The problem that people have with e-scooters is that they're new & different. So many people (and local governments) hate change and do what they can to control it. Officials and luddites alike complain about the problems that cars cause (like congestion, pollution, drunk drivers, etc). However, when the free-market offers a solution to the problem that consumers (locals and tourists alike) love, the folks who want to run our lives and tell us what we can and can't do, try to regulate them as much as possible (potentially killing the business or hurting the adoption).

Like most things you can get to the bottom of it if you follow the money (aka taxes). Cities (like SF) will offer e-scooter licenses (aka medallions) so they and their cronies can make these companies kiss the ring, limit the supply and take a big cut of the profits (which will ultimately hurt consumers... aka us).

Helmet laws arguably does not work very well for bicycles.[1][2] Don't make the mistake of thinking it will work better for scooters (if you can't back it up).

Still not sure why I'd chose this over a bicycle. A bicycle gives me daily exercise and doesn't need a battery to operate. Also, it runs well on ice and in 20 cm of snow when winter commuting. I guess that's more than you can say about scooters.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWhMEkMtLy0

[2] https://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5720762/stop-forcing-people-to...

This is my biggest complaint about shopping carts too. That they are left all over the parking lot in parking spaces, propped on curbs and so on. You don't even have to walk back to the store! Cart racks are never far away. It's a huge pet peeve.

But I've never blamed shopping carts or thought we shouldn't have them because of it. I blame lazy/inconsiderate people. How do we solve this problem?

This article goes even further to declare the aesthetics dopey. really? they look just fine thank you very much.

It must be a literary habit to latch on to some minority negative opinion, so as to establish trust, then to argue the positives.

Someone is doing some really good submarining. Bird, most likely.

They're banned from the streets and sidewalks are a joke locally. I think they would be an awesome way to commute if you have bike lanes to share?

Not really, but yeah: it's "native advertising".

People also take a wide berth around the scooters so they congest sidewalks even if leaned to one side.

If they come back I hope they do it by replacing the stupid bike docking stations with scooter docking stations. Scooters are a better fit for that model. Pay homeless ppl to return them to the docks and solve two SF problems at once

I love it.

They will be outlawed if people ride them on the sidewalks. If not, I’m confident they’ll catch on everywhere.

Right after the bit about how he agreed to the terms, we see a photo of the author riding the scooter on the sidewalk.

I mean, the mods quit Brighton beach (UK ( so I've not seen a excess of rear view mirrors lately. (the used market may still be saturated..) [1]

phones are beacons, [2]

potentially we could be broadcasting centimetre accurate position and velocity

I like the idea of roadside computing cabinets downloading local trip data and doing the hard lifting but basic stuff like flow scheduling

how about this beacon tells you its stopping distance, driver reaction time, gear and acceleration limits and expectations of driver style?

I am convinced that there's so much more to learn about elementary ergonomics, about human vision not computer vision and about what open the market will pay to attach devices to vehicles that already challenge budgetary constraints for most new purchasers.

I absolutely would pay say $500 device capable of displaying correctly where I am regarding the other road users and their intentions or probable because they're on the work run same as always. for a glance

[3] I don't drive any more, but I would have claimed in my twenties that I drove to work at a incredibly predictable pace. I doubt it could be so smooth with the traffic today, but in suburban and rural areas, well a big pothole at a dirt crossing sure will affect the movement of hazards. Where LIDAR may not travel, "local pilot's license knowledge" I reckon could save a great number of lives. The sudden steering wheel input and deceleration and acceleration around a big pothole would well warn fast coming vehicles to not take that lane as free, if not then used for turning right across a middle lane, so stay on the hard shoulder instead)

I want to glance at the road between my handlebars at a projected map of data,

(only when i am glancing down. The other day I saw the Canon Eos 1-v 35mm film camera linked being discontinued. This and the wonderful Eos 3, had eye focus point tracking. I remember reading the brochures and thinking BS, but nope, I remain convinced that you are going to get better results if you have dark eye colour, not pale blue like mine

[0] my brother is a professor of transport research, whose tutor literally created the formal discipline (kinda Djikstra for transport, but sadly despite his traffic following equations being important, my brother and I should have either subscribed to better peace pipes, or lived when computing wasn't infant and so our interests not so separated. he is a Cambridge alum, I'm just either the commercial enemy or PPE impenetrability, oh i i did my best to not get the green corduroy jacket and lecture physics on Open University... I go on because I know nobody deserving a real professional commercial successful (meaning completed, delivered, used. I honestly think the nearest he came to a product launch was resolving traffic light sequencing in Tokyo in the early eighties, if you wanted to hire genius safe in the certainty should suddenly genius demand credit, the last thing you ate was poisoned, to my bro you go. I think it is because the litany of failure is so incredible. once he started reciting funded closed European programmes and projects. long minutes in, i realised he was reciting alphabetically by the conurbation and chronologically since, well he knows or once did, each and every one.

I couldn't plug my brother enough,

byt my excuse for doing so here, is the fact that I can write books how to get value from him of the order Google was paying for some feted guys tangled up in that uber unpleasantness. The fact may be that cases like that keep my always almost retired brother out of big business. AFAIK his refusal rate is in immeasurable range off p=1. I would drop my life to move that needle and get the world itself a result. (at least I can't imagine deaths in my brother's vision of transportation future) Not would, I guarantee you devotion, as far as the best alignment of a exceptional pitch with what makes a exceptional mind tick that has resisted professional commercial scrutiny for half a century. I would do anything to have him on my board if I was in the field. Not being funny, were the closest in a combined century, but I receive nothing. Silence. Zero... the air itself approaches 0K if i broach commercial transport research. Sure he could be just under NDA. Just NDAs I know displease his academic mind how rattle snakes regard dingoes. But you can take my limitless effort to broach any possibility as my word. Any time. Whilst age permits,be ideal..

[1] as in mods and rockers, see Quadrophenia, especially if you haven't, especially for

[2] this immediately worries me about"throwies" and how much this matters for potential unintended regulation consequences

[3]

CANON EYE TRACKING I WISH TO CONTROL ON STREET HUD OF ROAD USERS A series of tiny infrared LEDs (light emitting diodes) shine harmless infrared energy onto your eyeball as you peer through the viewfinder. Light sensors record the infrared reflecting off your eye and calculate the focus point. A computer in the camera then examines this data and decides which of the focus points is closest to that point and selects it. If the camera is in AI Servo mode then it will also adjust focus automatically based on that selected point.

I do that all the time with my scooter. (I don't have an electric one, just a normal push scooter).

Portability is a huge advantage that scooters have over bikes. I take my scooter literally everywhere I go, anywhere in San Francisco. It is actually 100% of the time.

And If I don't want to scooter home, I just call an Uber and put it in the back.

Yeah, the evidence is actually pretty compelling that requiring bike helmets is a net negative to society. It's unfortunate how little it gets questioned.

That's the one time when I won't use my bike. Rain worries me as the rim brakes on my city get really weak, so I slow down a fair bit, but I am scared on snow and ice. Fortunately we don't get much where I live.

I've biked to work in ice and snow quite a bit. It does run, but I wouldn't say it runs well. I usually opt for the bus if the weather is that bad.

And it sometimes brings out the good in folks as well. I've often given someone smaller change for their freshly-emptied cart and had folks simply pay for my cart when I was searching for change. (This was especially so in the US as I don't use the metal carts nearly as often here).

Some also have small cash deposit (routinely spoofed with a similar-size token, but that doesn't matter, the tokens cost about the same as the coin). Maybe adding one of these and a reward prompt ("Did you park nice? Well done!")?

When I see people leave a cart in the wrong place I pick it up and put it where it belongs. Hopefully they'll be watching me. Sometimes you can only do what you can do in that moment.

You would be amazed what people will do for a small amount of money.

Bike lanes could be a better place for them. But a lot of the riders I see are tourists or scooter novices. A busy urban bike lane is not the right place to learn a new mode of transport.

The escooters aren't banned from sidewalks, but I don't know what the alternative is here. They're too slow to be on the roads and like you suggest, we don't have dedicated bike lanes throughout the island.

That said I know of people who can commute to work through the PCN and I'm so jealous of them.

The one in the article are limited to 15mph, a colleague of mine rides one limited to 60km/h (37mph).