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Lived in a small city which had mixed use of cars, bikes and shoes for many years. Never saw an accident of any kind. Generally mature and sedate drivers and bi

Lived in a small city which had mixed use of cars, bikes and shoes for many years. Never saw an accident of any kind. Generally mature and sedate drivers and bikers, but a culture that widely enjoyed adventure sports etc. E-scooters introduced. In one year I saw three accidents where someone was hurt to the point they require attention, and multiple close misses - one of which would have been extremely serious but for a split-second stroke of luck. All involving e-scooters. My observation is the combination of silent operation, effortless acceleration, and the impulsive enabling of randomly deciding you need to go faster right now both at rental and on the scooter, is a hot mess. I'd frequently have people whizz past me at high speed, inches away, and have no idea they were coming. Had I happened to move slightly, say to avoid an obstacle or bend around to reach for my bag, we'd both have been screwed. While this can happen with a bike, it's much less often - as the effort and room required to pedal doesn't lend well to instantaneous impulse, nor the "sneak through a tight gap" temptation, it's all simply louder and slower. I'm sure different demographics and cultures experience scooters differently, and maybe some safely, but where I was, and I can presume in Paris (given how they drive...) it was not a good mix, at all.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
> While this can happen with a bike, it's much less often - as the effort and room required to pedal doesn't lend well to instantaneous impulse, nor the "sneak through a tight gap" temptation, it's all simply louder and slower. That's interesting. The scooters I've tried here in Paris (Lime) were extremely anemic. They also only have token brakes which, apart from skidding, don't really do anything. Therefore, my reasoning was that since they take forever to pick up speed, and can't reliably slow down, people will tend to take chances and slalom around "obstacles". The local bike sharing schemes have electric models that accelerate much harder than the scooters do, and as far as I'm aware, they don't have the level of traffic issues scooters do.

vladvasiliu 4y ago

> While this can happen with a bike, it's much less often - as the effort and room required to pedal doesn't lend well to instantaneous impulse, nor the "sneak through a tight gap" temptation, it's all simply louder and slower. That's interesting. The scooters I've tried here in Paris (Lime) were extremely anemic. They also only have token brakes which, apart from skidding, don't really do anything. Therefore, my reasoning was that since they take forever to pick up speed, and can't reliably slow down, people will tend to take chances and slalom around "obstacles". The local bike sharing schemes have electric models that accelerate much harder than the scooters do, and as far as I'm aware, they don't have the level of traffic issues scooters do.