
The secret life of teen scooter outlaws - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/23/17882996/teens-electric-scooter-age-requirement-bird-lime
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Matt3o12_
So, in America where 15 year olds can get a driver license (and a full drivers
license when they turn 16), are not allowed to ride a scooter which can go a
lot slower then a car AND is a lot less dangerous to the public because they
are not driving a three thousand pound death machine.

I can understand that the companies don’t want underage kids driving it but
why would the police enforce a breach of a private contract?

I really don’t understand why riding one when underage is against the law.
Sure, they are not very safe, and things such as blowing a red light are a lot
more dangerous but doing that in your car is A LOT more dangerous and also
more dangerous towards other people. Can someone shed some light on the issue
because I really don’t see a reason why it should be forbidden, given they
know the rules of the roads. And that would simply require a drivers license
which most teens in the US seem to have anyways.

~~~
lumberjack
Because these scooters do not have infrastructure designed for them, they
might as well be more dangerous than cars, both for the rider and third
parties.

For example, in the Netherlands, this is indeed the case, and in the
Netherlands there are bicycle paths, although I am not sure if that helps or
increases the amount of accidents or their severity.

Data: [https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/road-
deaths-n...](https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/road-deaths-
netherlands)

What is the risk of a fatal crash in Dutch traffic for different modes of
transport?

~~~
bluntfang
>they might as well be more dangerous than cars

this is dumb. cars weigh 1000x more than these scooters.

~~~
minkzilla
A dumb teen isn't going to try to drive a car on the sidewalk. I've seen teens
drive scooters on sidewalks. You can't lane split with a car, you can with a
scooter.

Cars have a greater ability to be dangerous, but maybe scooters are more
dangerous because of how they can be and are used. I do not actually know,
I've never looked into numbers.

~~~
asdff
The exact same can be said for bicycles. They go the same speed, they have to
be used in the street and not the sidewalk, and bicyclists can be just as
careless and oblivious on the road. Yet there is no age restriction for riding
a bike on a roadway; you can bike down a 45mph road perfectly legally the day
you get your training wheels removed.

The problem is not the scooters and who rides them, it's the danger posed by
cars. Cars have to be physically separated from other forms of transport.
Buses should get their own lane to beat car traffic, bikes and other lower
speed vehicles like scooters or even runners should stay in the bike lane.
This is a transportation issue, not a scooter issue, and you can't fix it with
an age restriction.

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HarryHirsch
You read the headline and think it's fine, kids shouldn't go crazy in traffic,
and you click on the article and it isn't _bōsōzoku_ on Vespas, it's random
teenagers on an electric-assisted kick scooter. If the parents don't take
decisive action soon they'll buy bicycles and ride them to the library to read
banned books. And the next year they'll listen to wild jazz in the park.

Being cooped up with tiger parents in exurbia can't be good for mental health.

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twiss
There are obvious parallels with the view on biking and biking helmets in the
US versus the Netherlands: [https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2018/8/28/17789510/bi...](https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2018/8/28/17789510/bike-cycling-netherlands-dutch-infrastructure)

There are clear health and environment benefits to people biking, or taking a
scooter like this. Even for the people who keep driving, it reduces traffic
jams. The Netherlands has discovered that to make people bike, you need to not
require helmets, and find other ways of making it safe: build dedicated bike
paths, don't blame the victim when a car runs over someone without a helmet,
etc.

Rather than ostracizing them as "outlaws", the same should be done in this
case.

~~~
noobermin
Looking around America generally and how things are done here and attitudes
around driving and transportation just gives me little faith things will
actually improve here.

------
jaytaylor
Yesterday my fiancee and I went on a bike ride around the neighborhood. At one
point, we heard music and the whine of an electric motor approaching from
behind. A moment later, an adolescent on an electric scooter comes barreling
along with headphones blasting music into his ears. Without slowing down or
even a glance to either side, he enters the intersection to a relatively busy
30mph residential road (where cars frequently go 35 or 40+, easily, as it's a
boring 1 mile straight shot). The kid casually swerves around as he crosses to
narrowly avoid being t-boned by an SUV from the left. The blank expression on
his face betrayed no concern or surprise, only casual indifference as he rode
on as if nothing concerning had happened. The car didn't honk, maybe they
never even saw him. Looked like they were on their phone.

I hate watching this kind of stuff happen. Makes me cringe.

What's that Seinfeld joke about people who's brains are too stupid to protect
themselves? :P

PSA: Cars vs cyclists or other unprotected travelers are 3,000 pound weapons.
Watch out and gear up.

~~~
noobermin
I could take your experience (which is shitty, I admit) and multiply it by 5x
or so times and that would be my experience with cars everyday.

~~~
whatshisface
At least the cars have a crumple zone. If I had to hit a tree at 40mph I'd
rather be inside a recently built car than anywhere else. Cars are actually
extremely good safety devices, it's really the whole "moving at 70mph" thing
that causes the deaths.

The dislike of cars really is the dislike of having to move at high speeds for
two hours daily just to survive in society. Fast-moving scooters would make
that problem worse because they won't to much to protect you in a crash.

~~~
CydeWeys
Vehicles are safer for those inside them at a given speed, sure. The problem
is they're much _less_ safe for anyone outside them (i.e. pedestrians and
cyclists), and they're also capable of getting up to much higher speeds too.

As a pedestrian I would surely rather be hit by a bike going 15 mph than a car
going 45 mph. Bicycles also don't have blind spots, so they're less likely to
hit a well-behaving pedestrian to begin with.

~~~
whatshisface
> _As a pedestrian I would surely rather be hit by a bike going 15 mph than a
> car going 45 mph._

Remember, the topic at hand is motorized scooters: which are perfectly capable
of moving at 45mph. We can't think of them like they're bikes.

~~~
astura
TFA says they can only go up to 15 mph.

~~~
gonzo
TFA says they’ll do 25 mph downhill, actually.

~~~
CydeWeys
Anything with wheels will go pretty damn fast on a steep downhill. Skateboards
too. Not many people are riding them this fast because it feels terrifying.

------
jarboot
I think it's an American problem of treating 18 year olds like 14-16 year
olds. Same goes for drinking. Why can't we trust (young) adults like other
countries do?

~~~
astura
>Why can't we trust (young) adults like other countries do?

Because higher drinking age leads to less drunk driving (in the US, at least).
That's the reason the drinking age is 21. Unfortunately.

If we had a culture of responsibility around alcohol consumption, we wouldn't
have such a problem.

Interesting, some states are raising the age for cigarette purchasing to 21.

~~~
denzil_correa
> Because higher drinking age leads to less drunk driving.

This may be the cause of a poor or non-existent public transportation system.
Once you have an efficient public transportation, you have alternatives to
reach home after having drinks. Otherwise, it's your own car or Uber which is
an expensive option.

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qwerty456127
This is another example of age-based discrimination. Take a random adult and a
random teen and the chance the teenager is going to be more smart, agile,
conscious and simply decent are fairly far above zero. There are a lot of
decent and stupid people among both teens and adults. There is little reason
for people above 13 to have more limited rights than people above 18.

~~~
flatline
Driving statistics would imply this is far from true for the general case.

~~~
asdff
How do accident rates compare for an 18 year old with 2 years of driving
experience vs a 50 year old with 2 years of driving experience?

~~~
loco5niner
My wife got her license at 24 (after returning from China). I guarantee her
numbers are far better.

------
andyidsinga
I've heard a lot of scooter-hate - really reminds me of skateboard hate. The
common retort is safety and driving rules.

My response is we should be teaching kids to drive
(scooters/bicycles/motorcycles/cars) as if the environment were much more
chaotic - like a race/motocross track, and like many countries in the world.

When I drove in countries where traffic was chaos - I found it was just as I
learned to drive on the motocross track on a motorcycle as a kid: key rule try
very hard to not hit anyone and try very hard to not be hit. Don't get bent
out of shape - enjoy the ride.

I'm not suggesting that we change our driving regulations to be more chaotic -
but a different approach to training and changing our attitude while moving
through traffic might help.

~~~
HarryHirsch
In normal countries kids learn riding a bicycle from their parents at the age
of 6 and ride to school at grade 3. Only _babies_ walk to school, regular
people ride!

The demand for safe bicycling creates a demand for a safe road environment.

Also, when you are finally 18 and earned your driving license, you aren't
going to go overboard and attack a cyclist for using the road, because a month
ago you were one of them.

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jpm_sd
On the other hand, I watched a teenage boy ride a Lime scooter onto a highway
880 on-ramp yesterday.

~~~
anothergoogler
Clever kid taking the safest route, 880's usually a parking lot.

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blt
City planners and politicians in the USA would be wise to consider the root
cause of the scooter surge rather than worrying too much about the side
effects. People want to get around without buying an expensive heavy machine.
Scooters solve the "last mile" problem of public transportation in sprawled
areas.

It's clear that automobile-centric urban planning cannot work for large
cities. Yet, there are always screaming loud voices protesting anything that
affects their ability to drive in perfect comfort and speed.

I wish we had politicians with the courage to ignore those people and make the
infrastructural changes we need to keep our cities functional and pleasant as
our population continues to urbanize.

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WalterBright
> Most said they ignored the rules to use the scooters out of necessity

If it's "necessary", one wonders what they did last year when there were no
scooters.

~~~
astura
I don't know about these kids but I took the bus around town when I was a
teenager.

A scooter would be far more convenient.

~~~
WalterBright
More convenient? Sure, but that's not "necessary".

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da02
How much does a good electric scooter cost that lasts a few years for an
adult?

~~~
asdff
The ones used by bird and lime are around $500.

