
Scooter Madness - schintan
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/opinion/electric-scooters-nashville.html
======
tomhschmidt
> Last month, the inevitable happened: Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville
> man, was killed in a collision with an S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His
> grieving parents have launched a petition to ban the devices in Nashville.
> “[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed, and we are calling on Mayor David
> Briley and the Metro Council to ban them from the streets immediately,” the
> petition reads, arguing that Mr. Gaulke should be “the last victim of an
> epidemic that the e-scooter companies and local government both refuse to
> acknowledge.”

Imagine being gaslighted by the auto industry so hard that you think scooters
are the problem here, not the car that actually hit and killed someone.

All of the problems that are discussed in this article are artifacts of a
culture and cities designed around cars, period.

~~~
gamblor956
Imagine being gaslighted by the scooter industry so hard you think that cars
are the problem here, not the scooter rider that made an illegal turn in front
of an SUV which tried but failed to break in time to avoid hitting him.

[https://www.wsmv.com/news/bird-responds-after-scooter-
rider-...](https://www.wsmv.com/news/bird-responds-after-scooter-rider-dies-
after-being-hit-by/article_8a15872e-7d6f-11e9-84a3-0f4598259e24.html)
[https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/5/20/390590/Brady-
Gaulke-D...](https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/5/20/390590/Brady-Gaulke-Dies-
After-Being-Hit-On.aspx)

All of the problems with scooters are artifacts of a startup culture that
disregards safety, and business plans designed around scale, period.
[[https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197713/the-inventor-
rev...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197713/the-inventor-review-
theranos-scandal-silicon-valley-startup-elizabeth-holmes-fraud-sundance-2019)]

~~~
mikestew
Cars obviously _are_ the problem here. Had the SUV driver been riding a
motorcycle, there is a high probability the scooter rider would be alive. But
instead of saying to car drivers, "you are operating the least-forgiving
vehicle, therefore you will bear the most burden of responsibility", we say,
"ran over a bike because your were texting? Here's a $120 ticket, pay more
attention next time."

~~~
gamblor956
SUVs generally are more dangerous to the _other_ parties in a collision.

But in this case the scooter rider suffered fatal head injuries because he
wasn't wearing a helmet. He would have still suffered fatal head injuries no
matter what vehicle hit him since it wasn't the size of the vehicle that
mattered here; what mattered was that he fell off his scooter and hit his
head.

------
klodolph
> Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville man, was killed in a collision with an
> S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His grieving parents have launched a petition
> to ban the devices in Nashville. “[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed [...]

I'm just going to take a moment to remark how impressive it is that automakers
have achieved this, that the roads are owned by cars and collisions are framed
to be the fault of whoever was not in the car that shouldn't be on the road.
Cars were invented first, and then Jaywalking (as a crime) was invented
second.

In theory, you should evaluate these programs (and other programs like helmet
laws) against the risk posed by cars, but unfortunately, when people take
bicycles or scooters instead of cars, it frees up space on the road for more
cars.

I don't have a particular angle here, I wish we could redesign our cities to
accommodate better modes of transportation but that's expensive and there's
little political will for it.

~~~
jseliger
It's also amazing to read this piece in the same newspaper that has published
perhaps thousands of articles about the (very real) threat of climate change.

The solution is to ban 30 pound scooters, which have zero point emissions, in
favor of multi-ton cars, which carry around an entire internal-combustion rig,
spewing CO2 out the entire way?

Talk about bizarre.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> which have zero point emissions

It's better to be precise here: "whose contribution to emissions is an order
of magnitude lower than cars."

------
e40
And just last Friday in my walk home, two young gentlemen on scooters on the
sidewalk, riding in the direction I was walking, passed by me at 20 mph, on my
left, just as I was stepping left around something in my path and I came very
close to being hit. Had I stepped a second earlier I could have been severely
injured, even killed.

I've been walking to/from work for 23 years, and I've never felt less safe on
the sidewalk. I abhor these scooters because of how the users of them
disregard the safety of pedestrians.

~~~
novok
Scooters are limited to 15mph typically.

------
randyrand
It's an easy fix - just add bike lanes and bike/scooter racks.

The benefits of scooters are many: a single lane can accommodate many more
scooters than cars. less emissions. faster than public for 1-3 miles. It's
worth accommodating scooters.

~~~
darkstar999
> less emissions

Are you sure? Accounting for the fact that drivers pick them up with a car,
drive them home, charge them, and then drive them again to a new location? And
the fact that they can have as little as a 6 month life because of wear and
tear?

~~~
randyrand
Than a taxi? Definitely. A taxi _also_ has to drive to pick you up and drive
around to wait for more passenger.

Than public? it's a tossup.

As for linespan, the first scooter rollout used consumer grade scooters.
Commercial scooters are just rolling out:
[https://www.bird.co/zero/](https://www.bird.co/zero/)

------
lacker
This doesn't seem like a very well-written article to me. The main claim is
that scooters are dangerous, but since some trips on scooters are replacing
trips in other forms of transportation like riding a car or bicycle, you
should really be comparing to the dangers of using a car or bicycle. This just
has a few anecdotes of people dying on a scooter.

------
btbuildem
> Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville man, was killed in a collision with an
> S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His grieving parents have launched a petition
> to ban the devices in Nashville. “[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed, and
> we are calling on Mayor David Briley and the Metro Council to ban them from
> the streets immediately,” the petition reads, arguing that Mr. Gaulke should
> be “the last victim of an epidemic that the e-scooter companies and local
> government both refuse to acknowledge.”

A much more sane response would be to acknowledge the personal responsibility
of a single individual who chose to take risks, and suffered the consequences.

Personal e-vehicles are one of the rays of hope in the fight against climate
change - getting people out of cars, reducing congestion / load on transit. It
is the most shortsighted thing to try and ban them.

------
hprotagonist
My primary issues with dockless scooters are these:

1\. Solid tires are awful. Harsh ride, unsafe/twitchy as hell on even slightly
rough roads, and they don't inspire confidence for handling.

2\. Motors that need to be kick-started in order to have enough torque to work
are incredibly frustrating to use and don't have enough acceleration to get
out of trouble.

~~~
btbuildem
Check out the Boosted Rev...

~~~
hprotagonist
for $1600, i'll just craiglist myself a 49cc scooter if i want a not-bicycle
to get around on. 90+mpg, 30mph top speed, no special insurance or licenses
needed, you can park it on the sidewalk, and (in my city) use the bike lanes.
And it even carries groceries!

------
asveikau
> And while there is no question that this country needs a micro-mobility
> revolution,

Is there no question? Maybe we need to build fewer car dependent
neighborhoods. Maybe the revolution is called "walking".

The article starts from a position that we have giant hunks of metal going at
high speeds and anything that stands in their path must be banned or be
destroyed. But car to pedestrian deaths happen with or without scooters. So
why is there no talk of getting rid of the cars? Or at least creating a
culture where drivers are more careful.

------
cjf4
Having just gotten back from Nashville, their implementation is not really
working. The sidewalks are now stressful to walk on as scooters fly above 20
MPH in all directions, with the rider often yelling "Sorry! I don't know how
to drive this thing."

------
kristo
We are so violently opposed to car alternatives, it makes me wonder what other
better worlds are within reach that we simply can’t or refuse to see

~~~
defterGoose
I think that's a mischaracterization of the argument here, though. The point
is that riders of these things are causing novel hazards to the people around
them without any sort of mitigating factors like licensure or taxation. I know
I feel pretty mad when someone zips by me on the sidewalk while I'm walking my
(small) dog, and that anger goes mostly to the scooter company that is
enabling an idiot. If, in the end, this is a stepping stone to lower
pollution, great, but that doesn't mean there aren't any problems with it
because it is the lesser of two evils. This is all to say that I, a real
genuine person, am not upset with the Advent of scooters because they are
competing with cars; it's for completely different reasons.

------
Hippocrates
Show me the statistics on fatalities per capita per mile traveled on scooters,
vs in cars and I'll start taking the anecdotes a little more seriously. (I
think I know how those stats will look). I don't for one second believe that
this outrage is about the safety of others. It's about people feeling
uncomfortable and inconvenienced by something new and strange to them.

Scooters are very progressive for cities. I'm excited for anything that is
quiet, efficient, and possibly takes cars off the road. Their popularity
speaks for itself, but the nimbyism around them really is insufferable. People
want to ban anything new that they don't themselves benefit from (gasp).

It's really gross that people think that they and their preferred mode of
transport own the place. We need to learn to co-exist and be flexible about
our shared spaces while the cities evolve (at a slower pace) to support us and
technology better. Just be as respectful as possible and don't try to scare
the bejeezus out of the grannies in the meantime.

------
danghica
So there were three deaths for who knows how many rides. How does this compare
with bikes and cars? Surely some people die using those or any other means of
transport, including walking.

------
bluetidepro
Here in Chicago, we just started a pilot program of the scooters throughout
certain parts of the city this past Saturday [1]. I think that's the right
approach to all this. Do a test run with a handful of companies (there is 10
companies here in this trial), and get the data to see how they should move
forward. They have pretty strict guidelines on the pilot program, as well. I'm
very curious to see how it all goes, and what happens next with them.

[1] [https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-biz-
scooter-...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-biz-scooter-
companies-chosen-20190611-story.html)

------
module0000
From TFA:

> Less than 1 percent of the injured riders were wearing helmets.

I'm not sure why this statistic was included. All it could demonstrate is
"people more likely to wear helmets are less likely to be injured". IE:
cautious people are cautious.

This article reads like FUD. Along with scooters, people are currently free to
go bungee jumping, skydiving, rock climbing, skin diving, and all other manner
of activity which carries a higher-than-walking-around-the-block chance of
injury. I don't want to live in a nerf-like society, where our available
activities are dictated to us by...anyone.

~~~
sneak
Because all of the scooters, for liability reasons, implore you to wear a
helmet. Nobody does. It’s a farce. They are unsafe.

------
CarVac
The problem isn't scooters. Scooters have just exposed the problem: it's the
cars.

There's a lot of victim blaming going on: we have giant weapons rolling around
in broad daylight and when someone is killed by one we say nothing about the
lumbering giants we allow to occupy so much of our space, not to mention time,
money, and what little remains of the environment?

------
IshKebab
What misguided nonsense. The solution to cars crashing into scooters and bikes
(no, cyclists aren't magically protected like she seems to think) isn't to ban
them - it's to build proper bike lanes!

And why do people think scooters are street litter when cars aren't? Cars are
left _everywhere_.

This is just classic luddism. "Roads were only for cars when I was young and
that shall not change!"

~~~
happytoexplain
>build proper bike lanes

Strongly agree.

>This is just classic luddism.

Strongly disagree. To me, the common "luddite" accusation often seems like a
disconnected, elitist framing of issues that have important pragmatic angles.

------
sudosteph
There's always an adjustment period when transportation options begin to shift
rapidly. If you go back and read newspapers from 100 years ago, you'll see
people complaining about how cars are a menace and don't belong on the road
with horses. Based off of some of the stories about how recklessly people
handled some of those cars, you might even be inclined to agree with the anti-
car crowd of that time!

However, just like with cars, banning scooters altogether is probably not
going to be a widespread outcome. The reason scooters are so popular is
because they actually do solve a crucial missing link for many cities,
especially southern cities which often have terrible transit options and
patchwork sidewalk and bike paths. Then you factor in the crazy summer heat
and humidity, and it's no wonder that people are into the idea of a quick,
breezy, ride that can navigate on either roads or sidewalks.

Here in Raleigh (which is a fraction of the size of Nashville to be fair ),
there is a major problem of pedestrian unfriendliness the second you leave the
downtown core or college campus area. The sidewalks are spread out thinly,
often only existing along major arterial roads which are hard to cross, and
then often only one sidewalk on either side. The back roads which would be
safer to walk on in real cities normally (due to having less traffic),
typically lack sidewalks at all. So you end up with your options being big
empty, sidewalks with no shade or benches alongside cars going 50mph (on a
road that doesn't usually have actual houses on it) or tighter roads with no
sidewalk at all where people actually live (no benches, but more shade). It's
a crappy time for a pedestrian either way and it's no surprise that most
people don't want to make use of either option. However, I've found that on a
scooter it's actually not terrible. The big empty sidewalks aren't so
miserable because you get a breeze, and on the back-roads your scooter keeps
up with cars better and has a light on it for visibility.

The issues with parking in bad places could be pretty easily solved with a
some infrastructure for racks and geofencing to ensure riders end up there.
The helmet issue can be changed by making helmets more portable and widely
available. I bought a helmet for myself and my husband just to use the
scooters. It's slightly inconvenient, but not a big deal. I can buckle it to
my backpack. I'd prefer something that could fold up, or maybe a sharing model
(leave a helmet / take a helmet at stations with scooters), but again I think
that's something we can solve with regulation rather than outright banning.
One thing I've wondered is if scooter companies could install a little camera
facing the rider (or require you to take a pic with your phone camera) to
verify a helmet is on before starting the ride using ML (like the "hotdog, not
hotdog" joke app from the tv show "Silicon Valley").

------
725686
A car driver was killed in a collision with an S.U.V. Lets ban cars.

