
Electric Scooter Company Uses Technology to Go After Dangerous Riders - Varcht
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/sep/19/electric-scooter-company-uses-technology-go-after-/
======
Animats
SF General Hospital has been seeing many scooter-related injuries.[1] The
chief of emergency medicine reported three scooter related emergency room
visits on one Friday - two concussions, no helmet use.

Such injuries used to be tallied as "other", because they were rare. SF
General has started keeping statistics on small powered vehicle accidents.[2]

The emergency medicine people are saying "helmet". They can fix most other
injuries, but not brain damage.

The high-tech solution to this comes from Hovding.[3] They make an automatic
inflatable helmet that inflates like an air bag if you fall. It's available in
Europe and Japan, but not the US. €299. It's impressive, but not as good as a
hard helmet. It fails US helmet tests.[4] Good idea, needs more work. Startup
potential.

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Injuries-are-
the...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Injuries-are-the-untold-
part-of-the-scooter-13219335.php) [2]
[https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/08/411406/scooter-safety-
ucsf...](https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/08/411406/scooter-safety-ucsf-doctors-
track-new-injuries) [3] [https://hovding.com/](https://hovding.com/) [4]
[https://www.helmets.org/hovdingcommenttocpsc.htm](https://www.helmets.org/hovdingcommenttocpsc.htm)

~~~
koube
A large use case for scooters is that you're walking around and you just hop
on and ride to your destination. Any helmet you have you bring from home. That
means you have to plan your trip, and carry your helmet the whole time.

These two factors, planning ahead, and carrying the item for the entire time
you're not home, still exist with a Hovding. Carrying is easier for a hovding,
but the use case of spontaneous use is still not satisfied.

------
X-Istence
Riders ride on the sidewalk because it's far more dangerous to ride on the
street... cars are already not paying attention to bicyclists/motor cycles,
are we to expect them to pay attention to scooters?

~~~
Rapzid
I live in a city doing a scooter pilot with a few companies including Bird. My
observation has been that many, many scooter riders are:

* Breaking traffic laws(blowing through stop signs)

* Riding in the streets and through intersections without paying attention to traffic

* Riding quickly through parking lots without paying attention to traffic

* Riding unsafely on sidewalks

* Riding without helmets

Generally, being oblivious to any safety responsibility. I witnessed a guy the
other day riding down the sidewalk with one of those long skinny beer packs
across the deck flopping around and sliding off with something else in his
arms.

It's super stressful operating a vehicle around the hot spots with this
erratic, illegal behavior going on however I have yet to witness a vehicle
plow them.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I definitely see where you're coming from, but on the other hand you could
make the exact same arguments about cyclists. The rates vary a bit
(anecdotally, scooter riders are _way_ less likely to wear helmets but more
likely to stop at stop signs). I think the booming population of scooters is
just increasing the number of opportunities to see the problems that exist for
modes of transportation that split the difference between pedestrians and
cars.

~~~
Rapzid
Cyclist in my area(not SF, LA, NY, etc) tend to be much more safety conscious.
They typically have high visibility wear and lights in the evening, and ride
in the lanes and obey traffic laws and signage(traffic lights, stop signs,
etc).

As well, a scooter will casually accelerate very quickly up to 15mph which is
not a casual cycling speed for most people; it's a beginner training speed and
rarely seen in parking lots and other space constrained locations.

Lane splitting is not legal in my state, and scooters seem to be much more
likely to zip between cars and between cars and curbs including through lights
and stop signs. Typically, surprisingly, cyclists will actually full stop
behind cars at lights and not go around them to the front.

I would contest, but be open to, it being a sampling biases. I would posit the
scooter riders and my area are a much higher accident liability than cyclists
in large part due to their own actions. Cycling is reasonably prevalent in the
area I live at in my city.

I think I can sum it all up with one phrase: "Carte Blanche"

------
teagee
This type of thinking would do humanity a lot of good if applied to cars &
rules of the road. In my opinion using a public resource (roads) you should be
compelled to follow the rules

\- Speed Limits

\- Stop Signs

\- ...

~~~
clay_the_ripper
While I think applying this to scooters is one thing, I do not want to live in
a world where my car is artificially limited to 15mph in a 15 zone.

Yeah maybe we could reduce accidents by 0.1% or whatever. But you just know
the damn thing will go on the fritz at some point or gps will be wrong and
you’ll be going too slow somewhere else, or you’ll be a rush in an emergency
and be unable to get where you’re going...plus (and this May be unpopular)
that world just sounds boring and crappy. I don’t want my life controlled by
the cloud.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"I do not want to live in a world where my car is artificially limited to
15mph in a 15 zone."

15 - 20mph is a pretty significant speed limit. At that speed a car -
pedestrian collision is highly unlikely to be fatal. Much faster and the
chances of a fatality increase quickly.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero)

I would really like to see 20mph speed limits become much more common and
strictly enforced. There's no reason we need to risk killing people just to
get someplace faster.

~~~
rootusrootus
More crosswalks, and enforcement of their use, could also reduce the risk to
pedestrians. There is room for give and take here. Trying to retroactively
enforce 20mph limits on fast roads is pretty silly, just design the damn roads
better and it wouldn't be necessary.

~~~
meej
Safer road design is a big part of Vision Zero.

------
clairity
the goal for supporters of such approaches is not safety, but rather control.
new things signal a changing of the guard (no matter how remote the
possibility), and they oppose it by reflex. grousing about blocked sidewalks
and people getting hit by scooters is largely the brain rationalizing the
underlying instinct so as to provide ego coherence (i.e., "i am a good and
safe person" rather than "i'm trying to preserve my status in the world").

many people want scooters (along with bikes and e-bikes). it fills an
important missing middle between walking and driving. the better approach is
to replace parking lanes on city roads with a grade-separated (from both
regular roads and sidewalks) lane for these missing middle modes of
transportation.

as for road safety, strict imposition of the kind of regulation noted in the
article actually creates danger. the reason we have such powerful engines in
our cars is to provide headroom to accelerate out of accidents (where braking
out of them would be difficult or impossible).

i'd be all for much harder driving tests, where licensees show a mastery of
control over the vehicle in difficult conditions, much like commercial pilots.
i'd also support stricter enforcement of distracted driving laws (rather than
speed enforcements). those would actually help reduce auto deaths.

~~~
teagee
great point on control and disruption, the lawmaker is probably making these
statements / suggestions with uber & airbnb in mind

------
nraynaud
Funny that they don't spend their efforts on cars that actually kill people.

~~~
lucasmullens
Why would Bird do that? They're a scooter company.

~~~
dionidium
Bird wouldn't, but the point, generalized, is a good one.

People are quick to express frivolous concerns about pedestrians out of
crosswalks, scooters on sidewalks, and cyclists ignoring stop signs, examples
that are side-effects of a culture that privileges a transport option that
kills and maims orders of magnitude more people every year.

