Rolling electric scooter thread

So anyway I got to experience riding an electric scooter last week while attending a convention in San Diego and man am I smitten. Stayed at an AirBnB about a mile from the convention hall, and rode a Bird scooter back and forth each day. Great way to get around.

That said, I could definitely see why car-bound people could quickly come to loathe them, as people zip in and around traffic on the streets, then leave them piled up, cluttering the sidewalks. Perhaps bus-stop like parking corrals are in order? I dunno.

Anyway, here's a news article about another dark side of the transportation tech...the City of LA wants to know where you are riding them (and by them, apparently 40,000! more are coming to LA???)

'This is creepy': In LA, scooters become the next data privacy fight

 

I haven't been in a US city where they are quite so ubiquitous, but man they were everywhere in Paris. And people were whipping around on them without a care in the world. I guess they're no more dangerous than scooters or motorcycles, but it seems like they would give a false sense of security? I've never ridden one so I don't know. I love scooters when I'm vacationing or traveling.

 

Used one in LA downtown, really nice time saver, it is a nice ride only concern is no helmet and I’d rather be on sidewalk than roadway.

 

People were using them when I visited Austin. Seemed convenient but a lot of close calls.

 

They invaded DC just a few months after I moved away. Before then, dockless bikes were littering the sidewalks.

My wife and I were back in DC for a weekend, and we almost got clipped about a dozen times by scooter drivers; most were no more than 12 years old.

I’m not a fan.

 

When I worked in Manhattan, quite a few adults with arrested development were tooling around on electric skateboards at breakneck speeds. Manhattan is relatively flat, so they work well. But man, they are capable of going waaay too fast for my comfort.