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In Dallas, dockless bikes are nothing but problematic. People have gotten in the habit of dumping their bikes on strangers' front lawns and laying them down on
by amyjess 8y ago
In Dallas, dockless bikes are nothing but problematic.
People have gotten in the habit of dumping their bikes on strangers' front lawns and laying them down on sidewalks without using the kickstand. There was a pretty public case of a blind man being seriously injured because someone left a bike just laying on the sidewalk.
In retaliation, much of the citizenry has taken to vandalizing the bikes. There are pictures online of people throwing them into ditches and creeks, people sawing the bikes in half, people turning masses of bikes into impromptu art sculptures, etc.
- panopticon 8y agoSame thing with the electric scooters in SF. I've even seen many vandalized scooters--including one that someone had lovingly taken a dump on.
- adrianmonk 8y agoIt seems like there's a lot of potential for self-policing in that regard. Just a few random ideas: 1. The bikes could have an orientation sensor that would require them to be upright before you can end your rental. 2. When a user picks up a bike, have them rate the appropriateness of how and where it was parked. Obviously, bad parking is not always the previous rider's fault, but if a consistent pattern emerges, you could penalize them in some way. 3. Dockless bikes presumably have GPS, so they could warn you if you're parking in an area that you shouldn't, if they had (crowd-sourced?) maps of what areas are good and bad. 4. If a bike is left somewhere that GPS says isn't good, offer other users incentives (free rental, etc.) if they will go pick it up. Basically this creates cheap labor to clean up messes.