Just this week in Vantaa, Finland three 12-year-old girls piled onto one of those electric scooters you subscribe to with an app and proceeded to get run over by a car at a crossing, killing one of them

The app is supposed to have an age restriction but it's easy to bypass and you're not supposed to have more than one person riding on one, which people routinely ignore

I hate seeing kids and teens speeding around dangerously on those fucking things and then just leaving them laying around on high-traffic bike routes because they don't give a shit since they treat the scooters as completely disposable

Fucking awful bazinga-brained Silicon Valley-ass idea and business model. Actually, there are also bikes you can use with an app but curiously you don't see kids doing reckless shit with those, almost as if electric scooters were uniquely terrible thonk

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[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Surprised at the negative comments tbh. Imagine if a bike share program encouraged people to leave the bikes flat on the ground, wherever? The business model is a net negative for urban centers and needs to be at least reconsidered in several aspects.

Honestly I’m wondering if the people disagreeing even live with this problem? Finland has excellent cycling and transit infrastructure. Scooters are not the only way people can be car-free here.

The scooters also just go too fast in my opinion, and should not be silent. It is easy for uncoordinated people to ride the scooters silently through busy sidewalks at like 25 km/h.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I assume people who live in the US are more forgiving towards any alternative to cars which is understandable.

They should only really go at brisk walking speed at most

[–] triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 4 months ago

Allowing the scooters to be left on the ground is completely down to (lack of) regulation in the municipalities. the same scooter company in the same country in:

city A: completely banned
city B: allows scooters to be "parked" (read: abandoned) in any public space
city C: requires scooters to be parked in designated, painted bays, out of the way of bike lanes and street crossings

In city C people get fined up the ass for parking anywhere else (you have to take a photo of it parked to end the trip) and you basically never see a stopped scooter outside an official bay.

Anywhere you see parked scooters inconveniencing people (Berlin is so bad locals have started hanging them from streetlights), the local politicians made terrible choices.