monday. There are still no buses on Sunday, although there seem to be very few Monday-Saturda…

The religious indoctrination is that people (including bus drivers or ferry operators) should have a rest day with their family (everybody has the same rest day). Whether it is really religious or just good sense is left to your appreciation.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#412

Post by lmm »

anhner wrote: post #248
lmm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otoh, you could ban e-scooters tomorrow and after dramatically improving various urban areas, the biggest effect would be a few scooter companies going bankrupt. There are probably already people who depend on them to get to work - and those people are probably far more marginalised and vulnerable than car drivers.

At the prices these scooter sharing companies are asking these days, I'd hardly call the people dependent on them "marginalised"...

Compared to the price of a used car these days?

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#413

Post by lotsofpulp »

TheHappyOddish wrote: post #405
zirgs wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91594/theres-wire-above-... There's a wire around Manhattan. And it costs 100k a year to maintain it.

> The eruv encircles much of Manhattan, acting as a symbolic boundary that turns the very public streets of the city into a private space, much like one's own home. This allows people to freely communicate and socialize on the Sabbath—and carry whatever they please—without having to worry about breaking Jewish law. This article seems to assume a lot of existing knowledge about Jewish "laws". To provide further inform…

> How delightfully bizare. I can't imagine God at judgement time going "Well you got me on a technicality, head on up you cheeky rascals", but I guess they know him better than me.

It has nothing to do with “God”. It is a show of allegiance to the tribe. Everyone knows the rule and loophole is nonsense, but they play along to display that they are still wanting the tribal affiliation even though they do not want to follow all the tribal rules, and so put in some effort to getting around them to earn their “freedom” while still being able to claim allegiance to the other tribe members.

A lot of the answers to “why” for things that are obviously simple inconveniences with no utility to the individual or expenses that seemingly benefit no one are a form of sacrifice to show loyalty to a group. In fact, the more sacrificial something is, the better the signaling. In this case, giving up some money offsets not actually sacrificing the freedom to do what you want.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#414

Post by throwaway22032 »

I love e-scooters.

The simple problem with them is that too many people don't ride them on the road and instead act unpredictably on the pavement.

If people drove cars on the pavement whenever they felt like it was a shortcut it would be absolute madness.

IME, cyclists _occasionally_ detour onto the pavement in order to get around an obstruction e.g. pass some slow moving cars at a bottleneck. Almost always they cycle reasonably slowly and give a ton of space to others.

Where I am, invariably there's some sort of hood rat flying up and down the pavement at max speed the whole length of their journey not giving a toss about the people around them. I see this more often than I see people actually using the things responsibly in the road.

Some people just have, well, really bad manners, and if there's enough of them then we can't have nice things.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#415

Post by rocketbop »

elric wrote: post #287

I wonder if there have been any social studies done regarding the apparent sense of entitlement that comes with operating any kind of vehicle. E-scooters are an absolute menace nearly everywhere I've seen them being used, with their operators weaving between pedestrians and cars alike, and littering the kerb when unused. But the same is often true for bicycles, especially the fast electric kind, and it's certainly tr…

The ban is on rental scooters only, so more aimed at discouraging carefree casual users and tourists than people who really want to use escooters as part of a commute etc

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#416

Post by midasuni »

goatlover wrote: post #147
shtopointo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are banned from sidewalks.

Yet I see people riding bikes on sidewalks, usually on busy roads without bike lanes. Doubt the police bother ticketing them anymore than they do people riding scooters on sidewalks or without helmets. At least where I’m from.

In the U.K. out of london the vast majority of vehicles on sidewalks are cars. They are explicitly banned from driving on them except to enter adjacent property, yet nothing is ever done, and dozens are killed every year by those drivers.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#417

Post by rlpb »

elric wrote: post #287

I wonder if there have been any social studies done regarding the apparent sense of entitlement that comes with operating any kind of vehicle. E-scooters are an absolute menace nearly everywhere I've seen them being used, with their operators weaving between pedestrians and cars alike, and littering the kerb when unused. But the same is often true for bicycles, especially the fast electric kind, and it's certainly tr…

> and littering the kerb when unused

I think that we have different standards here. Street parking for cars is the norm now, but it isn't altogether different in principle from people leaving e-scooters "in the way" on public roads and pavements either. I accept it's a bit different as others have pointed out, but given that we generally permit street parking for cars (subject to some rules), it seems reasonable that we should also permit e-scooters to be parked and it's on society to figure out what the rules for that should be.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#418

Post by belorn »

dijit wrote: post #305
elric wrote: post #287

I wonder if there have been any social studies done regarding the apparent sense of entitlement that comes with operating any kind of vehicle. E-scooters are an absolute menace nearly everywhere I've seen them being used, with their operators weaving between pedestrians and cars alike, and littering the kerb when unused. But the same is often true for bicycles, especially the fast electric kind, and it's certainly tr…

It's also a problem of shared spaces. Pedestrians and Bikes are a poor mix. Bikes and Cars are a poor mix. but scooters and bikes seem to mix quite well. Malmo, Sweden; where I live, has excellent cycling infrastructure and the scooter "problem" is really miniscule. There are still issues, people parking in stupid ways or taking scooters into pedestrian areas, but overall there are significantly more dangerous driver…

Malmö municipality view the problem of e-scooters that have been dumped in the canal (or in the coast) as a problem that the owner of the e-scooter is responsible for. They do not want to pay for cleanup. The e-scooter companies on the other hand view it as way to expensive if they had to pay for the cleanup, and that they could not operate profitable in malmö if they were forced to pay for it.

The end result is that e-scooters are now accumulating in the water with a growing concern among researchers about what will happen once those batteries start to break down.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#419

Post by dolmen »

Fricken wrote: post #279
epolanski wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They reduce car usage which is better for both pedestrians and car users. Most stats show that they don't reduce car usage, the people using them aren't people that give up cars, but people that give up on walking or taking public transport.

I've only seen one stat and it shows that, in Atlanta, following an E-efooter ban, average commute times increased 10%. https://www.sciencealert.com/the-city-of-atlanta-banned-e-sc...

About Atlanta, this is a ban on e-scooter and e-bikes in day times.

About Paris, this is a ban on rental e-scooter.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#420

Post by leoedin »

pif wrote: post #241
rhaway84773 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem with scooters is cuties unwilling to provide them with proper infrastructure. Bike lanes in most cities (out of the better European cycling cities), tend to be narrow and about 1/4 - 1/3 the size of a car lane. If a city were to dedicate a single car lane sized lane for “micromobility” and responded quickly to damage to this lane (which wouldn’t be as frequent for the obvious reason that damage is pr…

> If a city were to dedicate a single car lane sized lane for “micromobility” Most cities do not have a car lane sized lane to spare.

That depends on how many lanes they devote to cars. Most of the main roads near me have at least 2 lanes in each direction - sometimes the inner one is devoted to parking, sometimes to cars, sometimes just to busses and bikes.
Post reply on HN