Ford Buying San Francisco-Area E-Scooter Startup Spin

I am - the ones that aren't legal on the sidewalk. I don't see why you would get the little scooters. There didn't seem to be that much price difference.

I’ve recently visited Santa Cruz, where I rode my first jump bike. I had an absolute blast with it, raved about it to friends non-stop for weeks. More recently, I experienced my first Bird scooter (and Lime) in Indianapolis. I did many fun things there so I didn’t expect that these silly scooters to be the highlight of the trip, but they were.

Aside from being an insanely fun and effective way to get around a city, my favorite thing about them stems from my hatred of cars. I own a car. But selfishly only like cars when its _my_ car and _I_ am driving it. Other than that, I think they’re dangerous, loud, expensive, terrible for the environment, and far too plentiful in crowded city streets. They crash and congest roads shared with public transit, wreaking havoc daily commutes, oh and they frequently murder the more tender specimens on the road.

I get disappointed when I see people complaining about these scooters and bikes “cluttering up the walkways” and pedestrians having “dangerous encounters”. I will admit it I saw a fair number of scooters that had fallen over on walkways. It really didn’t faze me. Walk around it. Step over it. Pick it up if you’re in a great mood. Maybe society needs time to adjust and develop more etiquette. It could be handled better, but to call this an immediate “problem” is just wrong— And what are the stats on scooter vs. pedestrian fatalities?

This debate reminds me of the hiker vs. equestrian vs. mountain biker tension. We all want to use the same trails and it’s a bit contentious. Hikers feel threatened by the fast moving bikers. Bikers are inconvenienced by people walking slowly on the trails. The horses are just taking 6LB dumps all over the path for everyone else to step in and ride through. They all try to lobby and ban one another from using the trails. Nobody seems to care about anything they aren’t partaking in.

In the end, people should be open to alternative forms of transportation that are effective regardless of whether they utilize it. I think these bike and scooter shares represent a massive objective improvement over cars, and even public transit. It might take some time for etiquette and city planning to catch up, but we need to check the hall monitor mentality and give it time, for the greater good.

Cycling is my only mode of transportation. I don't own a car and no longer take the bus. (Before I got my bike, the bus was my sole mode of transportation.) I bike to and from work every day (~6mi round trip) in addition to thousands of miles of recreational biking every year.

I'm in Austin where we have Lime, Bird, and Jump, and while I personally have yet to try the scooters, I strongly support more people riding electric scooters and believe the bike lane is the right place for them, at least out of the current options.

I don't hate the idea of having bike lanes and separate scooter lanes, but since we can't even manage to get bike lanes everywhere, I'm happy to go with putting them on the bike lanes.

I have to ride in the road for most of my commute, and a lot of human drivers are scary dangerous bad. Scooter riders are never more than annoying, and usually I can just pass them without difficulty if they're going slowly (which most are from a bike perspective). Most importantly, if they hit me, I'll likely be fine. (I've been hit by cars twice over the past ten years and I was fine in those instances too, but it's not my favorite experience. I've also had drivers try to force me off the road. People on their scooters don't do that.)

Bike lanes in the US are incredibly unsafe for bikers and scooters, and accidents easily result in death of the biker/scooter.

Scooters and pedestrians sharing a sidewalk is also unsafe, but accidents are far less lethal.

The problem is that bikes/scooters are adding a third distinct speed fundamentally incompatible with the existing two, and that takes up a lot of space costs a lot of allocative inefficiencies (what if there are lots of cars and pedestrians, but no bikes/scooters at this moment?). There's no easily solution but if we're going to ask scooters to share space, at least choose the one that is less fatal, as annoying at it is for pedestrians.

Are you really asking me to cite that? Its basic physics. A greater mass at a greater speed will damage you a whole lot more when it hits you.