You didn't mention my biggest concern: parking like assholes. But here we have the bigger kind you can sit on. Also, I haven't seen many lately.
Tiny wheels and 15 mph says jaw breaking face plants to me, but let's see.
Sooner or later, some little old lady (or man) will get hit by one of these fuckers. They invariably use the sidewalks and make turns without slowing to the required crawl. I saw a scooter with a couple of young'uns turn a corner downtown and almost take out a pedestrian walking toward them (neither could see the other until the scooter turned the corner). Damn, pissed me off so much.
I called up my supervisor and noted that these scooter companies should provide simple apps for pedestrians that allow a pedestrian who sees a violation of conduct rules/laws, to mash a big button and have the app figure out which scooter it was, and hence which user it was, who committed the infraction. With an automatic and mandatory report to law enforcement.
The alternative is vandalism (which is easy -- the wires are just laying out there, asking to be cut).
Somebody's gonna get badly hurt by these fuckers.
Have we not talked about this?
* Yes, some people are using them irresponsibly / dangerously.
* Helmets are required by law (at least in my state, probably most) and the apps also require you to show photo evidence of correct parking, so enforcement is within our grasp, if not yet much evidenced.
* Yes, fun as hell.
* Standing rigid on them feels very inflexible / vulnerable to bumps. We might end up collectively deciding all their benefits are better afforded by battery-boost bikes.
* Originally they could go up to 20mph on straightaways. Now they seem to have speed limiters that cut them off around 15mph, as is their legal maximum. That's more appropriate.
* Overall I'm pro everything that might reduce or give alternatives to cars. An urban street environment that is human-scale, accommodating pedestrians and bicyclists as much as or more than cars, will also be a good environment for electric vehicles. So I want them regulated and advanced.
3: The contracts my city is putting in place will have such a citywide reporting mechanism (not requiring people to download the app).
2: A September 24 headline from the Washington Post:
Hospital ER reports 161 percent spike in visits involving electric scooters
If only electric scooters has been a thing back when Action Park was still a going concern. just think of the possibilities...
3.3 I saw a story in Slate recently about how a lot of scooters are getting tossed in lakes and such.
Come to think of it, has electric scooter jousting started trending yet?
Hey, I was just bitching about that two days ago on a DC forum. As a biker I think I've always been a bit more careful than average, and only more so since my accident in 2017. I'm not sure how proud of that I should feel, because careful != law-abiding, and regardless of either concern there's always someone complaining about bikers. If I were to draw a Venn diagram of actions a biker can take, with circles for legal actions, safe actions, and actions unlikely to piss anyone off, there would probably be no point at all where all three circles overlapped.
And to get back on topic, I may look down on other bikers who don't measure up to my standards, and be annoyed or scared by drivers who don't, but I loathe these new scooter riders. The worst or both worlds. I think I've literally never seen one with a helmet.
The roads commissioner achieves power when the lady in the lake rises from the water with a drowned electric scooter to bestow.
I keep expecting the people who skateboard in the street to die, bit so far they have not.
Overall I'm pro everything that might reduce or give alternatives to cars. An urban street environment that is human-scale, accommodating pedestrians and bicyclists as much as or more than cars, will also be a good environment for electric vehicles. So I want them regulated and advanced.
I was speculating recently that electric scooters are serving the function that Segway wanted fill and, if that's true, it's a classic example of disruption in which the smaller, cheaper, less-featured version ends up making a much greater impact than the expensive, full-featured predecessor (and I presume that the decline in battery weight/prices is a big reason why electric scooters are practical now).
In addition to vandalism, lake-throwing, etc. when a bank of scooters is all parked together, they can be dominoed. I'm seeing this so frequently I suspect some people are just pushing them over reflexively by now. (Forget that that makes them even more of a nuisance to wheelchair users etc...)
I saw two teens, one on a scooter, one on a skateboard, arms linked so the former was pulling the latter along. It was disgustingly cute.
(I have also seen someone riding two at once, one under each foot. Less cute, more baffling, I guess showboating.)
Right next to this post in my RSS feed: Streetsblog, We Can't Stop Global Warming Without Reducing Driving.
The problem with reducing driving us that every car you take off the road makes it faster for all the other cars to get where they want to go. Unless you toss cars in lakes.
We might end up collectively deciding all their benefits are better afforded by battery-boost bikes.
This is an interesting thought; I hope it's where we end up. I think part of my problem with taking the scooters seriously as a "last-mile solution" is purely aesthetic: people on scooters look too wobbly.
Maybe they could rent me a Spanx before I ride?
6: Hospital ER reports 161 percent spike in visits involving electric scooters
Not terribly meaningful in a time period where scooter use spiked by more than 161%.
22: I'd have thought a lot of ER visits involved ambulances.
With American health care coverage, that's risky because who knows what it will cost.
The scooter companies are big customers of ours at work so I want them to please not all go out of business too quickly.
25: Two words: scooter jousting.
I called up my supervisor and noted that these scooter companies should provide simple apps for pedestrians that allow a pedestrian who sees a violation of conduct rules/laws, to mash a big button and have the app figure out which scooter it was, and hence which user it was, who committed the infraction.
My general reaction to seeing young people doing something new is to demand a better and easier way for me to harass them anonymously via social media. That's why I launched Beardr, the app that geotags people with annoying facial hair and prompts users to form flash mobs to scream abuse at them.
1: No one else seems to be doing the Vespa-like ones in Pittsburgh. You haven't seen any recently because they've taken their fleet off the road for the winter. Supposedly. I couldn't get up the courage to try one when they were out, but maybe this spring. (Or maybe not--I got into a car accident on the interstate over the weekend, no one was hurt but I'm a bit skittish of on-road transportation modalities right now.)
Sorry to hear that. Accidents always leave me with residual nerves too.
Just last week the Ford-branded docked bikeshare in the Bay added electric-boost bikes. They are really fun, better than when I owned one such bike a few years ago.
They make people look silly but that's not my prob - so long as they stay of the sidewalks I'm with minivet. Happy to share bike lane with them, but at least in SF nothing beats an electric assist bike to make the city wonderfully accessible without a car. Sob sob sob at some point I'll be back on my bike with functioning lungs.
31
They make people look silly but that's not my prob - so long as they stay of the sidewalks I'm with minivet.
Reminds me of my comment. In 90 percent of DC, it's legal to bike either on the street or on the sidewalk. There is nowhere that we're required to be on the sidewalk, and in the central business district, it's actually illegal to be. And yet, within that district, there are lots of places where biking in the street would be wildly unsafe. Lanes merging or becoming turn-only with little warning, etc. Car accidents in those places are probably relatively rare because drivers are on the lookout for each other, and when accidents happen it's just a fender-bender because speeds are low during rush hour. But every time I biked on the streets in those places I was sure I'd be creamed. So I stopped, and either started avoiding those places or biked on the sidewalk. Besides that, a lot of people seem annoyed at bikers for reasons that have nothing to do with either safety or legality. Online a lot of people hate bikers on the sidewalk, and when actually biking a lot of drivers seem to have it in for me.
As for scooters in the bike lanes, that doesn't bug me as long as they're going in the correct fucking direction because it sure as fuck bugs me if they aren't. (In fairness, I've seen bikers do the same thing at times.)
At this point I'm verbalizing arguments I have with myself every night while commuting, can you tell?
Comme ca: https://www.wibc.com/news/local-news/man-injured-while-riding-bird-scooter
I wish I had better news. The basic set up of these is wrong; roads are not smooth enough for them.
I'm sort of reflexively anti-anti-scooter. Basically all the criticisms are even more true of cars, especially the early days of car. Annoying parking? Well if we just gave them like two car parking spots per block it wouldn't be a problem. Killing pedestrians? Again cars! Maybe scooters will become popular enough that cars will get kicked off some streets, and that'd be a victory for everyone in every way.
This topic is making me feel like a country mouse.
Here's someone actually trying to marshal available data to figure out if scooters are more dangerous than other vehicles. Answer: insufficient information, but the anecdata is fairly worrying.
35: Wait till we get to Schnäppsenhösen.
I'm sure cars were more dangerous before we redesigned our cities for them.
If people ride scooters on the sidewalk, they might hit one of the cars parked there.
I am all for crowding out cars! Welcome to the bike lane my crazy wobbly scooter friends, just don't flop over onto me. And stay off the sidewalks.
I kicked a car once. And slapped one twice.
Pro-tip: If you never go to therapy, no therapist can point out healthy ways of dealing with conflict.
38: cars are still incredibly dangerous!
ajay @ 27:
My general reaction to seeing young people doing something new is to demand a better and easier way for me to harass them anonymously via social media.
Me, I think old people shouldn't walk in crosswalks, I mean, what if a biker wanted to get thru, and he's using one of those newfangled apps that track your speed, and he's tryin' to beat the record, maaaan, and hits one of those obstructing old people. I mean, is that even a CRIME? Rilly!
These two idiots were riding on the sidewalk, on a busy street downtown, and almost hit somebody as they rounded a corner at speed. It's not "something new". It's a safety hazard. And again: just to be clear: this shit keeps on going, we won't just be carrying them over to the street to wedge underneath cars, or planting them ass-end-down in trashcans. We'll be vandalizing them. These companies need to make sure their businesses operate *safely*.
You're going to vandalize scooters to stop cyclists from injuring pedestrians?
Uh, I thought the sarcasm was obvious.
"Young people trying something new" is not what happened in that linked-to story. What happened was an uncaring cyclist who was trying for a new Strava record on a segment, and rode at a (71-year-old) pedestrian in a crosswalk (hence, full right-of-way) with depraved indifference. And Strava made this more likely.
In a similar fashion, these scooters, ridden on the *sidewalk* are dangers to pedestrians. B/c a pedestrian cannot see them coming, and they come at high speed. Oh and just to be clear, there's no problem with them operating in bike lanes (and following the laws): pedestrians know to look for them there, etc, etc, etc.
Just to be clear, I have the same problem with bikers riding on sidewalks. I saw a young man tearing ass (really fast, out of the saddle, legs pumping) up the esplanade at the Embarcadero in SF, and hit a poor dog; the dog had no idea which way the guy was going and tried to dodge several directions, before getting hit. The guy didn't even stop. Didn't. Even. Stop. I cringe to think if that had been a human.
If something isn't done to stop scooters on the *sidewalks* by our forces of peace and order, then something *will* be done, is all I'm saying. I'm a law-abiding person: Every time I see an incident of the sort I described, I call the city to register a complaint. I call my supervisor (city legislators) to ask them to do something about it. I have no problem with people using "new toys" as long as they follow the laws. Scooters are illegal on sidewalks.
Sometimes people enjoy vandalism enough that they don't worry about the reasons. We've all been there.
I read somewhere or other that in enlightened topless Scandinavia, the solution is to have lanes in the streets with designated speeds, and the transport method doesn't matter. So if you're going 10mph, you stay in the 10 mph lane and no one cares how. The innermost lanes have the highest speeds.
My Bay Area friends love the scooters, say they are fun as can be and that for sure, they are incredibly convenient and the high school boys riding them stupidly will get killed or get someone else killed. I've ridden the JUMP bikes and those are super fun. From what I can tell, they've become a recreation option in addition to a transportation option.
"I have the same problem with bikers riding on sidewalks." This! Get into the street, or take the bus. And absolutely we need safer and vastly expanded bike infrastructure.
It looks like that cyclist received what was probably too lenient a sentence due to the same vehicular manslaughter laws that also protect drivers who kill. (TLDR: unless malice aforethought is proved, which usually means being under the influence of something, it's a misdemeanor.)
I hate cyclists buzzing pedestrians and blowing through intersections too. Urban cycling gives one justified paranoia, but that can turn into a "we can do no wrong" complex when what's needed is for everyone to remember "big yields to small".
Moby: something else. It isn't like I go up to every person with a scooter, every person riding their bike, every person using a "hoverboard" on the sidewalk, and start haranguing them to get into the street. I'm -specifically- angered by big companies doing this. Because their business model is built around users breaking the laws [without liability to the company], and that's unacceptable. It is -specifcally- the users of those companies' scooters, that I target with my "you do know you're not allowed on the sidewalk with those -- it's illegal, you need to be in the street" harangues.
44. My impression from reading some anti-scooter screeds is that the scooter business model is the scooters pay for themselves after a few weeks, and anything after that is gravy, so the companies aren't overly concerned about vandalism. One issue some cities have avoided is that if you allow in lots of scooter companies they of course flood the zone to maximize their scooters' visibility. One solution is to require they be returned to a rack rather than just abandoned; SF allowed them to be abandoned at first, but I think they are switching and also limited the number of licensed companies.
48. Most of the anti-scooter stuff I've seen comes from SF and the Bay Area in general. I guess opinion is divided on them. They were a test bed (by which I mean the companies just started dumping them everywhere without even asking permission), so it's not surprising things were chaotic. Maybe it's better now. I think DC has two licensed companies and requires return to a rack.
The ones I don't get are electric skateboards controlled by a remote fob held in the hand. Like, do they have brakes? How much experience skateboarding do you need to use one of those?
My problem as a frequent biker is pedestrians who cross when I have a green light but they don't consider a bike to be worth waiting for a walk sign. If the light is green I need to go at a normal speed to prevent being passed then right hooked by a car. I don't care if they cross when they don't have a walk sign but at least yield to the person with a green.
Some of the locals here manage to not consider a car worth waiting for a walk sign to stop for. It's really impressive, unless you happen to be the person they decided to walk in front of while you drive.
Moby: Some of the locals here manage to not consider a car worth waiting for a walk sign to stop for.
In both Massachusetts and California, pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right-of-way (technically, it's "at an intersection" in CA). Period. I remember the Boston po-po would run plainclothes officers on the crosswalk in front of Bulfinch's tavern on the public garden, with a car posted a block down, to write tickets for any cars that didn't yield right-of-way. And saw it myself in Cambridge's Central Square.
I'm talking about people who cross in the middle of the block. I mean, I do it all the time, but I wait until I have space and I move quickly. The elderly Jewish people around here will do it even when they need a walker.
56- That's true for an unsignaled crosswall, but you're saying at a crosswalk where I have a green light and they have a red hand, that a pedestrian still has the right to cross and I have to stop? I find that hard to believe, especially because if all pedestrians acted like that it would be total chaos. You could never approach an intersection at more than 5mph, when by car or bike.
I used to spend a lot of energy stewing over all the reckless bicyclists around here, wrecking things for the rest of us. Then I realized, have I sublimated my terror of cars and redirected it at the only behavior I feel some control over? Is this the white guy equivalent of respectability politics? I really did sometimes say to myself "Bikes might get treated better if they behaved better."
Honestly, I used to complain about reckless bikes, but they put in a bunch of bike lanes near my office and it really worked great.
SP @ 58: Link to summary of state laws: http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-crossing-50-state-summary.aspx
In many states (and for sure in MA, CA) yeah, a pedestrian -always- has right-of-way at a marked crosswalk, whether controlled or uncontrolled. And sure, you might think that this results in traffic slowing to a crawl, but it doesn't. In fact, at least in California, it results in drivers behaving courteously to pedestrians. [I've forgotten what it felt like in MA, but I never drove there either.] I noticed it in 1987 when I came to visit a friend working in Palo Alto (having grown up in Texas): drivers would stop when was just at the corner, about to step into the intersection. It totally baffled me! But it was great! And now living here, as a driver, I'm always careful and aware, and that means, yeah, I don't drive like a bat out of hell. That's all to the good. B/c it means that pedestrians, and esp. old folks with walkers, can actually get around. Ditto small children.
Moby:
The elderly Jewish people around here will do it even when they need a walker.
I take public transit all the time. I see older folks take the bus a single block, even on a pretty-flat-ish street. Maybe the "when they need a walker" is a clue? That they can't walk long distances, and walking down to the end of the block, crossing, walking back, is a big deal? Everybody gets old, eventually. Everybody wants to stay ambulatory as long as possible. Drivers needs to understand that for them, waiting a little is a matter of -convenience-. For pedestrians, esp. the kind you cite, it's a matter of whether they'll be able to get around at all, or not.
I'm admiring their trust of human nature.
I feel like Minivet@60 is onto something. Drivers kick down at pedestrians and cyclists. But they never kick at other drivers. When four cars approach a 4-way stop, nobody barrells thru, expecting the others to stop. Instead, they all stop, and then there's this dance of figuring out who's gonna go first. And after that, the dance repeats -- it's not like once the first car thru is decided, everything else goes by *lockstep*.
Somehow, the fact that if you don't actually negotiate with the other parties, you'll end up on the receiving end of a 2-4-ton death machine, makes everybody *courteous* in a way they don't behave towards pedestrians or cyclists.
51. Round here, bikes yield to horses as well.
pushing them over reflexively
I propose subsidized urban pastures to provide a distraction.
In many states (and for sure in MA, CA) yeah, a pedestrian -always- has right-of-way at a marked crosswalk, whether controlled or uncontrolled.
That sounded implausible enough to check, and it doesn't appear to be true in MA. M.G.L. 89.11: "When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be so to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk marked in accordance with standards established by the department of highways if the pedestrian is on that half of the traveled part of the way on which the vehicle is traveling or if the pedestrian approaches from the opposite half of the traveled part of the way to within 10 feet of that half of the traveled part of the way on which said vehicle is traveling."
It does appear to be more or less true in CA (CA Vehicle Code 21950), though with the important qualification that pedestrians have a duty not to leave the curb in a way that would hazardously put them in the path of a nearby vehicle. Who knows how that's applied in practice, but I'd read it to mean that cars don't have to approach all intersections at 5 mph just in case a pedestrian decides to exercise their right of way by suddenly dashing into the road, but would have to do so if a pedestrian is stepping into the road far enough ahead, even if the car has the green.
I presume that the decline in battery weight/prices is a big reason why electric scooters are practical now
Also practical now are vaping and drones. Its amazing how battery tech has created whole classes of shit we never had before.
Drones have shut down a major airport for the last 24 hours and as with the Chavez strike I am surprised it hasn't happened sooner.
I suspect in both cases they had help from humans.
70 It has. I was there for one of those and the delay was a lot longer than the reported 2 hours (coming back from a weekend trip late at night and had to go to work the next morning too.)
What this is city really needs is people with more kinetic energy.
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NMM to Mattis as SecDef. The wheels are really coming off now.
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68- aren't there stories about LA cops giving people tickets for even starting to cross when the don't walk has started flashing, never mind when a car has a green?
There are a million stories in the naked city. Most of them are pretty dull.
So did Mattis write that NYT op-ed?
77 Maybe, did you read his letter of resignation?
Not yet. I've only seen it so far linked in formats that there's no way I'd read on a phone.
He was careful to mention that the deputy secretary in charge is blocking Trump when he plunges for the button is staying on.
77: The question is kind of futile, since we don't know how much the NYT rewrote what it got. That said, I don't think so. The NYT piece is reads like a politician's work and is domestically focused. Mattis talks almost entirely about alliances. They feel entirely different to me.
In retrospect, I don't think I read the whole op-ed because so much was bullshit anyway.
I've been away from the news most of the day, but saw that there's some kind of rumor that Trump is going to order troops out of Afghanistan. I'm sure it's fake news, because, whoa.
What's amazing is that Trump seems to have decided that he cements a legacy, or insulates himself from removal, by getting out of wars rather than getting in them. I'm sure it's just a blind pig finding an acorn, with acorn defined as an ineffective strategy which nonetheless leads to goals I can get behind. Has he met any Republican senators? (Yes, re Syria I'm conflicted about selling out the Kurds. Again. I'm not conflicted about not getting farm kids from Nebraska killed for nothing.)
I stand by my position that if he enacts single payer universal coverage he gets on Mt Rushmore. Thing is, he won't care, because he'll be gone by then.
There's a really fucking stupid version of "All the King's Men" in the administration somewhere.
I'm all for getting us out of Afghanistan but how about, you know, getting the Taliban to sign a peace treaty first?
He's going to make them promise not to fly airplanes into buildings with "TRUMP" on the side and call it a win.
86: Exactly:
retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal was cited as saying the best the United States could hope for in Afghanistan was to keep a reasonably sized force there and "to muddle along" as best as possible. Some were disappointed with this comment. I would submit that he is both right and that his thought extends to the counter-terrorism mission globally. Which is to say, these are issues without a military solution but for which the United States has largely chosen to apply military means. Until or unless Congress decides to put sizeable amounts of the U.S. budget into addressing the underlying drivers of terrorism abroad, the Defense Department will be stuckAnd Afghanistan is not looking good.
One of the fucked up things about this is that there have been some significant overtures made to bringing the Taliban to sign such a peace treaty. This is exactly the wrong time to do this in this manner.
Also we have to consider there is now an unimpeded John Bolton presumably trying for war with Iran.
Unless he got fired and I missed it?
Not that I saw. I would guess he's not a happy man, but if he wanted to influence Trump, he should have had a less stupid mustache.
More optimistically (hahahahahahaha) there's every chance this will just flip back with the next IS attack, or just with best bud MBS freaking out about Turkey.
I think there's a good chance he's doing this to get Turkey to back off MBS.
It's going to turn out that America First boils down to ethnic cleansing at home and not giving a fuck abroad.
THERE'S ONLY ONE THING WORSE THAN FIGHTING WITH ALLIES AND THAT'S FIGHTING WITHOUT THEM
According to a crossword puzzle clue: allies are "the friend you fight with".
The second time as farce.
Meanwhile, the "the wall" thing continues to crack me up. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down wall!"
I steal everything from the internet. Except stationery. I steal that from work.
Maybe the real "the wall" is all the wall we built along the way.
Some MAGA guy started a GoFundMe for buliding the wall and it just hit 10 million USD. That's all going right into his pocket. Great grift.
Someone actually donated 50,000
GoWallMe
WallStarter
Wallmeon
Wallgress
Wall.org
Wallber
Wallr
Wallyft
Wallbook
Wallter
WallBnB
Wallgle
Wallmblr
Wallizon
Wall-mobile
WallT&T
Wallcast
Wallstr
Wallhub
Wall.io
Wallantir
Wallernews
Wallfeed
Wallington Post
WallTube
Wallazon
Wallspace
Wallple
Wallmail
Wallsapp
I think I'm basically with Minivet here. I'm annoyed by scooters on the sidewalk (just like I'm annoyed when people bike on the sidewalk), but I think this is 90% about insufficient bike-lane infrastructure (+10% kids being stupid assholes). The bottom line is we need to destroy individual car ownership, and reclaim the huge amount of lane given over in our cities to parking, and these scooters honestly seem like a much better last-mile solution than anything else that's ever come along. Compared to bikes, they take up considerably less parking space (which is why I'm annoyed by how much complaining there is about them being left wherever--yes, we need a better system, but FFS, these things take up like 1/3 the cubic volume of a bicycle, and like 1/50th of a car; talk about letting the perfect be the enemy of the SO MUCH BETTER) and there's no need to be fit to use one. (Yes, we can talk about electric-assist bikes, but I don't think they'll ever have as low a barrier to entry as these scooters.)
In my utopia, there's no more on-street car parking, just expensive garages; very low private car ownership; very good heavy-rail and other high-throughput public transit; and (thanks partly to reclaiming space from parking) massive buildout of low-speed dedicated lanes for electric scooters and bikes; plus maybe someday (hey, it's utopia) self-driving cars to pick up the remaining last-mile slack.
I complain about the occasional double parked delivery truck but holy shit.
111.1: We have one of those things already.
Does anybody else picture Master (the top half of Master Blaster) shouting "Embargo" at Tina Turner in all the reports of Trump on the coming government shutdown?
110: Walgreens tends to throw "Wal-" into its generic product names. My favorite one I've encountered is their version of Claritin, which is Wal-Itin. It's like they were sitting around the table, trying to think of clever plays on the word "Claritin" and then someone said, "Fuck it, who cares, Wal-Itin it is."
Probably a really good day for a new "Friday WTF" post.
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GoFundMe for an animatronic RBG doll.
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It's nice to know that it will be seriously overdetermined why I'm nervous and edgy for Christmas.