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 who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs.
On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to all the 'trendy' spots often opting to use these scooters.
More often than not they park them right in the middle of the sidewalk. 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.
There are legit reasons to complain about scooters scattered on sidewalks especially for people who are mobility-impaired in various ways. But I actually mostly agree that lots of stuff blocks sidewalks in cities and I'm not at all sure scooters are an outsized offender.
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.
I have a kid and don't use a stroller - in fact, strollers are kinda one of my pet peeves. They consume tons of space on sidewalks and in restaurants. I'd much rather have sidewalks full of parked scooters that I might at least occasionally use.
But you know what? I'm pretty tolerant, and I'm willing to put up with a little mild inconvenience that allows other people to make their lives significantly easier. I wish everyone else felt likewise.
If the thing you care about is clear sidewalks, scooters are such a tiny problem that they're barely worth mentioning. I've had to step over parked scooters a handful of times. Every time, they were in an alley that no wheelchair or blind person could have navigated. The sidewalk was also populated with garbage cans, bicycle parts, and some random trash.
If a scooter is poorly parked in a high traffic area, people tend to move it out of the way. If it's in a low traffic area, then there's almost always other stuff in the way as well.
These Electric Scooters in San Francisco have become a total nuisance.
I've seen quite a few riders ride them on the sidewalks and 1 person even ran into a dude on a wheelchair who was trying to get onto the sidewalk after crossing the road on his wheelchair.
The last safe place for Pedestrians and disabled persons -- the Sidewalk -- is under attack.
The startups that have created this nuisance also park these scooters on the sidewalk, and it routinely blocks disabled people on wheelchairs from travelling safely on the sidewalk.
On the margins of downtown, where the sidewalks are narrow enough, I've seen the sidewalk blocked by a fallen scooter, because pedestrians are only allotted a tiny strip of concrete between the roads and the parking lots. But you don't see people with physical disabilities trying to navigate those neighborhoods on the sidewalk anyway. Want to make those areas more accessible? Reclaim some space from cars. Provide an array of attractive alternatives that induce more people to get around without driving, and then you can have reasonably sized sidewalks.
Downtown, where pedestrians are more than an afterthought, I see people with physical disabilities using the sidewalks every day. (There's a homeless shelter not far away.) I don't see them having problems with scooters. There's plenty of space.
Honestly, I don't see many fallen scooters at all downtown. Considering how easily they fall over from being jostled (which should improve in future models) I suspect a lot of people care enough to take a second to put a fallen scooter upright. When you think about all the ways people can be shitty with scooters, you have to factor in that people can be pretty nice, too.
Of course people aren't always considerate. In my own neighborhood, sometimes people block the sidewalk with their cars when they don't pull forward far enough forward in their driveways, forcing people in wheelchairs to go into the street. That hasn't caused the world to end, and neither will scooters.
They're something of a plague in my home town as well, they're strewn all over the pavement/sidewalk/footpath(/whatever regional word), even when there was barely enough room for pedestrians.
Perhaps the users/distributors of these things aren't trying to come across as inconsiderate, but that's certainly the end result.
Pedestrians need their own space. These scooters shouldn't mix with pedestrian traffic at all
I see these scooters as somewhat good for the society if it'd be accompanied by enforcement- proper docks or allotted areas and no riding on the sidewalk and following the rules of traffic flow.
As it is right now it's a mobility issue for the disabled. I come from a country with no sidewalks with the disabled forever left to the mercy of their caretakers. I was simply amazed by the level of planning to accommodate them in the US. But now these scooters are blocking the sidewalks everywhere. What are the disabled going to do? Get up and move the scooter?
So far in Nuremberg, the main problem is that even if their users don’t park them directly in the sidewalk, they’ll still occasionally fall over into the sidewalk, which is anywhere from annoying to dangerous for able-bodied pedestrians and stroller pushers, and a serious barrier to people using mobility aids - think wheelchairs and walkers.
Also, many of them are hard to roll a few meters to get them out of the way - no, I’m not trying to steal your scooter, I’m trying to prevent an accident.
They were an absolute plague in Lisbon a few years ago.
Good for Paris. I hope that gives Nuremberg and my adjacent suburb courage to act.
It is not an absurd priority if you are disabled. These scooters in the middle of side walks can literally mean injury to the blind, and a big pain for those in wheel chairs. Think of that the next time you simply 'step over' a poorly-parked scooter.
Indeed. The scooters are fine. The bad manners are a whole other thing. At least once per week on my walk to work I’m pulling scooters off the middle of the sidewalk or out of a handicap conveyance.
A lot of the bad behavior on the road is the same as cyclists in the area, except these scooters are a lot faster than the beach cruisers and fixies you regularly see.
I always wonder what's going on in the mind of someone who leaves their scooter to block the sidewalk. Besides the obvious example of blind people having to navigate this obstacle course the same goes for the elderly, people in wheelchairs and so on. And these scooters are the things that block the sidewalk even in a city with plenty of bikes (such as Amsterdam) because there is no sense of responsibility associated with their use. When you're done you just need to get rid of it as though it is a disposable rather than a vehicle.
I really haven't seen scooter riding on the sidewalk as a problem out in my area. People already ride bikes and skateboards and everything else, plus, a lot of sidewalks are under utilized with very few pedestrians as it is.
So you wouldn’t mind people parking the scooters in front of your house then, since you can just walk around them?
I’ve seen scooters literally blocking entrances and pathways, heck people even take them inside buildings up to the 5th floor; not to mention that at night they emit a high pitched disrupting sound. Some people are plain lazy and highly inconsiderate. We need some rules because some people lack common sense.
They are dangerous and reckless on sidewalks. Sidewalks are used by all sorts of people: from healthy adults to a wide spectrum of mobility, sensorily and developmentally impaired people.
Case in point: handicapped folks, elderly, and children.
A 75 year old woman out walking her dog is unlikely to have the situational awareness (visual, audio, and cognitive degeneration) nor the quickness of reflexes to respond to scooters on sidewalks.
A collision between a 170lb male on a scooter going 10mph and a 130lb elderly person is going to lead to extensive injury, potentially life threatening, injury to the adult.
A pelvic fracture is not an uncommon injury from falls in elderly and is associated with a notable increase in probability of death.
Scooters on sidewalks are dangerous and should be immediately banned.
Parking on a sidewalk is a violation of many rules and norms, but the one that matters the most to me is that people in wheelchairs cannot maneuver around these. I tried reporting some in my local neighborhood via 311 but it's pretty much useless (I'm fairly confident the car was an unmarked cop car anyway).
I have yelled (successfully) at ebike riders that go on the sidewalk; they ended up apologizing to me even though I speak no Spanish and they spoke little English. There are tons of kids in my neighborhood and it takes a village etc.
My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs.
On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to all the 'trendy' spots often opting to use these scooters.
More often than not they park them right in the middle of the sidewalk. 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.
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