7 ms·

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers

• coldpie 5y ago
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    Yes, let's make innocent people crash their cars! That'll teach the people who left the scooters there a lesson!
    • coldpie 5y ago
      No one cares if pedestrians have to navigate around these things. But if people have to get out of their 4,000 lb steel cages to move these things out of the way, there will be consequences.
    • pengaru 5y ago
      > Yes, let's make innocent people crash their cars! That'll teach the people who left the scooters there a lesson! The cars are insured, the insurance companies will pursue the owners of the scooters. It's the negative feedback required to compel scooter companies to operate more responsibly.
      • CalRobert 5y ago
        I'm here for this 100% because cars destroy cities and lives except that this could kill motorcycle riders or cyclists. If you ride any debris in the road can be deadly.
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        Sometimes people get hurt or killed in car crashes, which just having insurance doesn't magically fix. And besides, if I were the scooter company, I'd be going after you who intentionally threw the scooter into the road, not after the last rider who parked it somewhere inconsiderate but not dangerous.
        • pengaru 5y ago
          Are you aware that if you loan your vehicle out and it's used in a crime you're liable?
          • josephcsible 5y ago
            Maybe, but if someone steals my car and uses it in a crime I'm not. And in this hypothetical, the company didn't loan the scooter to the person who caused the car crash with it.
            • pengaru 5y ago
              The crime in this case is littering, and the person your hypothetical scooter company is going to pursue for moving the litter into the road where a car hit it is quite likely to be a minor whose identity you'll never determine. But you're creating circumstances for this outcome to be probable by leaving unescured scooters littering sidewalks. Much like leaving your car idling with a key in the ignition and the doors unlocked creates circumstances for someone, possibly even a child, to climb in and commit a crime with it. It's negligence on your part.
              • josephcsible 5y ago
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • draw_down 5y ago
• netsharc 5y ago
  Someone, who for legal reasons is not me, has the idea to make stickers with strong glue and cheap paper (so they can't be ripped off in one go) to stick on top of the QR codes to these things. The sticker would have text that says "Sorry you can't use this scooter because the last rider parked like an idiot."
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    So "someone" thinks it's okay to vandalize other people's property just because the last person to use it didn't put it away right?
    • winkeltripel 5y ago
      The company which owns the scooter is responsible for the location of the scooter. They choose to let users leave scooters in shitty locations. They invite vigilant responses from other sidewalk users.
    • donkarma 5y ago
      since when is a corporation a person? if they leave their crap in public then I personally couldn't give more of a fuck to what happens to it
      • mtVessel 5y ago
        2010, in the U.S.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
  • kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
    It’s a frustrating problem, but isn’t it better to not be a jerk?
• Accacin 5y ago
  So a minor inconvenience for cleaner air in your neighbourhood? Ofc, I feel for disabled people in this situation, but personally I'll pick one up or move it if I see that it's in the way. Here when the were first released, the parking was a bit scuffed, but recently it seems people have been making a much greater effort to park them correctly.
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    That's still very dismissive of anyone using the sidewalks. Good for you that you pick up someone else's shit, but it's not a solution. These companies should take responsibility and fix the problem.
    • Kye 5y ago
      Waiting for capitalists to clean up their mess is a losing strategy. Change is almost universally a grassroots thing. Get enough people to put things in their proper place, and people leaving them there will get the message. I've seen this work at all scales. Model the society you want to live in and it will catch on, at least a little.
    • ctoth 5y ago
      I keep seeing people say "these companies" when the actual problem is the people who ride the scooters. Maybe your problem is with people in general? It doesn't feel super great to internalize, but if the problem keeps happening with different people riding the scooters then I think we can conclude that your anger is misplaced. Call out people you see misusing the infrastructure, don't destroy the infrastructure for everyone.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nabilhat 5y ago
  > Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. Same here, but from a different angle. If the scooters were the problem, we'd have had the same problem when Car2Go was a thing. But, car infrastructure in the US is so overbuilt that Car2Go didn't even register on the radar in terms of free street parking. Cars improperly abandoned that impede car traffic are quickly resolved. The nonmotorized infrastructure in the US is so begrudgingly inept that adversarial design wouldn't look much different. If there's a rent-a-scooter inconveniencing the token pedestrian path next to on street parking, I've simply been moving the scooters into on street parking. A single scooter fits between spaces, or only consumes <5% of the length of a standard 20 foot space. Surely drivers complain loudly, but they won't be inconvenienced unless they go out of their way to toss a scooter into the middle of the sidewalk; an accurate metaphor for how sidewalks got to be so terrible in the first place.
• ShakataGaNai 5y ago
  Sadly the problem is not the scooters themselves. They don't park themselves at random. The problem is the people. If, in general, people were just at tiny bit more respectful of others around them - the world would be a lot better off.
  • rtlfe 5y ago
    The real problem is that car manufactures have lobbied to give every scrap of space to car storage. If we took back parking lanes to dramatically expand sidewalks, this wouldn't be an issue at all.
• sharken 5y ago
  Electric scooters have been heavily regulated where i live, helmet is now required and you have to leave them at designated locations. And a photo upload showing how it was parked is now also required. Oh, and Friday and Saturday between 00 and 05, you cannot use the scooters. It kinda makes me sad that we can't just let people use scooters as they please, but as you observe that isn't working. It was much the same with drones, which is now also heavily regulated, e.g. you must maintain a certain distance to buildings.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    City bikes which have stations seem much better option. At least if run by city itself, higher installation cost, but means that they are much more orderly.
    • Robotbeat 5y ago
      Also subject to the same kind of abuse if our society continues to degrade to justifying more and more antisocial behavior.
      • Freak_NL 5y ago
        Some vandalism will always happen, but the key seems to lie in making such an amenity loved by the people rather than forced upon them by faceless and unapproachable corporations.
        • Robotbeat 5y ago
          That’s kind of subjective, isn’t it? A lot of people don’t feel threatened by businesses but instead feel threatened by a faceless and unapproachable government bureaucracy. See the DMV. When anti-business or anti-government ideology gives moral license to antisocial behavior, nothing is gonna work out for you.
          • Freak_NL 5y ago
• 30385421 5y ago
  I am heartened to hear that I am not the only one who does this. I feel the same about the Al Fresco dining set-ups. Happy that restaurants got more space for their business but angered that it comes at the cost of accessibility for wheelchair users and others like them.
  • _fullpint 5y ago
    This grind my gears so fucking much! You are running your business not only on property that isn't yours, but the public's -- AND it's an inconvenience to every person who walks by in a busy neighborhood, some that absolutely need the sidewalk.
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  The thing is there's no designated place to park them. You can't put them on the property line next to the sidewalk. Many sidewalks don't have a "planter" or other non-walking area. Sidewalks weren't designed for this. I think we should ban sidewalk scooter parking. The public right of way is not a parking lot for private companies. As an aside: many (most?) people who need sidewalks choose to use the road instead because the sidewalks are inaccessible. Snow and ice doesn't get removed from all sidewalks (regardless of what regulations say), tree roots breaking up the pavement don't get repaired, large inclines/declines are a safety hazard. I know a regular-abled person whose face got mangled as she was riding her bike on a sidewalk and hit a chunk of unrepaired sidewalk and went over. Sidewalks need a redesign.
  • rosndo 5y ago
    > The thing is there's no designated place to park them. We have designated parking spots for rideshare scooters in London.
    • cabbagehead 5y ago
      Yes, we have this in my city too, and it works really well - I’d say 98% of scooters get parked in these places. The council leans on the hire company to incentivise good parking - seems like a solved problem.
    • Robotbeat 5y ago
      This is a good idea. Innovation sometimes requires some additional provision of public goods. Seems like a good way to solve the problem!
      • kijin 5y ago
        Designated parking spaces are a good idea, but they should be paid for by companies that make a profit by renting out scooters. Not taxpayers. Public funding might be justified if the majority of scooters were owned by individual citizens with the right to vote on city affairs. Most rideshare companies, on the other hand, will simply siphon off public subsidies as additional profit to be taxed (or not) somewhere else.
• thepasswordis 5y ago
  > Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way. So you make the problem worse? Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why? I live in a major downtown full of these scooters. When I see them blocking something, I just move them. Why is this so difficult? It takes such a tiny amount of effort to fix this problem you are describing. You live in a society, and it’s your responsibility to contribute.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • avereveard 5y ago
    No lol, it's the other people responsibility not to be a nuisance. But I agree throwing them aside is not the optimal solution. Municipality looking for money could get some large cash influx from ticketing improperly parked scooters, the owning company can decide to eat the loss or flip the ticket on the user, either way people will get educated fast. It would only take for the law enforcement to enforce rules that are already there
    • ThunderSizzle 5y ago
      A fine doesn't help the person actually "inconvenienced" by the scooter(s). It just gives the city more money. Seems like the company might eat the fine, the city will take the money, and the problem persists, but now the city is happy too.
      • avereveard 5y ago
        > A fine doesn't help the person actually "inconvenienced" by the scooter(s). It just gives the city more money. not immediately, (albeit towing would). but would solve the problem in the long run, which will eventualy help the person be inconvenienced less.
      • 5y ago
• showerst 5y ago
  This is my _exact_ experience, I end up having to move at least two a week to get our stroller past, and they are a huge pain when my wheelchair-bound mother visits. I consider myself a law abiding person but have been sorely tempted to load them up into a truck and toss them into the Chesapeake ...
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Toss them onto all the access roads and grounds of the company that owns them instead, maybe they'll take a hint.
  • ctoth 5y ago
    Good lord. I'm blind, walk with a cane. Let me tell you the number of times I have to walk around someone parked on the sidewalk, or in a residential neighborhood find someone has their driveway filled with cars so I have to walk out in the street to get around, or someone's doing yard work and has stuff scattered on the sidewalk in front of the house or... Where's my law-abiding help to deal with this? It kinda just feels like somebody's got a hate on for scooters.
    • showerst 5y ago
      While I can't imagine the difficulty of being blind, I'm right there with you on the cars front! It's just that with scooters we're introducing something new, and unlike with cars it would be technologically reasonable to say "you can only park this at the end of block in the scooter zone" and nail the companies with a huge fine if they don't enforce it. I'm actually fairly pro-scooter (though I wish people just used city bikes in the places that have them, but I get it), but I think final parking location should be more like the city bikes, in designated spots.
    • _fullpint 5y ago
      To be honest -- when I see this, I also go out of my way to say something. I don't have a hate for scooters, I just get really annoyed by the lack of perspective people have for their neighbors. With that said, I rarely have to say something about this to the people in my neighborhood, because while they may be blocking the sidewalk to do whatever they may be doing, they are incredibly aware and say something as you're walking by: "sorry about my car" "sorry about my trailer" And I know that if someone was/is in need they'd go out of their way to help you out. My complaint wasn't about my neighbors -- it's a pretty tight knit community. It was about everyone who comes in for some event/holiday who doesn't give a shit about those of us who live here. I'm personally not inconvenienced by the scooters, I just care about my neighbors that are.
• Robotbeat 5y ago
  Riffing on your comment, but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society). Like people leaving scooters haphazardly lying around or you pushing over delivery robots instead of pushing them out of the way. People feel more and more justified to engage in antisocial behavior. And it feeds on itself. You see this as being anti-social behavior by the robot companies, therefore justify engaging in more antisocial behavior. I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.
  • _fullpint 5y ago
    Not too sure how pushing scooters out of the way to remove barriers for people who cannot go around them is "antisocial." Especially when those people are neighbors and are in need. The companies and their users -- the companies don't have structures to prevent their users from leaving their property in right of way, their users leave the companies' property in the spaces preventing those in need of using the space -- are the ones partaking in antisocial behavior.
  • rosndo 5y ago
    > but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society) It makes sense that people who feel that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society would feel rather bitter about that. To restore faith societies could take steps to compensate those worst hit by pandemic measures (i.e young people), so far that hasn’t happened.
    • Robotbeat 5y ago
      Oh, it’s that and also anger at folks who don’t take prosocial steps like wearing a mask, justifying being antisocial to “those” kind of people… …and the blame cycle goes round and round. Break the cycle! Be nice to people who don’t deserve it!
    • 5y ago
• Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  The county should act; assign parking spaces for these things, fine the companies if they find any outside of the designated spaces. The companies can sort it out with their customers. We are seeing the same thing with electric scooters and bikes (and they get torched sometimes), they get parked anywhere and the county's on board with it because it's "green". This was NOT as much of a problem with rental bikes in e.g. London, because they had designated stations for picking up and parking them; the user would get charged extra if they did not park their bike up properly.
  • burlesona 5y ago
    This regulatory overreaction is how we got to the present environment where nobody can build anything anywhere and we have a housing crisis that is severely harming people around the world. No thanks.
  • nikanj 5y ago
    We gave about 95% of the street for cars+parking cars, and are now frustrated that the sidewalks aren’t wide enough for mixed use. There would be no issues with fitting the bikes and the scooters, if the middle of the street was also freely available
    • dtech 5y ago
      The Netherlands has the best worldwide biking infrastructure and decent walking infrastructure, and these things are a blight here too. They're just parked and discarded wherever because the users don't care and there aren't logical places for them, contrary to people's own property.
• watwut 5y ago
  > The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way. Way better approach is to take phone and send complain to company that runs these. At least in our city, they do in fact end contracts with people who park them wrong. The threat and actual drivers who lost the ability to use scooters makes others park better.
• CPLX 5y ago
  How selfish of you. You should take more than 2 minutes and spend the time to throw them in a nearby body of water and solve the problem more permanently.
  • coldpie 5y ago
    Please don't pollute our waterways. Place them where they belong--into a nearby dumpster or the middle of the street.
• burlesona 5y ago
  You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’s reserved for cars so that everyone else has room. Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and scooter parking… as an example one easy solution is to convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and scooter parking. There’s enormous value in having big corporate allies in such a fight.
  • Kaze404 5y ago
    I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.
    • rtlfe 5y ago
      > I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a huge positive effect on safety.
      • slickdork 5y ago
        Counterpoint: These scooters go 20 MPH and there's no oversight on where or how they are used. I walk around a 'pedestrian only' lake every day, and these scooters come about literally 2 inches from me going 20 mph every 2-3 minutes. Usually they are driven by (likely drunk) teenagers. My daily walk is incredibly more dangerous and stressful due to these scooters existing.
        • rtlfe 5y ago
          That's a pretty different situation than what people who walk around cities for transportation deal with. I have no objections to banning scooters, bikes, etc from recreational pedestrian areas.
• AJ007 5y ago
  The other big problem is the trucks that drive around constantly loading/unloading the scooters. Often they park on the sidewalk, fully blocking anyone from getting through. One time I saw a driver back in to a woman was as trying to cross the street with a baby carriage. Unfortunate side effect of the past capital incineration years. If it doesn’t make sense to have unlocked bike-share, it definitely doesn’t make sense to do it with electric scooters.
• reaperducer 5y ago
  I just knock the things over and push them out of the way. Start "putting them away" for the careless people. In dumpsters. Pretty soon the scooter companies will figure out a solution.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  This is one of those online exaggerations. Occasionally some people will behave badly. Just like sometimes you’ll see people stop their cars on the sidewalk or whatever. It’s fine.
• dheera 5y ago
  What if they set up the scooter system such that if you parked the previous scooter incorrectly, the next scooter you rent squirts water on your pants? It's not technologically that difficult. Or put little fisheye cameras on every scooter and if you park it incorrectly every scooter you walk past for the next 24 hours uses face recognition and blasts insults at you unless you go back and re-park it correctly.
  • slickdork 5y ago
    I've often wondered why scooter companies don't keep metrics on their users, and punish the ones who use their product poorly (donuts, bad parking, use on sidewalks, etc) and came to the conclusion that these antisocial users are very likely the scooter companies largest consumer base. The scooter companies are likely incentivized to not regulate.
    • dheera 5y ago
      They spell their own death if they piss off the city though. So they are incentivized to not piss off the city and kick out the users that contribute to that.
• grishka 5y ago
  The scooter rental companies in my city have a rule in their contacts specifically prohibiting parking such that it would block the sidewalk. And you have to take a picture of the scooter when you end your rent.
• atleta 5y ago
  I have similar feelings. Though I don't hate the scooters per se. I'm pretty upset with the idiots who leave them right in the middle of the side walks AND the companies that don't do anything about it. They could pretty easily penalize the users for leaving these in the wrong place if they wanted to. Now I actually don't understand at all why they don't do it. On the surface, you can say that they don't give a shit about non-users, they just care about their customers and they are afraid of scaring them away. However, where I live (Budapest, Hungary) these have already been banned from the centermost district of the city. The district, the area most frequented by tourists. As it was predictable. Also, the city mayor came up with a regulation so that they'll designate several hundred e-scooter parking lots throughout the inner city and leaving these anywhere but those places will results in the company being fined. Which is a smart and friendly move, because there will be indeed lots of lots :) . But it's still a lot worse than if the e-scooter companies have solved it for themselves because then you'd still be able to leave them almost anywhere. Actually I see two king of annoying parking habits. The first one is the completely reckless, when they literally leave it in the middle of the walking path of everyone. I sometimes even think that it's deliberate. Like wanting to show off or something. "I'll just leave it here in the middle, so that everyone can see it." Quite often right in the front of zebra crossings. The other one is more like sheer stupidity. When they do park it besides a wall, but they do it as if it was a car. So 45 degrees, with front wheel to the wall. But that doesn't make much sense, because you want it to be out of the way (which almost always means parallel to the wall, preferably leaning towards the wall and not leaning away from the wall). This is all pretty sad because e-scooters, while I think they are dangerous to ride, are pretty cool and efficient vehicles. And being able to pick up one on the street, though more expensive than owning one, very convenient for the occasional user. (I mostly ride a bike though, and pre-covid I used to use a kick scooter + public transport.)
• iamleppert 5y ago
  When I see a car blocking a drive way, I flatten its tires and bash its windows in. Makes me feel good and now most of the cars on my street are damaged.