You underestimate the amount of people who don't at all care whether or not their stroller goes splat as long as they're on asphalt they like the feel of.
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.
Story time. I find myself to be pushing a stroller around a lot these days, and the number of times where I have to wait behind some obstacles to make place for another stroller, kids, someone in a wheelchair, a blind person, old people with walkers, is much higher than I thought it would be when I was just my agile, young self. I'm sure they'd all love to dive bomb away from cars that are running into them.
It's a bit funny, but not really. If I pushing my daughter in a stroller, and they blocked the way like that when it's already difficult to walk in the snow I would literally kick one to the curb. I'm tired of the sidewalk being used as a dumping ground for every possible thing.
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.
I'd vote for e scooters if most people didn't behave like toddlers
Not a day goes by without me having to remove 1-3 e scooters from my building sidewalk, which isn't even a public street, otherwise eldrely people or people with strollers can't pass through anymore
That you know these bikes and scooters blocking pavements is a social ill but you do not care because it is convenient for a fraction of a percent of commuters
Who defines hampering? I'm absolutely hampered by the plague of groups of parents filling the entire width of trails with strollers 3 across but have no illusions a majority would agree to ban them.
Carelessly placed scooters are a mild irritation, around the same level of annoyance as over-enthusiastic tree-planting requiring me to duck and weave almost constantly as I walk along the sidewalk.
But the real problem that needs to be addressed is the idiots riding the scooters on the sidewalk, expecting pedestrians to dive out of their way.
Probably sheer numbers in a city that's already overwhelmed by lots of other activities that people aren't supposed to be doing either. As others have noted, a lot of people like them but it's not clear that they are workable if they can never be ridden on the sidewalk.
I'm not condoning their use on sidewalks but it's probably inevitable that they'll be ridden there if they're going to be used to any great degree.
The sidewalk cluttering is such a non-issue. The real problem is people riding them on the sidewalks, which is annoying and best and dangerous at worst. Riding them in the street, on the other hand, is scary, I'm pretty sure too scary for mass adoption - I'm pretty sure Bird knows this and is hoping that people will be able to get away with riding them on sidewalks.
Edit: when I say that the sidewalk cluttering is a non-issue, I just mean that as far as I can tell there is barely any sidewalk cluttering, not that said cluttering wouldn't be an issue if it was actually happening.
It shouldn't be the opinion of the person on the scooter what is safe or not safe to do with said scooter on the sidewalk. Take space away from cars, not pedestrians.
I pretty much agree with that. More casual users in a lot of places who have never ridden bikes in traffic and aren't about to start. (And scooters are arguably even worse because of small wheels and rough roads.) So you get people with an attitude that the scooters are there to use but riding them on the road is a death wish. And they may even be right about the road part.
Add to that some sidewalks are wide and low pedestrian traffic and aren't really a problem given courteous users. But allow that and you get people bombing on narrow sidewalks with more pedestrians.
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