
Lime scooters are causing some issues for Brisbane's vision impaired community - clouddrover
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-21/lime-scooters-cause-issues-for-vision-impaired-residents/10731510
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eeeeeeeeeeeee
I loathe those scooters. We have about six different scooter companies here
and they are a nuisance. They are left all over the place, in public walkways.
And they are mostly ridden on sidewalks.

It still amazes me to see mostly healthy young adults that cannot walk a mile
or two with their own legs.

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LeifCarrotson
Leaving them out and riding them on the sidewalks is definitely a problem.

But not wanting to walk two miles to a shop or restaurant is not a matter of
inability or even of effort, it's a matter of time management. A two mile walk
might be pleasant but would completely blow away my lunch break or interrupt
progress on a project. There are limited options within a given walking
radius, and adding a car, bike, or scooter makes this radius hugely larger.
Parking a car or driving in traffic is a pain, so scooters and bikes are a
useful - not lazy - solution.

We need ubiquitous scooter and bike racks, and respect from cars.

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pan69
Anecdote. I was in China a few weeks ago, Shanghai to be precise. Me and my
wife were walking around the city and there is scooters everywhere (the ones
you sit on) and they're electric and because of this you don't hear him! A few
times this caused me the scare the sh#t out me when suddenly one of these
things comes from behind at high speed. Very annoying...

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eeeeeeeeeeeee
Yep, and most of the kids ride them like it’s a race so they’re weaving in and
out of people like it’s a race track.

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chrisper
I can't stand those scooters. Many people drive with them without being
careful to other traffic. Some of them just swerve around in bike lined etc

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Tharkun
They're something of a plague in my home town as well, they're strewn all over
the pavement/sidewalk/footpath(/whatever regional word), even when there was
barely enough room for pedestrians.

Perhaps the users/distributors of these things aren't trying to come across as
inconsiderate, but that's certainly the end result.

Pedestrians need their own space. These scooters shouldn't mix with pedestrian
traffic at all

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AmericanChopper
>Pedestrians need their own space. These scooters shouldn't mix with
pedestrian traffic at all

Not sure how this is any different than suggesting that cars need their own
space and that bicycles shouldn’t mix with motor traffic at all.

~~~
jeroenhd
Up to a point that's true. Low-speed roads are fine for mixing bikes and cars
but once cars start going twice as fast as bikes (say, 40-50kph) you need
separated bike lanes to have a safe biking experience. If you don't, bikes are
likely to cause either massive safety risks or huge traffic slowdowns, which
themselves can be a safety risk.

The same can be said for these scooters. Pedestrians walk at about 5kph; Lime
scooters (at least the Lime-S ones) can go up to about 25kph. That's 5x the
pedestrian speed; that's like biking on a road where people drive 100kph.

These scooters should be treated like bikes, not like pedestrians. A safe
traffic segregation would be pedestrians separated from bikes separated from
motor traffic, with anything going above 10kph classified as bikes.

~~~
AmericanChopper
It’s suggestion that pedestrians and scooters not being able to share a space
at all, that I find equivalent to a suggestion that motorists and cyclists
should not be able to share a space at all. I also don’t buy your suggestion
that a difference in speed of 15-20kmph is the same as a 70-80kmph difference
in speed. There’s plenty of situations where it’s safe to ride a scooter at
20kmph on a footpath, and from what I’ve seen, riding a lime on a foot path
involves a lot of entirely safe speeding up and slowing down.

In an ideal world, there’d be enough room for cars, bikes, scooters and
pedestrians all of have their dedicated space. But we don’t live in that
world. Few people would ride limes on the road, which wouldn’t be any safer.
If you were going to make anything illegal, banning riding scooters on the
footpath would be about as good as banning them al together, and capping their
speed at 10kmph wouldn’t be much better. Why not just apply the same rules to
scooters that are applied to vehicles? Carelessly driving a vehicle on the
road is illegal, why can’t it be for a scooter on the sidewalk? The lime
riders who are considerate and slow down in busy areas aren’t a danger or a
problem.

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drivingmenuts
Why not bill the rider extra if they don't return it to a designated parking
area?

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dwd
I'm a Brisbane CBD pedestrian.

Part of the issue is that there is no designated area so they are left either
perpendicular to the curb on the road side of the footpath or next to the wall
on the shopfront side.

I would assume Lime got a permit so Police can't simply hand out fines for
obstructing the footpath.

The speed issue is also an issue but mainly of educating riders - I was almost
run over last week when I started to move sideways hearing a scooter passing
from behind on one side and narrowly avoided being hit by a second scooter
passing on the other side - both traveling at full speed.

You don't see cyclists riding fast on the footpath where there are pedestrians
- scooter riders don't seem to follow that etiquette. I much prefer the laws
in Victoria where only children are allowed to ride on the footpath.

Is it because it is a paid service that they appear to feel entitled to go
fast or weave in and out of pesdestrians where a cyclist would often dismount
or go on the road?

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NamTaf
They're legally forbidden on roads and even in the bike lanes [1]. I can
understand the road lanes, but I think it's a bit insane to keep them from
bike lanes. Either way, both the police and Lime (via the app) specifically
direct people to only ride them on the footpaths.

edit for source: [1]: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-23/the-rules-
around-scoo...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-23/the-rules-around-
scooter-sharing-in-australia/10639170)

~~~
dwd
Not allowing them to use bike lanes seems crazy but I guess that doesn't fit
the idea of them being a last mile option.

It takes 10-15min to walk Central Station to Eagle St so a scooter replacing a
taxi/rideshare/bus and getting there in 5min makes sense.

Bike lanes in the CBD would be a good idea - instead we have bus lanes.

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tapland
We've had them for a few months now where I live and I see them many times per
day.

I think it's because pretty much every street here has a bike path, but I have
yet to see people riding them in the way of pedestrians. I've seen one or two
poorly parked ones, but they are usually parked next to bike racks.

I love that they have always on headlights though, with wind, rain and bad
lighting here crossing a bike path is dangerous since so many don't follow the
laws and use lights.

I just wish Lime-scooters were a bit cheaper (10 sek + 3 sek/min).

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eeeeeeeeeeeee
We have a lot of bike paths here but almost every scooter I see is on the
sidewalk. I’d say fewer than 5% use the bike paths.

I do see some cyclists using the sidewalk, which is also very annoying.

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fphhotchips
Honestly the scooters seem like a reasonable idea, but they are being left
everywhere in Brisbane, and also they're way too fast. Could bump them down to
25 or 20km/h pretty easily I would have thought.

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eeeeeeeeeeeee
I’m definitely in support of the scooters if they work with the city to ensure
they stay out of walkways. The entire point of walkways are so that similar
speed traffic is segregated together. Scooters are about 4x faster than a
walking human.

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manicdee
TL;DR: people have not been trained in considerate scooter use, especially in
pedestrian-dense environments.

