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France to ban electric scooters from pavements in September

103 points by CaptainZapp 7y ago

hkmurakami 7y ago
Was in Paris earlier in the year. It appeared that most people were already riding in the street rather than the sidewalk. Traffic in Paris is rather chaotic though (it's actually nice to see quite a few cyclists despite this chaos). I'd be concerned about rider safety.
- nemanjaboric 7y ago
  Yeah, the article is somewhat confusing, or wrong? I didn't see much people driving on pavement as well (I can't recall any), but had to move four of these to the side so that the lady with a roller can go through the pavement. The parking is literally - just leave them anywhere. And then they fall on the side, making them unwanted since nobody wants to drive scooter that's on the ground, so they stay there for days. > She said parking in such a way as to obstruct traffic or pedestrians will mean a 35-euro fine -- but the Paris city council has pledged to build parking spots for 2,500 scooters.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lucsky 7y ago
    > And then they fall on the side No they don't, some assholes push them and make them fall on purpose, I have seen it done many times here in Paris. Those idiot vigilantes seem to hope that by wreaking havoc they will increase the negative perception of the population against the scooters and their riders.
- nyandaber 7y ago
  I guess you were lucky or in a very specific area. Most of the "shared" electric scooters in Paris are used on the sidewalk, sometimes going very fast. I'm kinda split on the issue, on one hand they're a danger to pedestrian and there's a non negligerable amount of accident involving scooters on the sidewalk. On the other hand, it's hard to blame them from not using the cycle pathes because motorcycles will happily use them to avoid traffic. Still, bikes manage to use the streets just fine, so there's no reason electric scooters can't. Overall there's a huge need for traffic rules enforcement in Paris, for everyone. Pedestrians complain about cyclists/scooters, cyclists complain about motorcycles, motorcycles complain about cars, cars complain about pedestrian and bikes, all in good reason.
  - hkmurakami 7y ago
    Yeah I was mostly in district 7 and 1 which is not exactly representative of the whole of Paris. I've lived in Japan before and cyclists aren't allowed to ride on the sidewalk sure to danger to pedestrians but this happens way too often anyways due to lack of enforcement. Unexpectedly some of the worst offenders are middle aged housewife types. Agreed that in pedestrian heavy cities like Tokyo or Paris you really need to look out for their safety.
rienbdj 7y ago
The road is dangerous, the pavement is banned. Scooters and bikes need dedicated road space.
- noobermin 7y ago
  The article says they are being placed in bike lanes and streets. Paris streets aren't super safe but they are considerably easier to ride on than they are in American sroads.
- consp 7y ago
  In some parts of Europe that is the case. In most of the world it isn't unfortunately. In the Netherlands those scooters are allowed on the pavement if their max speed is 5kph but this is a grey area if the law. Otherwise they need a "specialized electronic moped" type approval and can either be classified as a bike (max 18kph), a low speed moped (same place on the road as a bike, max 25kph outside, 20 inside cities, requires driving licence and insurance) or moped (helmet, required to go in the car lanes in cities, max 45 kph, requires driving licence and insurance). A rental company came by my office a while back to promote people into buying one. They completely ignored the obvious safety concerns people had as it is far les easy to stay up with smaller wheels but still compared it to biking. We will see where this is going but I would not go fast on one without proper body protection especially if they go > 20 kph.
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    > In the Netherlands those scooters are allowed on the pavement if their max speed is 5kph but this is a grey area if the law. Wrong. The law is quite clear on this. They are not allowed on public roads, unless they are RDW-approved. Those that are approved (like the Segway) are considered mopeds, require a moped-licence and the minimum age of 16, and are consequently forbidden from using the pavement. Cf.: https://www.vraaghetdepolitie.nl/verkeer/overig-verkeer/mag-ik-met-mijn-elektrische-step-buiten-rijden.html https://www.vraaghetdepolitie.nl/verkeer/overig-verkeer/mag-...
- anonymou2 7y ago
  No way, that's a lie been repeated for the last 60 years to get rid of bicycles and leave the roads only for motorists. Cyclists have the same right to use the public roads as motorists, no more but certainly no less. Some of us, cyclists, are actively fighting against the cyclist apartheid.
lunchladydoris 7y ago
For a second I thought this was actually about scooters being abandoned on the sidewalks. I was in Paris in February and there were scooters littered all over the place.
deanclatworthy 7y ago
They just rolled out scooters in Helsinki. People are riding on the sidewalk everywhere. I contacted the city to suggest learning from the other examples of cities which have had many teething problems with scooters, but they were not in any position to enforce any form of rules on the operators. Crazy.
- ahje 7y ago
  The Finnish habit of riding bikes and scooters on the pavement is outright dangerous. Alas, I couldn't find a single candidate willing to raise the issue in the recent elections. :/
  - deanclatworthy 7y ago
    I believe it's technically against the law to cycle on the pavement here. It's also legal to ride a small scooter (e.g. a Vespa) on the cycle lane, yet nobody can tell me if it's actually illegal to ride an electric scooter on the sidewalk. For me it would be as simple as this: - Make it illegal to ride a scooter on the sidewalks with an immediate on the spot fine of 100e. - Make it illegal for scooter companies to operate the park anywhere model. They must work with the city to install stations. The city could even offer a standard model where operators can use the city-run recharging stations. - Get rid of the majority of city center parking and aggressively install more central bike lanes, allowing future mobility solutions (e-scooters, e-skateboards etc.) more transit ways.
    - ahje 7y ago
      Agreed, although if it isn't backed up with resources to actually enforce it, it's just a meaningless gesture. As sad as it is, a large part of the traffic offences are simply ignored outside ring III (apart from speeding caught by speed traps, of course). Riding a bike on the pavement is legal for children under the age of 12 iirc. For adults it's a no go.
      - deanclatworthy 7y ago
donjoe 7y ago
Traffic in cities should be remodeled. Currently, approx. 7/8 of public space is used by cars. Most of the time they're stuck in traffic or 'dead capital' while in parking mode. Furthermore, where I live, the price to park a car is ~10 times cheaper than to rent (per sqm) and highly subsidized by tax payers. I wonder why we do protect our workers but pedestrians and cyclists/scooters just don't matter. Have you ever seen a working environment where an object with 2-40tons is allowed to freely move next to a person at a speed of 50km/h and more? I'm glad we do have rules in working enviromnents. It would be great to see the same on roads as well. I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists. We wouldn't have to build new infrastructure but could simply use the existing one. I could imagine we could even remove most of our traffic lights replaced by roundabouts. In the long run I hope to see less cars overall and people switching to smaller means of transportation. Moving 2 tons to buy a 500g loaf of bread is just insane.
- smt88 7y ago
  > I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists. 1. People don't obey speed limits 2. In the US at least, there are people who aren't very wealthy living outside of cities. They may commute 20+ miles into the office. Their retirement may depend on their house retaining its value. Drastically reducing throughput of streets is nice for people who are only traveling a mile or two, but it hurts long-distance commuters.
  - nickserv 7y ago
    There's the same situation in Europe too. One option is to build large car parks on the outskirts of cities close to the highways and with good access to public transport. This way people living outside the city center can still use their cars to get to the city, but can bike/escooter/walk or take the subway/bus/tram to get to work. Even in Marseille, a city with terrible public transport, there are some of these, with new ones in construction or planning stages. Parking is free or heavily discounted if you have a transit pass. I believe this could work well in major US cities with a dense downtown area.
system_panic 7y ago
The plural of pavement is pavement.
- majewsky 7y ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pavement https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pavement
davedx 7y ago
This seems fair. I was in Paris a month ago and we used Birds to get around. Many people rode them on the roads but plenty were whizzing up pavements too, pretty dangerous considering the top speed, speed delta with pedestrians and nobody wearing helmets. The only issue with riding scooters on the road is a lot of the roads in the centre-north area of Paris are cobbled, but you can just slow down. I don’t find anything remotely controversial about banning a powered vehicle capable of ~30 km/h from pavements. <3 Paris!
- INTPenis 7y ago
  >I don’t find anything remotely controversial about banning a powered vehicle capable of ~30 km/h from pavements. 30km/h?! Here in Sweden they forced the company to bring the top speed down to 20km/h for rental scooters. Of course many have bought their own since the fad started dying down. And those are sometimes capable of illegal speeds up to 40km/h. Impossible for police to tell, and also a waste of time seeing as there are more pressing issues.
  - mercer 7y ago
    > Impossible for police to tell. How's that? Here in Holland there's quite an industry making scooters faster, but the police regularly set up funnels where they test the maximum speed of the scooters they catch. From what I hear some people even install hidden buttons to limit the top speed whenever they're checked (which I suppose is not too difficult to figure out now the police knows).
    - klyrs 7y ago
      A better mouse: a circuit that detects something akin to a knock sequence. You can put it into turbo mode with a cheat code, and it's only detectable if you analyze the circuit
  - davedx 7y ago
    Yup, the ones we rode had a digital speedo, and I rode mine almost 30 a few times when the roads permitted it (on the southern side of Paris where they're smooth and relatively open). It was kind of scary though given the small wheels and lack of helmet so we generally kept our speed lower than that.
tlrobinson 7y ago
To clarify for the Americans, "pavements" means sidewalks in this case, correct?
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  Yes, it's the same.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  That's exactly what I was confused about too. You must be right. Imagine saying "you can't ride on the pavement, you have to ride on the street!" You and I would be scratching our heads, thinking the street is paved. Aha! I just noticed a clue: "pavements". That is a word that almost doesn't exist in English. It's like "sands" or "waters". Those are actual words, but it's pretty rare to see them.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    > That is a word that almost doesn't exist in English American English. It's perfectly ordinary in British English. In British English although the road is usually paved the use of pavement in that sense is a jargon word applying to a particular trade (road building or mending) whereas pavement in general means what American English calls a sidewalk. Also paving in British English generally brings to mind paving slabs not tarmac even though most pavements are of course tarmac. And tarmac is also mostly British English for asphalt.
    - Stratoscope 7y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. Of course I meant American English. That's what I get for commenting from my phone in the late evening! "Two great peoples divided by a common language..."
    - derrikcurran 7y ago
      What is the sidewalk called in British English when the sidewalk is not paved?
hocuspocus 7y ago
It's already illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalks. And anywhere else really, given that these vehicles don't fall into any category. As usual, France is really good at introducing laws that don't bring anything new instead of simply enforcing the current ones. I've seen seven different companies providing free floating scooters in Paris, and plenty of them are used by complete idiots. There have been several deaths already. The mayor could easily ban all these startups if she really cared about the law and public safety. Riders who own their own scooter seem to be a bit more responsible, and those are the ones that should be targeted by new laws.
- smt88 7y ago
  It's illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalks in my city in the US, but everyone still rides them on the sidewalks. There's no practical way to enforce the sidewalk law. We know that's true because laws regarding cars are often ignored as well.
- adev_ 7y ago
  > As usual, France is really good at introducing laws that don't bring anything new instead of simply enforcing the current ones. The usual French way is to have law that makes almost everything illegal but with laws that are never enforced in practice. And when you want to make something really illegal, you pass 10 laws on the same topic to be really sure one of them is enforced in practice.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  > I've seen seven different companies providing free floating scooters in Paris... There have been several deaths already. Cite? I couldn't find any news stories about electric scooter (not mopeds) deaths in France, and this page suggests they are exceedingly rare. https://m.ranker.com/list/worst-electric-scooter-accidents-and-deaths/sarah-blumert https://m.ranker.com/list/worst-electric-scooter-accidents-a...
  - VSerge 7y ago
    you will find below a 2018 article (in French), it lists a 23% rise in injuries, though fatalies appear stable year on year. Experts are cited as expecting a sharp rise of both with the increasing numbers of "trottinettes électriques". Seeing the people ride everyday (headphones on, no helmet), it seems like it's pretty much a statistical certainty. http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-accidents-de-trottinettes-en-forte-hausse-10-10-2018-7916037.php http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-accidents-de-trottinett...
tlrobinson 7y ago
It seems entirely reasonable to ban powered vehicles from sidewalks, and I say that as a daily user of a Boosted Board. Now in exchange, go forth and create more dedicated (and preferably protected) lanes for bikes (electric or otherwise), electric scooters, skateboards, and other light personal vehicles. In 2001 Dean Kamen said Segway would "cause cities to be redesigned". I think he was only off by a couple decades and a slight variation on the vehicles' form factor.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  The problem here is that in the year 2019, a) most cities have few, if any protected bike lanes (or equivalent) b) scooter riders experience more danger from cars in the road than pedestrians do from scooters on the sidewalk (just think if you'd rather be hit by a scooter while walking or by a car while scooter-ing) Thus, forcing scooters off the sidewalk is a net negative for safety, is it not?
  - lm28469 7y ago
    Banning scooters is a net positive for safety for everyone until the infrastructure can handle them safely.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      Not necessarily. You have to factor in that cars generate danger, so if some drivers scoot instead, they're generating less danger (but of course they're also more vulnerable themselves).
      - lm28469 7y ago
        That's a very simplistic view. In Paris for example cars come from outside the city, from people who live too far / don't have access to public transportation / have kids / need cars for their job / or are just too lazy to do something else. These people can't/won't use scooters. I'd agree with you if 1 scooter = 1 less car, that would be awesome. But it's pretty obvious when you visit Paris that it's not the case though, scooters are mainly used teenagers and tourists, who wouldn't use car in the first place.
scarejunba 7y ago
In San Francisco, there's this common view that you can't ride on the sidewalk because _it's dangerous_! So I took this long trip to Japan, and everyone rides their bikes on the sidewalk there and shifts to the road when they want to and Japan is safer. Made me wonder. And it was everywhere. In Tokyo, where it's crowded. In Odawara, where it's less so. EDIT: You know what I think? This is the same thing as the panic around kids playing outside. The notion of 'danger' is overplayed in the West.
- o_nate 7y ago
  I saw the same thing in Tokyo. It may have something to do with the common courtesy of the bikers to yield to pedestrians and not buzz past them. Here in NYC, I'm much more terrified of bikers who stick to the road (given that I occasionally have to cross the street) than I was of bikers on sidewalks in Tokyo.
jasonlingx 7y ago
Singapore seems to have gone the opposite direction and banned electric scooters from the roads. They also require government registration of every device. https://www.gov.sg/news/content/are-e-scooters-allowed-on-roads https://www.gov.sg/news/content/are-e-scooters-allowed-on-ro...
mapcars 7y ago
A question from a rider, I ride on the pedestrian side when the road is full of holes and broken pieces of asphalt which is only possible to ride on a car wheel. Are they going to fix the roads to be ridable as well or just make one more stupid law?
- TACIXAT 7y ago
  Where I live the streets are so much better than the bike paths. I tend to residential since they're quieter but damn, I would love to have some nicely maintained dedicated lanes.
whydoineedthis 7y ago
Clickbait. They aren't banning scooters from anywhere - you just can't physically ride them on the sidewalk anymore.....if anyone was dumb enough to anyway.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Thats the old europe we all know and hate. Dont even search for a solution to a problem, just ban it, until the fad goes away. There are laser projectors, to mark your trajectory ahead of time.. a thousand ways- and instead - the nays. Like a grumpy old guy, on a bench, envying the still living for his life wasted, hating on the new joys and the joy of the new.

103 points by CaptainZapp 7y ago

Was in Paris earlier in the year. It appeared that most people were already riding in the street rather than the sidewalk. Traffic in Paris is rather chaotic though (it's actually nice to see quite a few cyclists despite this chaos). I'd be concerned about rider safety.

nemanjaboric 7y ago
Yeah, the article is somewhat confusing, or wrong? I didn't see much people driving on pavement as well (I can't recall any), but had to move four of these to the side so that the lady with a roller can go through the pavement. The parking is literally - just leave them anywhere. And then they fall on the side, making them unwanted since nobody wants to drive scooter that's on the ground, so they stay there for days. > She said parking in such a way as to obstruct traffic or pedestrians will mean a 35-euro fine -- but the Paris city council has pledged to build parking spots for 2,500 scooters.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lucsky 7y ago
  > And then they fall on the side No they don't, some assholes push them and make them fall on purpose, I have seen it done many times here in Paris. Those idiot vigilantes seem to hope that by wreaking havoc they will increase the negative perception of the population against the scooters and their riders.
nyandaber 7y ago
I guess you were lucky or in a very specific area. Most of the "shared" electric scooters in Paris are used on the sidewalk, sometimes going very fast. I'm kinda split on the issue, on one hand they're a danger to pedestrian and there's a non negligerable amount of accident involving scooters on the sidewalk. On the other hand, it's hard to blame them from not using the cycle pathes because motorcycles will happily use them to avoid traffic. Still, bikes manage to use the streets just fine, so there's no reason electric scooters can't. Overall there's a huge need for traffic rules enforcement in Paris, for everyone. Pedestrians complain about cyclists/scooters, cyclists complain about motorcycles, motorcycles complain about cars, cars complain about pedestrian and bikes, all in good reason.
- hkmurakami 7y ago
  Yeah I was mostly in district 7 and 1 which is not exactly representative of the whole of Paris. I've lived in Japan before and cyclists aren't allowed to ride on the sidewalk sure to danger to pedestrians but this happens way too often anyways due to lack of enforcement. Unexpectedly some of the worst offenders are middle aged housewife types. Agreed that in pedestrian heavy cities like Tokyo or Paris you really need to look out for their safety.

rienbdj 7y ago

The road is dangerous, the pavement is banned. Scooters and bikes need dedicated road space.

noobermin 7y ago
The article says they are being placed in bike lanes and streets. Paris streets aren't super safe but they are considerably easier to ride on than they are in American sroads.
consp 7y ago
In some parts of Europe that is the case. In most of the world it isn't unfortunately. In the Netherlands those scooters are allowed on the pavement if their max speed is 5kph but this is a grey area if the law. Otherwise they need a "specialized electronic moped" type approval and can either be classified as a bike (max 18kph), a low speed moped (same place on the road as a bike, max 25kph outside, 20 inside cities, requires driving licence and insurance) or moped (helmet, required to go in the car lanes in cities, max 45 kph, requires driving licence and insurance). A rental company came by my office a while back to promote people into buying one. They completely ignored the obvious safety concerns people had as it is far les easy to stay up with smaller wheels but still compared it to biking. We will see where this is going but I would not go fast on one without proper body protection especially if they go > 20 kph.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  > In the Netherlands those scooters are allowed on the pavement if their max speed is 5kph but this is a grey area if the law. Wrong. The law is quite clear on this. They are not allowed on public roads, unless they are RDW-approved. Those that are approved (like the Segway) are considered mopeds, require a moped-licence and the minimum age of 16, and are consequently forbidden from using the pavement. Cf.: https://www.vraaghetdepolitie.nl/verkeer/overig-verkeer/mag-ik-met-mijn-elektrische-step-buiten-rijden.html https://www.vraaghetdepolitie.nl/verkeer/overig-verkeer/mag-...
anonymou2 7y ago
No way, that's a lie been repeated for the last 60 years to get rid of bicycles and leave the roads only for motorists. Cyclists have the same right to use the public roads as motorists, no more but certainly no less. Some of us, cyclists, are actively fighting against the cyclist apartheid.

lunchladydoris 7y ago

For a second I thought this was actually about scooters being abandoned on the sidewalks. I was in Paris in February and there were scooters littered all over the place.

deanclatworthy 7y ago

They just rolled out scooters in Helsinki. People are riding on the sidewalk everywhere. I contacted the city to suggest learning from the other examples of cities which have had many teething problems with scooters, but they were not in any position to enforce any form of rules on the operators. Crazy.

ahje 7y ago
The Finnish habit of riding bikes and scooters on the pavement is outright dangerous. Alas, I couldn't find a single candidate willing to raise the issue in the recent elections. :/
- deanclatworthy 7y ago
  I believe it's technically against the law to cycle on the pavement here. It's also legal to ride a small scooter (e.g. a Vespa) on the cycle lane, yet nobody can tell me if it's actually illegal to ride an electric scooter on the sidewalk. For me it would be as simple as this: - Make it illegal to ride a scooter on the sidewalks with an immediate on the spot fine of 100e. - Make it illegal for scooter companies to operate the park anywhere model. They must work with the city to install stations. The city could even offer a standard model where operators can use the city-run recharging stations. - Get rid of the majority of city center parking and aggressively install more central bike lanes, allowing future mobility solutions (e-scooters, e-skateboards etc.) more transit ways.
  - ahje 7y ago
    Agreed, although if it isn't backed up with resources to actually enforce it, it's just a meaningless gesture. As sad as it is, a large part of the traffic offences are simply ignored outside ring III (apart from speeding caught by speed traps, of course). Riding a bike on the pavement is legal for children under the age of 12 iirc. For adults it's a no go.
    - deanclatworthy 7y ago

donjoe 7y ago

Traffic in cities should be remodeled. Currently, approx. 7/8 of public space is used by cars. Most of the time they're stuck in traffic or 'dead capital' while in parking mode. Furthermore, where I live, the price to park a car is ~10 times cheaper than to rent (per sqm) and highly subsidized by tax payers. I wonder why we do protect our workers but pedestrians and cyclists/scooters just don't matter. Have you ever seen a working environment where an object with 2-40tons is allowed to freely move next to a person at a speed of 50km/h and more? I'm glad we do have rules in working enviromnents. It would be great to see the same on roads as well. I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists. We wouldn't have to build new infrastructure but could simply use the existing one. I could imagine we could even remove most of our traffic lights replaced by roundabouts. In the long run I hope to see less cars overall and people switching to smaller means of transportation. Moving 2 tons to buy a 500g loaf of bread is just insane.

smt88 7y ago
> I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists. 1. People don't obey speed limits 2. In the US at least, there are people who aren't very wealthy living outside of cities. They may commute 20+ miles into the office. Their retirement may depend on their house retaining its value. Drastically reducing throughput of streets is nice for people who are only traveling a mile or two, but it hurts long-distance commuters.
- nickserv 7y ago
  There's the same situation in Europe too. One option is to build large car parks on the outskirts of cities close to the highways and with good access to public transport. This way people living outside the city center can still use their cars to get to the city, but can bike/escooter/walk or take the subway/bus/tram to get to work. Even in Marseille, a city with terrible public transport, there are some of these, with new ones in construction or planning stages. Parking is free or heavily discounted if you have a transit pass. I believe this could work well in major US cities with a dense downtown area.

system_panic 7y ago

The plural of pavement is pavement.

majewsky 7y ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pavement https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pavement

davedx 7y ago

This seems fair. I was in Paris a month ago and we used Birds to get around. Many people rode them on the roads but plenty were whizzing up pavements too, pretty dangerous considering the top speed, speed delta with pedestrians and nobody wearing helmets. The only issue with riding scooters on the road is a lot of the roads in the centre-north area of Paris are cobbled, but you can just slow down. I don’t find anything remotely controversial about banning a powered vehicle capable of ~30 km/h from pavements. <3 Paris!

INTPenis 7y ago
>I don’t find anything remotely controversial about banning a powered vehicle capable of ~30 km/h from pavements. 30km/h?! Here in Sweden they forced the company to bring the top speed down to 20km/h for rental scooters. Of course many have bought their own since the fad started dying down. And those are sometimes capable of illegal speeds up to 40km/h. Impossible for police to tell, and also a waste of time seeing as there are more pressing issues.
- mercer 7y ago
  > Impossible for police to tell. How's that? Here in Holland there's quite an industry making scooters faster, but the police regularly set up funnels where they test the maximum speed of the scooters they catch. From what I hear some people even install hidden buttons to limit the top speed whenever they're checked (which I suppose is not too difficult to figure out now the police knows).
  - klyrs 7y ago
    A better mouse: a circuit that detects something akin to a knock sequence. You can put it into turbo mode with a cheat code, and it's only detectable if you analyze the circuit
- davedx 7y ago
  Yup, the ones we rode had a digital speedo, and I rode mine almost 30 a few times when the roads permitted it (on the southern side of Paris where they're smooth and relatively open). It was kind of scary though given the small wheels and lack of helmet so we generally kept our speed lower than that.

tlrobinson 7y ago

To clarify for the Americans, "pavements" means sidewalks in this case, correct?

Carpetsmoker 7y ago
Yes, it's the same.
Stratoscope 7y ago
That's exactly what I was confused about too. You must be right. Imagine saying "you can't ride on the pavement, you have to ride on the street!" You and I would be scratching our heads, thinking the street is paved. Aha! I just noticed a clue: "pavements". That is a word that almost doesn't exist in English. It's like "sands" or "waters". Those are actual words, but it's pretty rare to see them.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago
  > That is a word that almost doesn't exist in English American English. It's perfectly ordinary in British English. In British English although the road is usually paved the use of pavement in that sense is a jargon word applying to a particular trade (road building or mending) whereas pavement in general means what American English calls a sidewalk. Also paving in British English generally brings to mind paving slabs not tarmac even though most pavements are of course tarmac. And tarmac is also mostly British English for asphalt.
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. Of course I meant American English. That's what I get for commenting from my phone in the late evening! "Two great peoples divided by a common language..."
  - derrikcurran 7y ago
    What is the sidewalk called in British English when the sidewalk is not paved?

hocuspocus 7y ago

It's already illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalks. And anywhere else really, given that these vehicles don't fall into any category. As usual, France is really good at introducing laws that don't bring anything new instead of simply enforcing the current ones. I've seen seven different companies providing free floating scooters in Paris, and plenty of them are used by complete idiots. There have been several deaths already. The mayor could easily ban all these startups if she really cared about the law and public safety. Riders who own their own scooter seem to be a bit more responsible, and those are the ones that should be targeted by new laws.

smt88 7y ago
It's illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalks in my city in the US, but everyone still rides them on the sidewalks. There's no practical way to enforce the sidewalk law. We know that's true because laws regarding cars are often ignored as well.
adev_ 7y ago
> As usual, France is really good at introducing laws that don't bring anything new instead of simply enforcing the current ones. The usual French way is to have law that makes almost everything illegal but with laws that are never enforced in practice. And when you want to make something really illegal, you pass 10 laws on the same topic to be really sure one of them is enforced in practice.
jessriedel 7y ago
> I've seen seven different companies providing free floating scooters in Paris... There have been several deaths already. Cite? I couldn't find any news stories about electric scooter (not mopeds) deaths in France, and this page suggests they are exceedingly rare. https://m.ranker.com/list/worst-electric-scooter-accidents-and-deaths/sarah-blumert https://m.ranker.com/list/worst-electric-scooter-accidents-a...
- VSerge 7y ago
  you will find below a 2018 article (in French), it lists a 23% rise in injuries, though fatalies appear stable year on year. Experts are cited as expecting a sharp rise of both with the increasing numbers of "trottinettes électriques". Seeing the people ride everyday (headphones on, no helmet), it seems like it's pretty much a statistical certainty. http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-accidents-de-trottinettes-en-forte-hausse-10-10-2018-7916037.php http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-accidents-de-trottinett...

tlrobinson 7y ago

It seems entirely reasonable to ban powered vehicles from sidewalks, and I say that as a daily user of a Boosted Board. Now in exchange, go forth and create more dedicated (and preferably protected) lanes for bikes (electric or otherwise), electric scooters, skateboards, and other light personal vehicles. In 2001 Dean Kamen said Segway would "cause cities to be redesigned". I think he was only off by a couple decades and a slight variation on the vehicles' form factor.

TulliusCicero 7y ago
The problem here is that in the year 2019, a) most cities have few, if any protected bike lanes (or equivalent) b) scooter riders experience more danger from cars in the road than pedestrians do from scooters on the sidewalk (just think if you'd rather be hit by a scooter while walking or by a car while scooter-ing) Thus, forcing scooters off the sidewalk is a net negative for safety, is it not?
- lm28469 7y ago
  Banning scooters is a net positive for safety for everyone until the infrastructure can handle them safely.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Not necessarily. You have to factor in that cars generate danger, so if some drivers scoot instead, they're generating less danger (but of course they're also more vulnerable themselves).
    - lm28469 7y ago
      That's a very simplistic view. In Paris for example cars come from outside the city, from people who live too far / don't have access to public transportation / have kids / need cars for their job / or are just too lazy to do something else. These people can't/won't use scooters. I'd agree with you if 1 scooter = 1 less car, that would be awesome. But it's pretty obvious when you visit Paris that it's not the case though, scooters are mainly used teenagers and tourists, who wouldn't use car in the first place.

scarejunba 7y ago

In San Francisco, there's this common view that you can't ride on the sidewalk because _it's dangerous_! So I took this long trip to Japan, and everyone rides their bikes on the sidewalk there and shifts to the road when they want to and Japan is safer. Made me wonder. And it was everywhere. In Tokyo, where it's crowded. In Odawara, where it's less so. EDIT: You know what I think? This is the same thing as the panic around kids playing outside. The notion of 'danger' is overplayed in the West.

o_nate 7y ago
I saw the same thing in Tokyo. It may have something to do with the common courtesy of the bikers to yield to pedestrians and not buzz past them. Here in NYC, I'm much more terrified of bikers who stick to the road (given that I occasionally have to cross the street) than I was of bikers on sidewalks in Tokyo.

jasonlingx 7y ago

Singapore seems to have gone the opposite direction and banned electric scooters from the roads. They also require government registration of every device. https://www.gov.sg/news/content/are-e-scooters-allowed-on-roads https://www.gov.sg/news/content/are-e-scooters-allowed-on-ro...

mapcars 7y ago

A question from a rider, I ride on the pedestrian side when the road is full of holes and broken pieces of asphalt which is only possible to ride on a car wheel. Are they going to fix the roads to be ridable as well or just make one more stupid law?

TACIXAT 7y ago
Where I live the streets are so much better than the bike paths. I tend to residential since they're quieter but damn, I would love to have some nicely maintained dedicated lanes.

whydoineedthis 7y ago

Clickbait. They aren't banning scooters from anywhere - you just can't physically ride them on the sidewalk anymore.....if anyone was dumb enough to anyway.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

Thats the old europe we all know and hate. Dont even search for a solution to a problem, just ban it, until the fad goes away. There are laser projectors, to mark your trajectory ahead of time.. a thousand ways- and instead - the nays. Like a grumpy old guy, on a bench, envying the still living for his life wasted, hating on the new joys and the joy of the new.