What a weird thing to say. This is about the Kentucky Derby, the mint julep is synonymous with the derby. And while that is possibly how they’re done in New Orleans, it’s absolutely not how it is done in Louisville.
You're just "trivializing an incredibly complex moral conundrum" -- by stating someone is "co-opting someone's pain for your own political or ethical brownie points" for having an opposing view point on " an incredibly complex moral conundrum."
Given the rest of what you have written in this thread, your idea of justice comes off as being based in a punitive approach, and it shouldn't be surprising not everyone agrees with that.
One, the lack of support for HKT isn’t great. There are some work arounds, but they aren’t particularly safe and end up being pretty cumbersome to implement.
Another big one is while the language supports lambdas and closures, it’s highly recommended to not perform any currying.
Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective.
My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs.
On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to all the 'trendy' spots often opting to use these scooters.
More often than not they park them right in the middle of the sidewalk. The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’s reserved for cars so that everyone else has room.
Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and scooter parking… as an example one easy solution is to convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and scooter parking. There’s enormous value in having big corporate allies in such a fight.
I agree, but right now it feels like the scooter companies have decided it's easier to inconvenience pedestrians than to ally with us and fight car culture.
I'm a huge fan of the idea of plentiful, cheap scooters for short trips, and was excited to have a new cohort of people who would want more safe bike (and scooter) routes. Alas, as much as I love the concept, I've developed a strong dislike for the companies.
I've little doubt that they could dramatically reduce the amount of improper scooter parking, but it would involve punishing their customers, and that would hurt their growth in the short term, for the unimportant benefit of avoiding crushing regulatory responses on the long term.
We didn't choose for them to be our enemies. We were natural allies. But they decided they'd fight us than have to combat the real problem.
Complaints like this are typically run through the city or campus that leases operation rights to the fleet. These entities usually get fairly forceful in (competitive) markets. Your local scooter outfit(s) are not going to want to risk a market with a ton of complaints and bad operations feedback.
That said: given GPS limitations, the time it takes for a van with humans to arrive (and park!), as well as lagging feedback loops... this isn't an easy problem. Last I was in the industry, they were just starting to concept customer reputation systems, but generally they were more concerned with winning markets and decreasing operating costs.
The fact that scooter companies are focused on “winning markets” makes me think they are a negative. For this to work the price has to be low. That means competition.
In my neighborhood both Comcast and CenturyLink provide service. When the CenturyLink installer showed up he explained the install would take longer than estimated because he couldn’t use the line directly in front of my house. That’s a “Comcast line”. Apparently Comcast techs will literally cut competing lines off theirs.
I wonder what the scooter van equivalent is. Is there someone leaving competing scooters in the middle of the sidewalk as a psy-op to disrupt competing marketshare?
I haven't heard of direct antagonism as such, but I do know there've been social media groups dedicated to defacing/destroying property, incl hacking/theft. Unless maybe you're one of the top 2-3, I don't think anyone has time (in eng at least) to do such things. From what I could tell, everyone does use custom software.
To your point about ISP competition, the original company in the space I was at was developing generic operations software. Our main (large) client decided to inhouse instead of continue the contract, and a smaller competitor bought us. Sharing platforms isn't really in the cards; the best you'll get is MDS[0] or GBFS[1], but those initiatives are typically led by municipalities or their vendors. The former is usually restricted to regulators, and the latter isn't always reliably implemented unless the market specifies it. These are also moving specs (markets want different versions, ofc), it was great fun!
As far as "winning" vs other motivations, remember that (afaik) none of these companies are profitable yet and the VCs aren't dong this for fun. The people I worked with cared very much about the mission, but the board doesn't always agree.
If Copenhagen's experience is normal, then ample bicycle (etc) parking won't change the parking behaviour of rental scooter users. They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road.
I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand!
Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre.
(Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the scooter companies are probably still a positive influence even with the terrible riders.)
> They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road.
Ticket the scooter company for improperly parked/docked scooters in geofenced areas where parking/docking is available. The scooter companies will update their software & hardware to bill the rider if they leave their scooter outside of a permitted dock. The riders will be incentivized to park/dock the scooters.
The problem will fix itself, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't ride scooters, and I don't like stepping over them when people dump them/knock them down, but I love that they exist, and we need more, not less infrastructure to support non-automobile transport. In this case, the infrastructure consists of installing bike/scooter racks. It's not expensive.
I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.
> I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved.
There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a huge positive effect on safety.
The thing is, cars operate on roads, while pedestrians operate, largely, on sidewalks. Roads have lights and signals to help mediate situations where pedestrians and cars need to use the same stretch of road. Pedestrians only really need to worry about cars at crosswalks, and even then, the most dangerous situations are cars making left turns (who can't see the cross walk in use).
Scooters are vehicles and should operate along side cars. The reason scooter rides don't drive one the roads with cars? Because it fucking dangerous. They want safety, and they want it at the expense of the safety of others.
A scooter on the road is a net gain to safety. But a scooter on a sidewalk is a net loss.
> cars operate on roads, while pedestrians operate, largely, on sidewalks.
In theory yes, but in practice most cities do a terrible job of separating cars and pedestrians. Here in NYC a pedestrian dies in a crosswalk almost every day, and on a sidewalk much more often than you'd hope. Here's one from last week: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/02/10/breaking-careless-suv...
> A scooter on the road is a net gain to safety. But a scooter on a sidewalk is a net loss.
And that's how they (and bikers) use those things aggressively. They have no concerns for the people who have the right to be on the sidewalk. (In Chicago there is an ordinance against both on the sidewalk) Remind a biker/scooter on the sidewalk about the bike line.. they act like you just shot at their family.
Counterpoint: These scooters go 20 MPH and there's no oversight on where or how they are used. I walk around a 'pedestrian only' lake every day, and these scooters come about literally 2 inches from me going 20 mph every 2-3 minutes. Usually they are driven by (likely drunk) teenagers.
My daily walk is incredibly more dangerous and stressful due to these scooters existing.
Maybe it depends on the cities but where I live, these scooters are limited to about 12.5 mph (20 km/h), and are supposed to share the space with bikes on the bike lanes and road, not on the sidewalk.
So while they are indeed parked on the sidewalk everywhere, I do not see them as dangerous at all.
That's a pretty different situation than what people who walk around cities for transportation deal with. I have no objections to banning scooters, bikes, etc from recreational pedestrian areas.
You are right that there is no comparison, and I haven't made one. Scooters are safer than cars, but me wanting them gone does not mean I want those people to be driving instead.
You don't know me. Me saying scooters are dangerous does not, in any way shape or form, imply that I think cars are safe. They are death machines that I would also very much like to see gone.
Yes they are. Cars are separated from pedestrians. Scooters and e-bikes aren’t. There is always some jerk with scooter trying to push through the cyclists on the bike lane or show his driving skills between pedestrians when I go to the office.
I spent five years living on a street with very large sidewalks (at least triple-wide, if not quadruple wide). Cyclists and scooter riders were just as inconsiderate of pedestrians. Traveling at dangerous speed, weaving across the whole sidewalk, and parking the vehicles in remarkably inconvenient spots were all very common behaviors.
The problem is cultural. People in larger, faster, more dangerous vehicles seem to think they have right of way in shared spaces and that everyone else should get out of their way. Anyone who's ridden a bicycle or a scooter on a road also used by cars will have experienced this.
Compare this to Tokyo, where there's less space, more of it is shared, but people don't behave like I've described above.
> the battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk
I'm not asking for 10% of the sidewalk for myself -- that's ~4.8 inches, which is much less of the space needed for a stroller, a person with a cane, or someone in a wheelchair.
I don't see any lobbying, let alone any actions from these companies that ensure that the quality of the lives of the people I mentioned isn't negatively impacted. What I do see is rent seeking and extraction of public value for there own profits.
Lobbying is great, but they aren't doing anything currently to actually curb their users from partaking in reducing the use of public space for those that can't simply 'walk around it and pray their lobbying works one day.'
Scooter companies aren't in it for the long haul like that. I've seen four different scooter companies come and go in my city (well, the fourth hasn't gone yet). They seem to buy a batch of scooters, keep them in service until they've made back their investment or lost too many scooters, then disappear. They don't care about the disruption and inconvenience they cause, or the ways they could make the city better, because they don't even see those things - they don't seem to have a presence here beyond a few gig-employees charging scooters.
I hate the rental scooters and bikes. It’s just trash in my way. I live in an area that already has great walking and cycling options, but the scooters make that much less enjoyable.
But you are right and I hadn’t considered the benefits. So thanks for posting this.
Because of all the scooter trouble the city has reclaimed some parking spaces for scooters. So that is a step in the right direction. And if it gets people out of their houses and seeing where the bike infrastructure works and doesn’t that’s probably good for future expansion too.
> Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
So you make the problem worse?
Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why?
I live in a major downtown full of these scooters. When I see them blocking something, I just move them. Why is this so difficult? It takes such a tiny amount of effort to fix this problem you are describing. You live in a society, and it’s your responsibility to contribute.
Perhaps it is human nature to want to inflict harm on those we perceive to be causing harm. This rarely leads to the best outcome. So I would love to hear from cooler heads that could improve the following idea and take the pointless retribution out of it:
It is not enough to kick over a scooter. We need to tag repeat offenders and increase the severity of the response. For instance, paint one handlebar grip on the first infraction, then the other grip on the second, then a seat, headlight/taillight, etc. A scooter that has been tagged enough can have the tires flattened, spokes broken, etc.
Clearly, there are numerous flaws with the solution above. It's really a terrible idea. To some degree it shows the flaws with kicking over offending scooters.
Alternatively, you could hire enforcement officers to issue citations. That also has flaws. You could build a system that allows random citizens to document offenses in a credible way and then have authorities act on repeated offenses. Also not without problems.
Perhaps coloring the scenario differently might help. Imagine, for instance, that a certain neighborhood house is popular with the neighborhood children. The children frequently ride their bikes to the house and leave their bikes strewn in the driveway, the front yard, and on the sidewalk. What would be an appropriate series of responses? How could you build a system that protects against a grumpy neighbor abusing whatever escalation mechanism you devise?
The scooter company who provides the scooters?
The scooter renter who drops the scooter in semi-random locations?
The city who built the sidewalks?
It seems like you are targeting the scooter company when it may be the users who are being careless. I’ve seen a lot of scooters left in the way when a reasonably clear area was just a few feet away.
In the first scenario, the repeat offender is clearly the tagger.
But to address your valid question, the scheme shifts the costs to the scooter provider who would likely then impose costs on the scooter polluter. Although they may instead choose to impose costs on all their customers to subsidize the offender.
But it is a very clumsy scheme with many flaws, so probably not a great model upon which to iterate.
If Moore's law continues for a few more years, we'll probably see offenders fined automatically with the use of omnipresent traffic cameras. Since the scooters have number plates just like cars, it isn't infeasible to identify them and their drivers at any moment. The cameras and software that are already in place made me wary of driving, and especially parking, in the UK (after fining me for parking at an empty motorway restaurant parking lot overnight, and at a half-empty supermarket car park with no gate for more than 90 minutes), and there is nothing that will prevent them from spoiling my preferred mode of transport that I use to travel to work every day, electric scooters.
In particular, they could achieve this by enforcing the law that makes them illegal to drive on the sidewalk. It won't matter that it is 3am and the nearest pedestrian is two miles away, or that you're driving at less than walking speed. You'll get fined anyway.
To add a bit of optimism, maybe these systems will become good enough to only fine those who drive inconsiderately or dangerously, and a successful campaign will make that the law, instead of the blanket ban.
> Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access?
Because you’ll be doing this over and over again. How about those companies educate their users how to behave in a neighbourhood where those people are basically guests?
Toss them into a pile will make them more compact. Really it wouldn't take too long to clear a whole sidewalk of them, granted it might get more difficult once the pile gets to significant height. But I'm thinking 1 scooter toss every 2-5 seconds: 1 grunt grab, 2 grunt grab, 3 grunt grab etc, you can imagine it happening at a decent pace.
I don't imagine that would help. Most of these scooter companies already do some sort of education regarding traffic laws... but when was the last time you saw a person on a scooter, stopped at a red light, wearing a helmet?
The only way it'll be fixed is if someone actually enforces compliance.
I haven’t, one of these things knocked me out unconscious while I was waiting for green light to cross the road.
It came from the side, hit me, I landed in the middle of the street. Happened right in front of the central station in Antwerpen.
Just imagine how confused you are waking up laying in the middle of the road while a paramedic smacks you in the face and asks you if you know what your name is. I’m going to spare the details for how long the grit I landed with my face on was coming out of my nose and the chin.
I don’t understand how it’s okay for these scooters to be legal. They are so quiet and so fast. They can come from any direction and you’ll not hear a thing. Apparently that’s what is so appealing about them.
I mean, with a car there are at least some clearly defined rules. Barring mental people, everyone drives on the roads, within clearly defined lanes while we walk on the sidewalk. These scooters are everywhere!
From what I've seen in Oxford and Munich, scooter drivers are quite considerate in these cities.
Oxford:
- requires a driver's license
- capped at 12mph
- highly granular 0/5/8/12mph zones (boundaries are a bit spotty, but will likely get better with time)
- only allowed to park at predefined parking spots
- decent bike/e-scooter infrastructure
- loud
- private scooters are illegal and common
Munich:
- driver's license not required
- capped at 20km/h
- allowed to park anywhere
- great bike/e-scooter infrastructure
- quiet
- private scooters are legal and rare
The speed limit in Antwerpen is 25km/h. From my experience of driving in Prague, which also has a 25km/h speed limit, (omitted above because I haven't seen many people driving there), the difference in vehicle control when driving at 20km/h vs 25km/h is enormous. At 20km/h, the braking distance is ~2m, the turning radius is small, and hopping off the scooter to avoid a collision feels safe. Driving among car traffic is smoother at 25km/h, but it doesn't feel safe to hop off at that speed and the turning radius feels twice the 20km/h value.
If it helps, you can point Antwerp's politicians to Copenhagen, where rental scooters have been banned from starting or ending journeys in the city centre.
I agree, and even if punishing bad behavior is appealing, I think it'd work best if Scooter Co. added sensors so it could tell/see where the rider parked the scooter, and rewarded good parking with free rides (which would also prevent griefing the last rider by quickly dragging it somewhere terrible to get them punished).
I think most of those simply require that you send a picture. I'm not sure that they validate that the scooter is parked correctly, and I have seen people submit pictures of other scooters parked correctly.
Exactly. Where I've gotten the most benefit from scooters is in cities like Dallas and Phoenix. It's impossible to walk around those cities because they're so big and spread out, but a scooter means I don't need to drive constantly.
No one encounters 10 misplaced scooters in a 3-4 minute walk, and it would take under a minute to move a single scooter. That's a very unrealistic hypothetical.
I guess you've never been in SOMA in San Francisco. I used to live in that neighborhood and in the 3 block walk to the coffee shop I could easily pass 20-30 of them. In my current neighborhood I'll see about 6 in the same distance.
You passed 20 scooters blocking your path in a 3 minute walk?
I lived in SF when the scooters first appeared. Maybe it's gotten worse, but I thought they made you prove you parked it somewhere legally with a photo. So I would figure at least the majority aren't just blocking the sidewalk.
I'm not saying they aren't misplaced a lot and that it isn't a problem. I'm just saying there's no way every 10 seconds you're climbing over a scooter on your walk (20 in 3 minutes).
I think you underestimate the number of people who are careless and inconsiderate. Or maybe you live in a very nice part of town. I sometimes get stuck doing 8 things on the way to do a thing I intended to do, because I see a thoughtless thing and cannot help myself from fixing it. It's important to higher functioning to be able to look at a thing wrong and say "not my job to fix it!" without guilt.
No lol, it's the other people responsibility not to be a nuisance.
But I agree throwing them aside is not the optimal solution.
Municipality looking for money could get some large cash influx from ticketing improperly parked scooters, the owning company can decide to eat the loss or flip the ticket on the user, either way people will get educated fast.
It would only take for the law enforcement to enforce rules that are already there
Moving one scooter aside doesn't fix the problem. Also they said they move them aside, the only difference between them and you is they knock the scooters over. I don't see how they're worsening the problem by moving the scooters aside.
> Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why?
Uh... I said out of the way. I push them onto the easement required by the city which is grass from the curb to the sidewalk.
There is no way that this is in any way "worse." Especially due to the fact that they are usually in the way via being not parallel.
It might make the problem worse in the short term but maybe those leaving them in the middle will move them out of the way in the future possibly reducing the issue long term.
Riffing on your comment, but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society). Like people leaving scooters haphazardly lying around or you pushing over delivery robots instead of pushing them out of the way. People feel more and more justified to engage in antisocial behavior. And it feeds on itself. You see this as being anti-social behavior by the robot companies, therefore justify engaging in more antisocial behavior.
I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.
With these scooters, bicycles, mopeds for rent; and delivery robots it's also a form of not very nice but justifiable resistance in lieu of better ways.
Remember the sudden onslaught of Chinese app-rentable bicycles in cities around the world a few years back? Near useless pieces of unrepairable plastic, steel, and rubber clogging up the pavement (sidewalk) because technically this was not illegal. Several companies competing in a race to become the biggest one in any given city. In many cases it ended after new legislation and citizens demanding action; often spurred on by activists using the same fuck-you tactics these companies used to put them everywhere, but in reverse (often by means of gently chucking them in a canal).
Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too. Responding tit-for-tat is not classy, but some people feel they have little recourse, especially if municipalities are (at first) taken in by the greenwashing ideals of some of these companies.
> Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too.
Tell that to the rideshare companies whose drivers crowd the streets of cities, circulating while they stare at their phones waiting for a passenger (and leaving bottles of human waste everywhere).
Not too sure how pushing scooters out of the way to remove barriers for people who cannot go around them is "antisocial." Especially when those people are neighbors and are in need.
The companies and their users -- the companies don't have structures to prevent their users from leaving their property in right of way, their users leave the companies' property in the spaces preventing those in need of using the space -- are the ones partaking in antisocial behavior.
I don't think it's fair to blame the pandemic measures, at least in the USA. People weren't nice and then all of a sudden turned shitty because they were asked to voluntarily stay home. I think it's more likely that they were already antisocial people, but spent most of their lives keeping it inside and mostly hiding it under a thin facade of basic manners. Then, maybe several years ago, something happened that encouraged them that manners didn't matter, and it's ok to own your own asshole. Maybe someone showed us that you could just say the quiet part out loud without consequences. Hmm... Some human embodiment of narcissistic anti-social contrarianism... Can't quite put my finger on it though...
Why right wing? I’m rather left leaning, even by European standards. I’m not some crazy antivaxxer either, plenty of those on both sides.
Nevertheless the pandemic responses by various governments I have to interact with have done much to deepen my distrust of them and the society around me.
Various governments have deployed drastic measures such as lockdowns in an effort to control the pandemic, but they’ve released little evidence to demonstrate the usefulness of these measures.
Research is increasingly showing that the lockdowns were not worth it. If that is really true their victims should be lavishly compensated and those responsible actually held responsible.
Of course I personally am not qualified to judge whether or not the lockdowns were a mistake, but the evidence seems to be piling up against them. The governments could alleviate these concerns by showing solid research confirming that they didn’t fuck up.
It does not matter what attitudes people should have. It matters which they actually had.
The "feel that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society" was very right wing attitude. Even in places with no lockdowns and no restrictions. Even left wing disagreeing with this or that measured would talk about these in less emotional terms.
Given that topic under discussion is US campus and behavior of Americans, the way attitudes are spread in US is relevant. In fact, "Americans" is only relevant demographics.
Also, coincidentaly, similar division occurred across Europe. The people more likely to be influenced by American conservative thinkers were more likely to be hostile to masks and lockdowns.
I think that this was heavily partisan issue. So, yes, the "unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society" would have severe right wing bias. Just like anti masking and anti vaccine attitudes are currently heavily biased by partisan politics.
OP could have stated it in more neutral terms, but chosen not to.
The county should act; assign parking spaces for these things, fine the companies if they find any outside of the designated spaces. The companies can sort it out with their customers.
We are seeing the same thing with electric scooters and bikes (and they get torched sometimes), they get parked anywhere and the county's on board with it because it's "green".
This was NOT as much of a problem with rental bikes in e.g. London, because they had designated stations for picking up and parking them; the user would get charged extra if they did not park their bike up properly.
This regulatory overreaction is how we got to the present environment where nobody can build anything anywhere and we have a housing crisis that is severely harming people around the world. No thanks.
Electric scooters have been heavily regulated where i live, helmet is now required and you have to leave them at designated locations. And a photo upload showing how it was parked is now also required.
Oh, and Friday and Saturday between 00 and 05, you cannot use the scooters.
It kinda makes me sad that we can't just let people use scooters as they please, but as you observe that isn't working.
It was much the same with drones, which is now also heavily regulated, e.g. you must maintain a certain distance to buildings.
City bikes which have stations seem much better option. At least if run by city itself, higher installation cost, but means that they are much more orderly.
Some vandalism will always happen, but the key seems to lie in making such an amenity loved by the people rather than forced upon them by faceless and unapproachable corporations.
That’s kind of subjective, isn’t it? A lot of people don’t feel threatened by businesses but instead feel threatened by a faceless and unapproachable government bureaucracy. See the DMV.
When anti-business or anti-government ideology gives moral license to antisocial behavior, nothing is gonna work out for you.
It depends on how far the relation between citizen and government has deteriorated, and is certainly something to take into account. A practical example is the mayor of Manchester asking people not to apply the same destructive tactic to the new municipal bicycle plan¹. In Manchester the memory of the invasion of Chinese rent-a-bikes is still fresh, so the new plan will have to work at not being unapproachable and providing an asset to the city rather than a service for the few.
And it's not just the potential vandal (or activists) who affect the balance. If someone were to molest one of the unasked for app-hireable mopeds cluttering the sidewalk in my Dutch town, I wouldn't bother reporting it (in fact, I'd probably cheer them on). If someone did this to bicycles for hire part of a municipally managed plan (for which I can hold the council accountable as a voter, and whom I can address with complaints or suggestions for improvement) with fixed parking areas rather than devil-may-care-anywhere-on-the-sidewalk-parking, I would act differently.
The thing is there's no designated place to park them. You can't put them on the property line next to the sidewalk. Many sidewalks don't have a "planter" or other non-walking area. Sidewalks weren't designed for this. I think we should ban sidewalk scooter parking. The public right of way is not a parking lot for private companies.
As an aside: many (most?) people who need sidewalks choose to use the road instead because the sidewalks are inaccessible. Snow and ice doesn't get removed from all sidewalks (regardless of what regulations say), tree roots breaking up the pavement don't get repaired, large inclines/declines are a safety hazard. I know a regular-abled person whose face got mangled as she was riding her bike on a sidewalk and hit a chunk of unrepaired sidewalk and went over. Sidewalks need a redesign.
Designated parking spaces are a good idea, but they should be paid for by companies that make a profit by renting out scooters. Not taxpayers.
Public funding might be justified if the majority of scooters were owned by individual citizens with the right to vote on city affairs. Most rideshare companies, on the other hand, will simply siphon off public subsidies as additional profit to be taxed (or not) somewhere else.
But why? These are same parking spots I would park my car in.
A parking spot for cars is useful to only one person at a time, if converted to a scooter parking space with some paint it can serve vastly more people.
Straight up donating parking spaces to private scooter share companies is probably a net positive for the public.
In most urban areas, parking spaces for cars are paid for by people who actually use those spaces. If you don't pay for the space you take up, you get a ticket. The same should be true of parking spaces for scooters if we want to convert one to the other (which I think is a great idea, by the way). Urban space is valuable.
If for-profit rental companies want to reserve some space for their own customers to pick up and return scooters, they should pay the city and/or whoever owns those spaces. They shouldn't be allowed to take a free ride on public infrastructure just because they're "greener" than cars. They've been using that excuse to push externalities onto the public for too long already, I don't trust them with any additional subsidies.
In my area (Westminster, Central London) we have a plenty of free parking for residents.
Here, and in most of the country we have free parking for motorcycles.
Even the paid government owned parking spots probably don’t tend to actually be profitable.
> If for-profit rental companies want to reserve some space for their own customers to pick up and return scooters, they should pay the city and/or whoever owns those spaces
These spaces are not reserved for one specific company, they’re shared by multiple operators.
Wait, why NOT have a public good paid by taxpayers? Just have a progressive taxation system.
A system where private companies effectively own these little spots would stifle innovation and competition (ie the big players would be the only ones with a chance of succeeding) as well as individual freedom.
Parking spaces dedicated to scooters are vastly better than parking spaces dedicated to privately owner cars. A scooter parking spot will serve vastly more people than a car parking space.
Yes, we have this in my city too, and it works really well - I’d say 98% of scooters get parked in these places. The council leans on the hire company to incentivise good parking - seems like a solved problem.
So a minor inconvenience for cleaner air in your neighbourhood?
Ofc, I feel for disabled people in this situation, but personally I'll pick one up or move it if I see that it's in the way.
Here when the were first released, the parking was a bit scuffed, but recently it seems people have been making a much greater effort to park them correctly.
That's still very dismissive of anyone using the sidewalks. Good for you that you pick up someone else's shit, but it's not a solution. These companies should take responsibility and fix the problem.
I keep seeing people say "these companies" when the actual problem is the people who ride the scooters. Maybe your problem is with people in general? It doesn't feel super great to internalize, but if the problem keeps happening with different people riding the scooters then I think we can conclude that your anger is misplaced. Call out people you see misusing the infrastructure, don't destroy the infrastructure for everyone.
Waiting for capitalists to clean up their mess is a losing strategy. Change is almost universally a grassroots thing. Get enough people to put things in their proper place, and people leaving them there will get the message. I've seen this work at all scales. Model the society you want to live in and it will catch on, at least a little.
This is my _exact_ experience, I end up having to move at least two a week to get our stroller past, and they are a huge pain when my wheelchair-bound mother visits.
I consider myself a law abiding person but have been sorely tempted to load them up into a truck and toss them into the Chesapeake ...
Good lord. I'm blind, walk with a cane. Let me tell you the number of times I have to walk around someone parked on the sidewalk, or in a residential neighborhood find someone has their driveway filled with cars so I have to walk out in the street to get around, or someone's doing yard work and has stuff scattered on the sidewalk in front of the house or...
Where's my law-abiding help to deal with this? It kinda just feels like somebody's got a hate on for scooters.
To be honest -- when I see this, I also go out of my way to say something. I don't have a hate for scooters, I just get really annoyed by the lack of perspective people have for their neighbors.
With that said, I rarely have to say something about this to the people in my neighborhood, because while they may be blocking the sidewalk to do whatever they may be doing, they are incredibly aware and say something as you're walking by:
"sorry about my car"
"sorry about my trailer"
And I know that if someone was/is in need they'd go out of their way to help you out.
My complaint wasn't about my neighbors -- it's a pretty tight knit community. It was about everyone who comes in for some event/holiday who doesn't give a shit about those of us who live here. I'm personally not inconvenienced by the scooters, I just care about my neighbors that are.
While I can't imagine the difficulty of being blind, I'm right there with you on the cars front!
It's just that with scooters we're introducing something new, and unlike with cars it would be technologically reasonable to say "you can only park this at the end of block in the scooter zone" and nail the companies with a huge fine if they don't enforce it.
I'm actually fairly pro-scooter (though I wish people just used city bikes in the places that have them, but I get it), but I think final parking location should be more like the city bikes, in designated spots.
The other big problem is the trucks that drive around constantly loading/unloading the scooters. Often they park on the sidewalk, fully blocking anyone from getting through. One time I saw a driver back in to a woman was as trying to cross the street with a baby carriage.
Unfortunate side effect of the past capital incineration years. If it doesn’t make sense to have unlocked bike-share, it definitely doesn’t make sense to do it with electric scooters.
> The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
Way better approach is to take phone and send complain to company that runs these. At least in our city, they do in fact end contracts with people who park them wrong. The threat and actual drivers who lost the ability to use scooters makes others park better.
The real problem is that car manufactures have lobbied to give every scrap of space to car storage. If we took back parking lanes to dramatically expand sidewalks, this wouldn't be an issue at all.
The scooter rental companies in my city have a rule in their contacts specifically prohibiting parking such that it would block the sidewalk. And you have to take a picture of the scooter when you end your rent.
> Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective.
Same here, but from a different angle. If the scooters were the problem, we'd have had the same problem when Car2Go was a thing. But, car infrastructure in the US is so overbuilt that Car2Go didn't even register on the radar in terms of free street parking. Cars improperly abandoned that impede car traffic are quickly resolved.
The nonmotorized infrastructure in the US is so begrudgingly inept that adversarial design wouldn't look much different. If there's a rent-a-scooter inconveniencing the token pedestrian path next to on street parking, I've simply been moving the scooters into on street parking. A single scooter fits between spaces, or only consumes <5% of the length of a standard 20 foot space. Surely drivers complain loudly, but they won't be inconvenienced unless they go out of their way to toss a scooter into the middle of the sidewalk; an accurate metaphor for how sidewalks got to be so terrible in the first place.
I am heartened to hear that I am not the only one who does this. I feel the same about the Al Fresco dining set-ups. Happy that restaurants got more space for their business but angered that it comes at the cost of accessibility for wheelchair users and others like them.
This grind my gears so fucking much! You are running your business not only on property that isn't yours, but the public's -- AND it's an inconvenience to every person who walks by in a busy neighborhood, some that absolutely need the sidewalk.
Someone, who for legal reasons is not me, has the idea to make stickers with strong glue and cheap paper (so they can't be ripped off in one go) to stick on top of the QR codes to these things. The sticker would have text that says "Sorry you can't use this scooter because the last rider parked like an idiot."
The company which owns the scooter is responsible for the location of the scooter. They choose to let users leave scooters in shitty locations. They invite vigilant responses from other sidewalk users.
I have similar feelings. Though I don't hate the scooters per se. I'm pretty upset with the idiots who leave them right in the middle of the side walks AND the companies that don't do anything about it. They could pretty easily penalize the users for leaving these in the wrong place if they wanted to.
Now I actually don't understand at all why they don't do it. On the surface, you can say that they don't give a shit about non-users, they just care about their customers and they are afraid of scaring them away. However, where I live (Budapest, Hungary) these have already been banned from the centermost district of the city. The district, the area most frequented by tourists. As it was predictable.
Also, the city mayor came up with a regulation so that they'll designate several hundred e-scooter parking lots throughout the inner city and leaving these anywhere but those places will results in the company being fined. Which is a smart and friendly move, because there will be indeed lots of lots :) . But it's still a lot worse than if the e-scooter companies have solved it for themselves because then you'd still be able to leave them almost anywhere.
Actually I see two king of annoying parking habits. The first one is the completely reckless, when they literally leave it in the middle of the walking path of everyone. I sometimes even think that it's deliberate. Like wanting to show off or something. "I'll just leave it here in the middle, so that everyone can see it." Quite often right in the front of zebra crossings.
The other one is more like sheer stupidity. When they do park it besides a wall, but they do it as if it was a car. So 45 degrees, with front wheel to the wall. But that doesn't make much sense, because you want it to be out of the way (which almost always means parallel to the wall, preferably leaning towards the wall and not leaning away from the wall).
This is all pretty sad because e-scooters, while I think they are dangerous to ride, are pretty cool and efficient vehicles. And being able to pick up one on the street, though more expensive than owning one, very convenient for the occasional user. (I mostly ride a bike though, and pre-covid I used to use a kick scooter + public transport.)
What if they set up the scooter system such that if you parked the previous scooter incorrectly, the next scooter you rent squirts water on your pants? It's not technologically that difficult.
Or put little fisheye cameras on every scooter and if you park it incorrectly every scooter you walk past for the next 24 hours uses face recognition and blasts insults at you unless you go back and re-park it correctly.
I've often wondered why scooter companies don't keep metrics on their users, and punish the ones who use their product poorly (donuts, bad parking, use on sidewalks, etc) and came to the conclusion that these antisocial users are very likely the scooter companies largest consumer base. The scooter companies are likely incentivized to not regulate.
They spell their own death if they piss off the city though. So they are incentivized to not piss off the city and kick out the users that contribute to that.
This is one of those online exaggerations. Occasionally some people will behave badly. Just like sometimes you’ll see people stop their cars on the sidewalk or whatever. It’s fine.
When I see a car blocking a drive way, I flatten its tires and bash its windows in. Makes me feel good and now most of the cars on my street are damaged.
No one cares if pedestrians have to navigate around these things. But if people have to get out of their 4,000 lb steel cages to move these things out of the way, there will be consequences.
> Yes, let's make innocent people crash their cars! That'll teach the people who left the scooters there a lesson!
The cars are insured, the insurance companies will pursue the owners of the scooters. It's the negative feedback required to compel scooter companies to operate more responsibly.
Sometimes people get hurt or killed in car crashes, which just having insurance doesn't magically fix. And besides, if I were the scooter company, I'd be going after you who intentionally threw the scooter into the road, not after the last rider who parked it somewhere inconsiderate but not dangerous.
Given that the rental scooter market is concentrated in cities, and that the roads where they're used are typically limited to 30mph or less, unless the person is actively throwing the scooter at the car, the cause of a crash would be an inattentive driver rather than a poorly-positioned scooter.
> Are you aware that if you loan your vehicle out and it's used in a crime you're liable?
That's...very much not true.
For certain torts related to the vehicle you would be liable, but unless you actively and with requisite mental state engaged in the crime, you would not be liable for a crime.
Maybe, but if someone steals my car and uses it in a crime I'm not. And in this hypothetical, the company didn't loan the scooter to the person who caused the car crash with it.
The crime in this case is littering, and the person your hypothetical scooter company is going to pursue for moving the litter into the road where a car hit it is quite likely to be a minor whose identity you'll never determine.
But you're creating circumstances for this outcome to be probable by leaving unescured scooters littering sidewalks. Much like leaving your car idling with a key in the ignition and the doors unlocked creates circumstances for someone, possibly even a child, to climb in and commit a crime with it. It's negligence on your part.
Doesn't something have to be trash for leaving it somewhere to count as littering? After all, improperly parking a car isn't littering, even if it's a Zipcar or something.
> leaving your car idling with a key in the ignition and the doors unlocked
But it isn't like that, since these scooters do lock their wheels.
> Doesn't something have to be trash for leaving it somewhere to count as littering? After all, improperly parking a car isn't littering, even if it's a Zipcar or something.
Any object improperly placed so as to be a public nuisance or health concern is litter. If you abandon an object obstructing sidewalks, it's a public nuisance.
In the case of a zipcar improperly parked there are more relevant laws with more severe penalties, automobiles have a whole world of explicit laws governing their safe use for obvious reasons.
In the case of bicycle rideshares we've long had precedent of a more responsible operator; velib in paris had dedicated bike racks for storing the bikes and the borrowers would be fined for abandoning the bikes. Velib employed staff in vans to regularly collect the bikes when they weren't returned to the racks. This is what it means to at least try not be negligent.
I'm here for this 100% because cars destroy cities and lives except that this could kill motorcycle riders or cyclists. If you ride any debris in the road can be deadly.
How selfish of you. You should take more than 2 minutes and spend the time to throw them in a nearby body of water and solve the problem more permanently.
