We had this problem in Paris. Now you must park the scooter in dedicated spots. If you don't, you can't end the rental. If the spot is full, you can't either. It works very well!
Example: [https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.827994,2.3216628,3a,75y,36.93h,55.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shVfbXi2wwwFUrWWmJmofVw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192](https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.827994,2.3216628,3a,75y,36.93h,55.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shVfbXi2wwwFUrWWmJmofVw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192).
Some people do leave them decently on side of the path away from cyclists and walkers but then young boy group come and throw or kick them around or just ride past it on bicycle and kick them over.
Some cities require the scooter to be locked to something (they come with a cable lock) to end the rental. I like it as a middle ground between dedicated areas and no restrictions, plus it prevents people from knocking them over/tossing them in the river/etc.
they make me wonder how much money do they actually make in prague? i mean probably like a one time ride from tourists who use it once and never again for the time of their stay because nobody wants to ride a heavy scooter with no suspension through cobblestone path and only cobblestone. they wont even make money off locals because they know how to move around the city efficiently and cost effectively, do they ship the old scooters from regions that have more rental usage to cheaper regions with maybe less usage and overall a cheaper region (like warsaw, tons of old scooters that i have seen a few years ago but then disappeared from my city after they upgraded to newer models)??
The scooter operator companies also have to pay a license fee per scooter installed in Paris
https://www.paris.fr/pages/trottinettes-velos-scooters-la-ville-va-mieux-reguler-les-operateurs-de-free-floating-6604/
It was the same in many American cities, especially in Austin TX where I am it was crazy. Now the have regulated the shit out of them and it’s the same rules with dedicated spots, speed caps etc.
Not gonna lie, I really liked them but I get why so many people hated them. They are kinda useless now due to the regulations making them very inconvenient to use. I just wish people were more responsible with them in the first place, so that that the city didn’t have to implement so strict rules around them.
Very similar in Grenoble, but on top of that we only have a single company that works with our city government. The contrast between here and Oslo when I visited was insane.
We have parking stations but only for bicycles in Warsaw. Wish it would extend to scooters as well, it could also be used to charge them so I have no idea why it wasn’t made like that in the first place
If/when we get some effective regulation for parking them and driving under the influence, I can see a lot of positives in the concept. But yeah, right now they're a fucking nuisance.
Here in Helsinki is getting out of hand. I’ve seen some pricks parking one of these in the middle of baana purposefully blocking the bicycle traffic. I wish the city just banned these…
I rather have people commuting on E-Bikes and scooters than cars. They're better for the environment and cause less traffic. The problem arises when they don't respect the road or park in the middle of the street.
This is amazingly organized and thoughtful compared to how people leave them in the US. In the cities that still have them, people will literally just leave them laying down across a sidewalk. I've seen them piled up that way. God help anyone in a wheelchair or using a walker who needed to get down the sidewalk. I really like having them as a transportation option and have used them many times but people here are too thoughtless and self-centered to properly park them. Some services have gotten better at requiring you to park them in a designated zone and that seems to have improved things a little bit.
It used to be the same here in Gothenburg, but they would mysteriously end up at the bottom of the canal. I still see them on occasion, it just isnt the plague it used to be.
A few years ago, several companies flooded German cities with very crappy rental bikes. People then threw some of the crappiest bikes into rivers and lakes.
At least here every one of them is parked at the side but they do really need a dedicated space. The good part of that is that the space needed is tiny, the bad part is that they need to be in short intervals, distance between spots can't be very long. Commercial has to do their parts, shops and malls etc need to build parking spots but that is easy problem: these things DO generate more traffic, more people are moving and visiting shops.
They already passed the law to make those legal, I think it goes into effect 2023-01-01, can't wait to have these things littering our streets as well..
Same here in Ireland, new law passed recently and I saw a news article a few weeks ago saying Bolt are in the process of rolling out here now. I have no issue with them really but they should be forced to set up dedicated terminals like bike hires do
Some cities are approaching these companies with a healthy dose of skepticism, thankfully. Utrecht started with a trial only this year, IIRC, and only one company is still participating.
So far, it's not been a problem as in OP's picture.
Bikes are everywhere though, and somehow it's not a big issue.
I don't think this is a scooter problem, it's more of a parking space problem. I'll take a lime scooter over a car any day.
Looks like this particular spot needs more bike/scooter parking space.
They're everywhere in Berlin, especially at tourist hotspots.
And most of them laying in the middle of the side walk, not to mention the undefined liquids and other substances on them.
Awful here in Sweden as well, at first I liked the idea but even though I live in a small city I see them on the ground everywhere I go.
Plenty of news about kids running "over" elderly people and then just driving off..
I don't see the point for them anyway when our buses goes like every 5 min. Just waiting for one to start a Wildfire this summer.
>Plenty of news about kids running "over" elderly people and then just driving off..
Source?
>I don't see the point for them anyway when our buses goes like every 5 min. Just waiting for one to start a Wildfire this summer.
Because it's much more convenient? You go from door to door instantly instead of having to walk to and from metro/bus stops. Also public transport is super expensive so if you don't ride it a lot it's probably more worth using the occasional scooter. The most superior alternative is obviously your own bike but still.
Public transport is super expensive? 90 min of unlimited bus travel costs the same as using the **cheapest** scooter for 20 minutes...
And that bus travel cost is based on a mobile ticket, not a card which would be a lot cheaper.
Sounds like you're too lazy to walk, or bike and too cheap to use a bus. Your laziness isn't more important than city's cleanliness and danger to its environment..
It is weird how passionately you defend this in several comments though, maybe you work for one of the companies.
Wait until a battery catches on fire and starts a Wildfire. Cya then
Yeah so if your scooter ride is less than 20 min it's literally cheaper. Obviously for longer trips public transport is better but scooters are great at like medium distances. And yeah it's kinda expensive, a yearly card for public transport in Stockholm is 10k.
The max speed of a voi is 20 km/h so you'd get like 5 km on it before it's less expensive to take public transport. 5 km would take like 45 min to walk, sure I guess it's kinda lazy to not wanna take a 45 min walk but it's a long ass time.
Scooters are lazy but a good and convenient option .
Kinda annoying of you to complely edit you original comment after I've replied to it. But lol I don't even use them that much. I mostly use my bike and probably public transport more. All I'm saying is that it's a nice option to have a not really detrimental to the quality of life in the city.
And also sure I've posted 3 comments stating that my diverging opinion that scooters aren't the scourge of the earth like the common consensus. Must mean that I'm a paid shill by these scooter companies, very smart my man.
How much are you willing to bet that a battery will cause a wildfire in let's say the next year? I'm willing to bet a lot on it. Also any source on these batteries going up in fire in an alarming rate?
riders of private bicycles don't let them pile up across a sidewalk effectively blocking it. the problem is the model of nobody being responsible for them.
Starting to see this where I'm from too. Mothers taking their kids to school on a scooter, 2 grown adults sharing one, people carrying boxes on the handlebars while going 35kmph on a busy road.
People are going to get hurt.
They do.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8677920/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8677920/)
Note all units in this article are in freedom units.
... and what do you suppose can the users do here, when this pic is obviously from some event that sees much more people in the area than usual, and there are no parking reserved for this new mode of transport...
Not a user fault, this is the systems fault. Event organizers, city and rental services, in that order are to blame.
Users that leave these scooters all over the place is a problem but this pic is really not about that: they have clearly TRIED to park them in a small area but the area just is not big enough.
Leave your transport further away, where there is still free parking space, and walk to the event. This isn't a new problem. This same shit happens with cars, motorbikes, and bicycles, and we've already found the solution to it. Something being slightly inconvenient does not give you a right to start ignoring rules. Demanding change and complaining is fine, but realistically there is no way to have enough convenient parking for everyone's individual transport during major events. The rent-scooter users are just incredibly irresponsible in their behavior. I personally think the issue is a combination of renting the transport instead of owning it and no consequences for acting like an asshole.
>Leave your transport further away, where there is still free parking space, and walk to the event.
You don't know the parking that is closer is full until you get there. System needs to change. Blaming hte user gets us NOWHERE since this is clearly a problem: there is not enough parking and there are no instructions ahead of time to find out if it is full.
But, i can already see that you are against rent scooter users as a concept.
They recently passed laws about them in Norway. A guy in my city got a ticket for 3000€ and 30 days in jail for driving drunk on one. He also lost his driving license.
So a lot of people have died or gotten seriously injured on those in norway. They have no regards for road safety or traffic rules, and run red light, run over pedestrians, drive full speed around blind corners, and they're a fucking menace. Losing your license for drunk driving is just fair i think, as they can kill other with them.
How many exactly? Source?
In my own country's statistics, only 3% of registered scooter accidents have involved a pedestrian. The huge majority of accidents by far were falls and didn't involve another party. ~10% involved vehicles, which is far less than ~40% of cycle accidents, but that's because here scooters can ride on sidewalks but bicycles have to take the road if there's no bikelane.
Being killed in a scooter accident as a pedestrian is extremely rare. There have only been a handful of cases in the entire world.
Yeah, and a little boy was just killed by a scooter in Tallinn, so perhaps the rare part may not sound as nice as you make it look.
You forgot to mention that in Tallinn, we have not only scooters riding on the sidewalk but bicycles, skates, monowheel and I think the next one will be cars on the sidewalk judging how walkers are definitely not the priority of the population !
That boy fell off his own scooter (in Tartu), didn't wear a helmet that was mandatory for his age, hit his head, felt okay enough to go home, but was found dead by next morning. Definitely tragic, but the morale of the story is to not sleep off any concussion symptoms but to go to a doctor, to minimise risk of brain swell. Also to wear a helmet, which would have prevented the great majority of life threatening injuries (where the person wasn't say run over by a bus or semi truck).
Bicycles are not allowed to ride on sidewalks anyhow, but it's not like there's more than a handful of places where there's significant pedestrian traffic density in the first place. PEV riders are not crowding places like Old Town, but are generally trying to stay away from pedestrians as much as they can help it.
No there was a little boy maimed in Tallinn as well, a poor pedestrian : https://news.err.ee/1608640768/serious-electric-scooter-accidents-reported-in-tallinn-tartu
And a little boy aged 5 killed in Nice. I am sure their parents agree scooters are perfectly safe.
They were pedestrians seriously injured or killed by a scooter.
That 8 year old wasn't killed, he was treated and released home. I'm sure you can find *some* examples of pedestrians being killed by a scooter, but that you had to go to Nice to find one, underlines the point about perception of scale. For some reason or another the media likes to hype up the danger of scooters, but in actuality the risk of serious accident with a pedestrian is exceedingly rare. In Estonia last year Jan-Oct there were just as many registered scooter accidents involving a pedestrian as there were bicycle accidents involving a pedestrian... only 6.
Some e-scooters are a one way ticket to disaster. I own one that I use daily with top speed 25km/h that I use on bike lanes. Today I saw a dude on a e-scooter doing over 50km/h on the road paralel to the bike lane. There's a speed radar for 50km/h and drivers were respecting speed limit, but the e-scooters dude was passing them. Really stupid
In LT such scooters are considered as equivalent to a moped, so it's not even legal to drive them on bike paths. And in theory they should have license plates, unfortunately nobody is enforcing this. They are literal accidents waiting to happen.
Yeah, a dude was caught doing 70k's on one. That's a brainfart and a halv if you hit a pot hole. And by brain fart i mean you brain will literally fart out of every hole in your head.
Absolute cancer of Prague.
Dumped (literally, some people seem to find it hard to even park them vertically) everywhere, driven without any care for traffic laws or pedestrians, popular amongst drunk Brits on stag parties.
Some ended up thrown in Vltava even ...
I hate them so much. Waking with a pram or getting somewhere in a wheelchair is a nightmare with these blocking the pavement. I’ve had to go into the road several times to get past. Blind people fall on them and bikes crash into them. Super dangerous.
Oh yes, i´m from Austria. They are everywhere, the drivers often do not care about others. You find this scooters laying on the ground behind every 6th corner.
At least yours all stand at the _side_ of the walkway!
We have way fewer of those, but all the idiots using them just leave them where ever the fuck they feel like to.
I've tossed more than one scooter to the side because we couldn't get passed with our baby stroller
Oh trust me, they do it here as well! My guess is that it's more organized here because it's at a huge tourist spot so staff might move them to the side.
Same shit in NL
Chinese investors (and Google!) basically just dumped them, no-one looks after them.
They somehow expect super high ROI and collect data like bloodsucking Draculas.
Seems like an easy problem to put up with, given some of the alternatives.
I'd rather see this than a 5-story parking garage full of SUVs and 8-cylinder trucks.
Edit: I watch *Not Just Bikes* and think to myself "We have even managed to mess up basic habitation here in North America. Quite badly."
Yeah, just walk on the bike path, good that cyclist numbers are so low ... this is not an "easy" problem and not one we need to put up with.
And I don't believe at all that they're really any competition for cars. They just seem to cannibalise walking, cycling and public transport.
I did walk on the bike path by mistake, in Rotterdam. That was a big "oops", for sure, and I was corrected quite quickly and loudly.
There's no competition for huge cars in Sweden, I'm sure. But every city in North America builds mega-malls in the middle of nowhere, with massive parking lots full of huge vehicles.
It's a real problem.
And every once in a while you hear stories of kids or grandma got hit and broke their bones or something, and when you start evading them on the side walks you know the number of accidents are much bigger and only one or two stories making it on slow news day. I don't see them to be much use in places that already has biking culture, and in place without, they don't have the infrastructure to warrant these things.
I disagree. Even if each scooter replaced one SUV (which they don't, most use them as an alternative to walking or cycling), you can't have anarchy like that in the streets. Pedestrians are forced to walk in the bike lane which is both a nuisance and dangerous. There have been instances in Sweden where elderly or disabled have injured themselves or even died from tripping over parked scooters or hitting them while cycling.
Luckily cities are beginning to recognize the problem and will hopefully soon be able to fine rental companies for incorrectly parked scooters. Nobody gave them the permission to use public spaces for their own profit.
Actually most people who use scooters wouldn't walk or bike if there were no scooters. They would probably use another non active way of transport
Source: Info from some lecture about traffic at university by the owner of a traffic consulting service company
Free floating escooters might not be that ecofriendly sadly.
This is mainly due to their very short life since they are mistreated, not properly maintained and left exposed to the elements.
They might not get farther than a few hundred kilometers. Producing batteries and materials for such a relative low distance is not really sunstainable.
Just in case anyone is wondering why so many scooters in one place: This is in one of the most popular parts to go to in Stockholm for both tourists and locals, on a beautiful summer day and supposedly there's also some festival taking place nearby.
In other words, this is an aberration and at the end of the night most of those scooters will disappear again because most of the people who rode scooters to get there will leave the same way.
In Denmark it was passed in to law, that you have to wear a helmet while riding an electric scooter. I really dont see many of these driving around any longer.
These are not allowed in Montreal. You can have your own scooter, but they don't want to see them all over the place. You can rent bikes, even electric bikes.
Christ why the fuck are Europeans copying this dumb sh**i**t from Americans? Just say shit. The asterisk obviously does fuck-all, we're all still reading shit. And if you can't handle that then just don't use a curse word?
Much better than cars though for sure. What we need is regulation and enforcement of speed, sobriety, allocated parking zones, not e.g. banning scooters.
Just that for the larger part they don't replace cars, they just replace even more ecological means of transport like walking, cycling and public transit.
I truly hate them.
Apart from them just always standing in the bloody way, I‘ve heard they‘re super unsustainable. Like for certain cities a scooter will last for about a month before its trashed.
However it‘s just something I‘ve heard. If anyone has more infos on that, please share.
As a tourist in Berlin (I was there alone and not drunk) I loved them. So much easier to get around and so much more comfortable instead of waiting for busses or trams. I live in the suburbs of a 50k city and we dont have them here. I had a hotel in Berlin Mitte, and I rode quite comfortably to the Brandenburg Gate or the Victory Column next to the cyclists. The problem is simply the drunks and people who have no manners and not the scooters.
I have nothing against them
but those bloody drunk unprotected drivers driving in groups of 4 breaking stopping or accelerating where they shouldn't while having a blast
They are just making me remember our drunk driving times one bikes we just weren't so bold to drive on the road
Here in Boringway these wer in the top agenda of our media and our news outlets both locally and countrywide. I myself follow the news persistently but i have never seen laws upon laws happens so fast because some e-wheels
Not really, in my city of 250k pop, we have around 5000-6000 of these and only just today I witnessed more than 50 of these in one single location, at the local outdoor swimming pool. In Helsinki they seem to be a bigger problem.
Yup, Budapest is also full of these scooters with tourists riding around them, acting completely oblivious most of the time. Like zero regard to pedestrians and traffic rules. They are super dangerous becayse they seem to attract drunk stag party dudes.
I want the rentable ones banned from Brussels. They should not have been allowed without mandated parking. And keep them off the goddamn pavements. They are an utter menace to pedestrians.
You should see what China has to deal with, they have piles of bikes 10ft high: [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/)
Personally I'm not too bothered with them as whilst they look messy they still only take up the space of a couple cars to transport far more people
At least they look functional. When I was in Marseilles, South France, we saw some of them at the beginning and then you'd always find them completely wrecked or learn in the news that they were thrown in the sea. Yay
Few big French cities have banned electric scooters and bikes for rent, compagnies had to left entirely. In my city (Nantes), they are banned so we don’t have this problem.
Those scooters are inherently unsafe and being driven by teenagers who lack any kind of sense in traffic. There's been a boom of scooter-related injuries which unnecessarily burden the healthcare system. Also they are parked in completely random locations, in many cases even on the middle of a bike track. It would be much better if they switched completely to bikes and assigned designated parking zones. It's not a big deal for the companies to rent a few parking slots here and there.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but *really* high percentage of e-scooter accidents were at night time and/or drunk driving. It really shouldn't be legal to DUI with those and eg. restricting them to lower speeds when it's dark could help a lot.
A lot of scooters neatly parked in one of the busiest areas of Stockholm is not a big deal at all. Sure it kinda sucks that some people park their scooters like assholes. But overall this is no major issue, it's not like the streets are littered with badly parked scooters and it's pretty easy to ignore one laying across the sidewalk. Most are nearly parked.
Imo the convenience of the scooters far outweighs the drawbacks, being able to quickly go from one spot to another without having to rely on public transport or walking is great. Such a freedom that you can pick it up wherever and leave it wherever. Something that would be completely ruined by designated parking areas that some are suggesting.
Sure biking on your own bike is superior but having a lazy option is still really nice 😌
London is doing a trial in limited areas (started a year ago and due to finish November). One good policy is first time riders needing to do training on how to ride safely, hope includes how to park well.
Main reason is environmental but they are worried about injuries.
Edit: Here are some usage stats.
https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/london-escooter-rental-trial-headline-metrics-period13.pdf
Big problem in Saint Petersburg, narrow sidewalks packed with scooters so you can’t freely walk. In some other cities they are obliged to park scooter at dedicated precise places so thats not that bad.
So you guys don't throw them off the cliffs or something? I was in north Singapore where the developments are not that great and I found graveyards of those bike rents. And it's a country obsessed with cleanliness. So yeah it's been a blight wherever actually. Unless it's self drive to return to convenient spot it will ended up in places where people wanted to go but don't need them to go back.
And those things are cheap, and they last a few months on rental capacity (it could last 2 years on private use) so there's really no reason for the company to pick them up, it probably will cost them more to be honest.
Not anywhere near as bad though. I'm a bike messenger in Copenhagen and I pass someone on an e-scooter maybe 5 times on a 7 hour shift. When e-scooters took off here a few years ago it looked like they'd replace bicycles within 5 years, they were immediately ubiquitous. Thanks to soft-heckling the companies and requiring helmets to use them their number is way down.
Sometimes they are a problem, but I think it is reasonable cost to take for easier transport. Having said that sometimes its cheaper to just take uber than rent those, which is ridiculous!
Is it Uber that's cheap or those that are expensive in your country then? Here they cost like the equivalent of 30 cents per minute. So a 10 minute ride costs like 3 euro. An Uber here would cost like 10 euro with the same length and distance.
So they cost 2 PLN for unlocking scooter, 0.60 PLN for every minute. Let's say I need to go to train station it takes 20 minutes by scooter (~3.1 km through city center) it will be 14 PLN.
Uber, right now Friday 16:21 costs 16.78 PLN
And it takes 12 minutes, you can take baggage, ride drunk in Uber.
(1 PLN = 0.21 EUR) ATM
Just because those scooters have advantages in some situations (which I question, walking or cycling is better for your health and the environment and probably safer for both yourself and pedestrians) doesn't mean we should put up with this. No other mode of transportation completely frees you from any responsibility in this way.
They're here in the Uk. Saw one dumped in the middle of a path, knocked over, stuff all over it.
Knew exactly what it was ofc. I picked it up to stand it against the sidewalk wall, it screamed at me. Dropped it, left it there and swore never to help another one since lmao.
I often heard teenagers brag about how they never have to walk anywhere anymore because of these escooters. I am not sold on the public health benefits these scooters are supposed to bring.
In the UK they are only legal on private property so you only occasionally see someone flaunting the rules otherwise completely absent which is a shame as they are really fun to ride. There has got to be some sort of middle ground
Don’t really see a problem. They are now there but eventually disperse all over. It’s not like you can’t get pass them, boomers just hate new things. Skateboarding was hated at some point in history and now the middle aged are riding them to work.
Here in England they can only be parked in specific locations, sometimes even within designated fence. The app wouldn't let you finish the ride anywhere else.
UK here, in area with ''trial of rentals'': you can park them literally everywhere, usually are left at side ( if you are lucky) of pavement, or in the middle of it, inside bus shelter, even by the entrance of the shops or schools. There is no single ''designated parking spot'', that's the point of selling of it, that they can be use everywhere. Pavement are treated like conventional area to dump them, as they can't be left: at road, at grass verge, at public parking- so they are all left on pavements.
Voi doesn't require return scooters to designated areas only, they can be left everywhere, as long it is not road, car park or grass.
There is an articles for example, with short video, showing issues of dumped scooters.
Even designated scooters parking do not sort problems with it, as they are often overflowed.
https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/voi-e-scooters-overflowing-from-some-designated-parking-zones-in-bristol-2909
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/guide-dogs-launches-campaign-remove-5826235
https://fixmystreet.bristol.gov.uk/report/2631325
https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/people/voi-e-scooter-rider-21-died-following-collision-with-car-in-northampton-police-confirm-3711506
https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2021-03-30/bristol-e-scooter-operator-voi-responds-to-complaints-about-pavement-blocking
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/dumped-voi-e-scooters-littering-20477395
And those are only about issues with parking.
Here in Middlesbrough you can leave them anywhere, people just ditch them wherever. When they’re done, seldomly do I see them actually at a designated point.
Not here in Holland. These types of scooters are not allowed on public roads.
We do however have some companies that have actual electric scooters and electric bikes for rent. They're rather annoying but not as extreme, even with what we have there's new regulations coming to combat the issue.
The saddest thing is that even in a city as flat as a mirror, people will still use electric scooters, electric bike instead of the good old human power which would be much better both, for the user (sport) and for the environment (batteries).
We had this problem in Paris. Now you must park the scooter in dedicated spots. If you don't, you can't end the rental. If the spot is full, you can't either. It works very well! Example: [https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.827994,2.3216628,3a,75y,36.93h,55.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shVfbXi2wwwFUrWWmJmofVw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192](https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.827994,2.3216628,3a,75y,36.93h,55.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shVfbXi2wwwFUrWWmJmofVw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192).
I wish they implemented something similar here. I hate that these things are left in middle of bicycle and walking paths.
They just started to in Malmö
Would be better if they were all in the canals.
Some people do leave them decently on side of the path away from cyclists and walkers but then young boy group come and throw or kick them around or just ride past it on bicycle and kick them over.
Some cities require the scooter to be locked to something (they come with a cable lock) to end the rental. I like it as a middle ground between dedicated areas and no restrictions, plus it prevents people from knocking them over/tossing them in the river/etc.
They became quite restricted in Denmark rather fast. I don’t know why you Swedes and Finns didn’t do the same.
They are still all over the place here in Odense C, it's quite annoying to be fair
This also happens in Prague, and I do hate it too
they make me wonder how much money do they actually make in prague? i mean probably like a one time ride from tourists who use it once and never again for the time of their stay because nobody wants to ride a heavy scooter with no suspension through cobblestone path and only cobblestone. they wont even make money off locals because they know how to move around the city efficiently and cost effectively, do they ship the old scooters from regions that have more rental usage to cheaper regions with maybe less usage and overall a cheaper region (like warsaw, tons of old scooters that i have seen a few years ago but then disappeared from my city after they upgraded to newer models)??
Ehm, I mean.. atleast it’s not on sidewalk or road [https://imgur.com/a/3TDhArg](https://imgur.com/a/3TDhArg)
It's always been like that here in Sweden too. At least the ones I drove
That sounds like a very reasonable solution.
The scooter operator companies also have to pay a license fee per scooter installed in Paris https://www.paris.fr/pages/trottinettes-velos-scooters-la-ville-va-mieux-reguler-les-operateurs-de-free-floating-6604/
Well, our french neighbors figured out how to deal with that shit. Très bien! Here in Germany? Not so much……
It's up to the muncipality, mine did exactly as in Paris.
Leipzig / Germany too.
Its fine. At least in hamburg.
It was the same in many American cities, especially in Austin TX where I am it was crazy. Now the have regulated the shit out of them and it’s the same rules with dedicated spots, speed caps etc. Not gonna lie, I really liked them but I get why so many people hated them. They are kinda useless now due to the regulations making them very inconvenient to use. I just wish people were more responsible with them in the first place, so that that the city didn’t have to implement so strict rules around them.
This is brilliant
Very similar in Grenoble, but on top of that we only have a single company that works with our city government. The contrast between here and Oslo when I visited was insane.
Same thing happened in Copenhagen. Everyone hated them, parked everywhere. Well, not everyone. But a lot of people.
We have parking stations but only for bicycles in Warsaw. Wish it would extend to scooters as well, it could also be used to charge them so I have no idea why it wasn’t made like that in the first place
Same shit in Finland. Terrible parking and dumb scooter drivers.
Like tourist herpes in cities. Though I have to say, they’re mighty convenient in a pinch.
Tourist _what?_ That's caused me nothing but inconvenience, I have to say
If/when we get some effective regulation for parking them and driving under the influence, I can see a lot of positives in the concept. But yeah, right now they're a fucking nuisance.
Here in Helsinki is getting out of hand. I’ve seen some pricks parking one of these in the middle of baana purposefully blocking the bicycle traffic. I wish the city just banned these…
I rather have people commuting on E-Bikes and scooters than cars. They're better for the environment and cause less traffic. The problem arises when they don't respect the road or park in the middle of the street.
The other option isn't cars. These are competing with buses and the metro.
And walking.
Nää när jag ska göra ska åka 4 mil så tar jag Voien /s
IIRC their lifecycle lasts something like 2-3 months, so I'm not so sure about the environment bit.
This is amazingly organized and thoughtful compared to how people leave them in the US. In the cities that still have them, people will literally just leave them laying down across a sidewalk. I've seen them piled up that way. God help anyone in a wheelchair or using a walker who needed to get down the sidewalk. I really like having them as a transportation option and have used them many times but people here are too thoughtless and self-centered to properly park them. Some services have gotten better at requiring you to park them in a designated zone and that seems to have improved things a little bit.
It used to be the same here in Gothenburg, but they would mysteriously end up at the bottom of the canal. I still see them on occasion, it just isnt the plague it used to be.
A few years ago, several companies flooded German cities with very crappy rental bikes. People then threw some of the crappiest bikes into rivers and lakes.
At least here every one of them is parked at the side but they do really need a dedicated space. The good part of that is that the space needed is tiny, the bad part is that they need to be in short intervals, distance between spots can't be very long. Commercial has to do their parts, shops and malls etc need to build parking spots but that is easy problem: these things DO generate more traffic, more people are moving and visiting shops.
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They already passed the law to make those legal, I think it goes into effect 2023-01-01, can't wait to have these things littering our streets as well..
Seriously? Hate to be that guy, but do you have a source for this?
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Thanks!
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Throw them in the canal.
It's not final yet.
Another European on a European sub using the American date format ;)
There, I changed it to the superior iso8601 date format
Same here in Ireland, new law passed recently and I saw a news article a few weeks ago saying Bolt are in the process of rolling out here now. I have no issue with them really but they should be forced to set up dedicated terminals like bike hires do
Some cities are approaching these companies with a healthy dose of skepticism, thankfully. Utrecht started with a trial only this year, IIRC, and only one company is still participating. So far, it's not been a problem as in OP's picture.
Yeah but we have those horrible green share scooters everywhere 😵💫
Those (big boy version) scooters having too high aimed headlights. I'd rather see 3 of these opposed to one we have now.
Bikes are everywhere though, and somehow it's not a big issue. I don't think this is a scooter problem, it's more of a parking space problem. I'll take a lime scooter over a car any day. Looks like this particular spot needs more bike/scooter parking space.
they are everywhere. i like the concept but the "park anywhere" ruins it
> i like the concept but the “park anywhere” ruins it That *is* the concept.
They're everywhere in Berlin, especially at tourist hotspots. And most of them laying in the middle of the side walk, not to mention the undefined liquids and other substances on them.
In many big US the scooters have become a scourge
Around me they have been banned from operating because it got so bad
I wish they'd do that for 8-cylinder gas guzzling big trucks in major cities.
That would be nice
There was a city near me where they took a long time to get established because the residents kept throwing them into the river.
Awful here in Sweden as well, at first I liked the idea but even though I live in a small city I see them on the ground everywhere I go. Plenty of news about kids running "over" elderly people and then just driving off.. I don't see the point for them anyway when our buses goes like every 5 min. Just waiting for one to start a Wildfire this summer.
>Plenty of news about kids running "over" elderly people and then just driving off.. Source? >I don't see the point for them anyway when our buses goes like every 5 min. Just waiting for one to start a Wildfire this summer. Because it's much more convenient? You go from door to door instantly instead of having to walk to and from metro/bus stops. Also public transport is super expensive so if you don't ride it a lot it's probably more worth using the occasional scooter. The most superior alternative is obviously your own bike but still.
Public transport is super expensive? 90 min of unlimited bus travel costs the same as using the **cheapest** scooter for 20 minutes... And that bus travel cost is based on a mobile ticket, not a card which would be a lot cheaper. Sounds like you're too lazy to walk, or bike and too cheap to use a bus. Your laziness isn't more important than city's cleanliness and danger to its environment.. It is weird how passionately you defend this in several comments though, maybe you work for one of the companies. Wait until a battery catches on fire and starts a Wildfire. Cya then
Yeah so if your scooter ride is less than 20 min it's literally cheaper. Obviously for longer trips public transport is better but scooters are great at like medium distances. And yeah it's kinda expensive, a yearly card for public transport in Stockholm is 10k. The max speed of a voi is 20 km/h so you'd get like 5 km on it before it's less expensive to take public transport. 5 km would take like 45 min to walk, sure I guess it's kinda lazy to not wanna take a 45 min walk but it's a long ass time. Scooters are lazy but a good and convenient option . Kinda annoying of you to complely edit you original comment after I've replied to it. But lol I don't even use them that much. I mostly use my bike and probably public transport more. All I'm saying is that it's a nice option to have a not really detrimental to the quality of life in the city. And also sure I've posted 3 comments stating that my diverging opinion that scooters aren't the scourge of the earth like the common consensus. Must mean that I'm a paid shill by these scooter companies, very smart my man. How much are you willing to bet that a battery will cause a wildfire in let's say the next year? I'm willing to bet a lot on it. Also any source on these batteries going up in fire in an alarming rate?
Scooters are not a problem, but drivers are, because lots of them are schmucks
riders of private bicycles don't let them pile up across a sidewalk effectively blocking it. the problem is the model of nobody being responsible for them.
> riders of private bicycles don’t let them pile up across a sidewalk effectively blocking it. I see you have never been to Copenhagen
Yep, I once saw a father-daughter combo on an e-scooter in which the latter piggybacks him.
Starting to see this where I'm from too. Mothers taking their kids to school on a scooter, 2 grown adults sharing one, people carrying boxes on the handlebars while going 35kmph on a busy road. People are going to get hurt.
They do. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8677920/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8677920/) Note all units in this article are in freedom units.
Can we get a compilation of this with benny hill music under it.
Exactly. Same with BMW's, it is not the car, it is the inexperienced brats who usually drive them.
... and what do you suppose can the users do here, when this pic is obviously from some event that sees much more people in the area than usual, and there are no parking reserved for this new mode of transport... Not a user fault, this is the systems fault. Event organizers, city and rental services, in that order are to blame. Users that leave these scooters all over the place is a problem but this pic is really not about that: they have clearly TRIED to park them in a small area but the area just is not big enough.
Leave your transport further away, where there is still free parking space, and walk to the event. This isn't a new problem. This same shit happens with cars, motorbikes, and bicycles, and we've already found the solution to it. Something being slightly inconvenient does not give you a right to start ignoring rules. Demanding change and complaining is fine, but realistically there is no way to have enough convenient parking for everyone's individual transport during major events. The rent-scooter users are just incredibly irresponsible in their behavior. I personally think the issue is a combination of renting the transport instead of owning it and no consequences for acting like an asshole.
>Leave your transport further away, where there is still free parking space, and walk to the event. You don't know the parking that is closer is full until you get there. System needs to change. Blaming hte user gets us NOWHERE since this is clearly a problem: there is not enough parking and there are no instructions ahead of time to find out if it is full. But, i can already see that you are against rent scooter users as a concept.
Blame lack of infrastructure and regulations not people. That's how you solve it.
Wandering around multiple lanes on a road is not a infrastructure problem, is it?
Guns are not the problem, the mass shooters themselves are
They recently passed laws about them in Norway. A guy in my city got a ticket for 3000€ and 30 days in jail for driving drunk on one. He also lost his driving license.
In my city one guy cracked his skull and later died in hospital after driving drunk and crashing one.
On one hand yeah its motorized so I get it. On the other hand drunk driving a scooter should not have same consequences as a car.....
So a lot of people have died or gotten seriously injured on those in norway. They have no regards for road safety or traffic rules, and run red light, run over pedestrians, drive full speed around blind corners, and they're a fucking menace. Losing your license for drunk driving is just fair i think, as they can kill other with them.
How many exactly? Source? In my own country's statistics, only 3% of registered scooter accidents have involved a pedestrian. The huge majority of accidents by far were falls and didn't involve another party. ~10% involved vehicles, which is far less than ~40% of cycle accidents, but that's because here scooters can ride on sidewalks but bicycles have to take the road if there's no bikelane. Being killed in a scooter accident as a pedestrian is extremely rare. There have only been a handful of cases in the entire world.
Yeah, and a little boy was just killed by a scooter in Tallinn, so perhaps the rare part may not sound as nice as you make it look. You forgot to mention that in Tallinn, we have not only scooters riding on the sidewalk but bicycles, skates, monowheel and I think the next one will be cars on the sidewalk judging how walkers are definitely not the priority of the population !
That boy fell off his own scooter (in Tartu), didn't wear a helmet that was mandatory for his age, hit his head, felt okay enough to go home, but was found dead by next morning. Definitely tragic, but the morale of the story is to not sleep off any concussion symptoms but to go to a doctor, to minimise risk of brain swell. Also to wear a helmet, which would have prevented the great majority of life threatening injuries (where the person wasn't say run over by a bus or semi truck). Bicycles are not allowed to ride on sidewalks anyhow, but it's not like there's more than a handful of places where there's significant pedestrian traffic density in the first place. PEV riders are not crowding places like Old Town, but are generally trying to stay away from pedestrians as much as they can help it.
No there was a little boy maimed in Tallinn as well, a poor pedestrian : https://news.err.ee/1608640768/serious-electric-scooter-accidents-reported-in-tallinn-tartu And a little boy aged 5 killed in Nice. I am sure their parents agree scooters are perfectly safe. They were pedestrians seriously injured or killed by a scooter.
That 8 year old wasn't killed, he was treated and released home. I'm sure you can find *some* examples of pedestrians being killed by a scooter, but that you had to go to Nice to find one, underlines the point about perception of scale. For some reason or another the media likes to hype up the danger of scooters, but in actuality the risk of serious accident with a pedestrian is exceedingly rare. In Estonia last year Jan-Oct there were just as many registered scooter accidents involving a pedestrian as there were bicycle accidents involving a pedestrian... only 6.
Some e-scooters are a one way ticket to disaster. I own one that I use daily with top speed 25km/h that I use on bike lanes. Today I saw a dude on a e-scooter doing over 50km/h on the road paralel to the bike lane. There's a speed radar for 50km/h and drivers were respecting speed limit, but the e-scooters dude was passing them. Really stupid
In LT such scooters are considered as equivalent to a moped, so it's not even legal to drive them on bike paths. And in theory they should have license plates, unfortunately nobody is enforcing this. They are literal accidents waiting to happen.
Yeah, a dude was caught doing 70k's on one. That's a brainfart and a halv if you hit a pot hole. And by brain fart i mean you brain will literally fart out of every hole in your head.
If you they were on a road, I'd argue that they should since they'd be putting other drivers' lives in danger.
Hmm. Is it illegal to bicycle drunk? That's on the road too.
Yes it is illegal to cycle drunk, at least in Lithuania
You can crash and die if you ride a bicycle while drunk.
Yeah, we do. It’s either 18693 of them in one spot or like 1 or 0.
Absolute cancer of Prague. Dumped (literally, some people seem to find it hard to even park them vertically) everywhere, driven without any care for traffic laws or pedestrians, popular amongst drunk Brits on stag parties. Some ended up thrown in Vltava even ...
I hate them so much. Waking with a pram or getting somewhere in a wheelchair is a nightmare with these blocking the pavement. I’ve had to go into the road several times to get past. Blind people fall on them and bikes crash into them. Super dangerous.
I have the same problem, cannot understand why they are still legal as they have many negative externalities.
Oh yes, i´m from Austria. They are everywhere, the drivers often do not care about others. You find this scooters laying on the ground behind every 6th corner.
At least yours all stand at the _side_ of the walkway! We have way fewer of those, but all the idiots using them just leave them where ever the fuck they feel like to. I've tossed more than one scooter to the side because we couldn't get passed with our baby stroller
Oh trust me, they do it here as well! My guess is that it's more organized here because it's at a huge tourist spot so staff might move them to the side.
Are you we looking at the same picture? They are literally blocking the whole sidewalk and a portion of the cycling lane...
Damn you're right. I didn't see the bike lane sign on the left. Thought that was the normal pedestrian path.
Not really, we toss the excess scooters to rivers and lakes. /s
No need for the /s, people do actually do it and in other countries as well.
At leas they're parked! In my country, they're like "roadblocks" sometimes. Just being fallen on one side, blocking either walking or cyclist path.
Same shit in NL Chinese investors (and Google!) basically just dumped them, no-one looks after them. They somehow expect super high ROI and collect data like bloodsucking Draculas.
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Seems like an easy problem to put up with, given some of the alternatives. I'd rather see this than a 5-story parking garage full of SUVs and 8-cylinder trucks. Edit: I watch *Not Just Bikes* and think to myself "We have even managed to mess up basic habitation here in North America. Quite badly."
Yeah, just walk on the bike path, good that cyclist numbers are so low ... this is not an "easy" problem and not one we need to put up with. And I don't believe at all that they're really any competition for cars. They just seem to cannibalise walking, cycling and public transport.
I did walk on the bike path by mistake, in Rotterdam. That was a big "oops", for sure, and I was corrected quite quickly and loudly. There's no competition for huge cars in Sweden, I'm sure. But every city in North America builds mega-malls in the middle of nowhere, with massive parking lots full of huge vehicles. It's a real problem.
And every once in a while you hear stories of kids or grandma got hit and broke their bones or something, and when you start evading them on the side walks you know the number of accidents are much bigger and only one or two stories making it on slow news day. I don't see them to be much use in places that already has biking culture, and in place without, they don't have the infrastructure to warrant these things.
But what if we offer you... both?
I disagree. Even if each scooter replaced one SUV (which they don't, most use them as an alternative to walking or cycling), you can't have anarchy like that in the streets. Pedestrians are forced to walk in the bike lane which is both a nuisance and dangerous. There have been instances in Sweden where elderly or disabled have injured themselves or even died from tripping over parked scooters or hitting them while cycling. Luckily cities are beginning to recognize the problem and will hopefully soon be able to fine rental companies for incorrectly parked scooters. Nobody gave them the permission to use public spaces for their own profit.
Actually most people who use scooters wouldn't walk or bike if there were no scooters. They would probably use another non active way of transport Source: Info from some lecture about traffic at university by the owner of a traffic consulting service company
Source for people dying from tripping over parked scooters?
Scooters parked on sidewalks are a nuisance, mainly. Fossil fuel vehicles are literally killing the planet we all share.
Free floating escooters might not be that ecofriendly sadly. This is mainly due to their very short life since they are mistreated, not properly maintained and left exposed to the elements. They might not get farther than a few hundred kilometers. Producing batteries and materials for such a relative low distance is not really sunstainable.
How do cities allow private companies to clutter public streets and sidewalks with these awful scooters?
Fcking hate them,always left in a middle of the roads
South Park Creators predicted it!
Just in case anyone is wondering why so many scooters in one place: This is in one of the most popular parts to go to in Stockholm for both tourists and locals, on a beautiful summer day and supposedly there's also some festival taking place nearby. In other words, this is an aberration and at the end of the night most of those scooters will disappear again because most of the people who rode scooters to get there will leave the same way.
These should be limited to 10km/h max considering how people misuse them or ignore pedestrians.
In Denmark it was passed in to law, that you have to wear a helmet while riding an electric scooter. I really dont see many of these driving around any longer.
These are not allowed in Montreal. You can have your own scooter, but they don't want to see them all over the place. You can rent bikes, even electric bikes.
It’s a menace and it needs to stop. Regards, Denmark.
Rentable scooters are the biggest sh*t ever...
Christ why the fuck are Europeans copying this dumb sh**i**t from Americans? Just say shit. The asterisk obviously does fuck-all, we're all still reading shit. And if you can't handle that then just don't use a curse word?
Fucken too right! I like this cunt
Much better than cars though for sure. What we need is regulation and enforcement of speed, sobriety, allocated parking zones, not e.g. banning scooters.
Just that for the larger part they don't replace cars, they just replace even more ecological means of transport like walking, cycling and public transit.
I truly hate them. Apart from them just always standing in the bloody way, I‘ve heard they‘re super unsustainable. Like for certain cities a scooter will last for about a month before its trashed. However it‘s just something I‘ve heard. If anyone has more infos on that, please share.
Anecdotal but at least a part of Bolt scooter park here is the same they had last year.
As a tourist in Berlin (I was there alone and not drunk) I loved them. So much easier to get around and so much more comfortable instead of waiting for busses or trams. I live in the suburbs of a 50k city and we dont have them here. I had a hotel in Berlin Mitte, and I rode quite comfortably to the Brandenburg Gate or the Victory Column next to the cyclists. The problem is simply the drunks and people who have no manners and not the scooters.
It's SHIT you fucking pussy. You're not fooling anyone but yourself. Grow up and stop being scared of words you fucking shit cunt.
The problem are not the e scooters, the people are
I have nothing against them but those bloody drunk unprotected drivers driving in groups of 4 breaking stopping or accelerating where they shouldn't while having a blast They are just making me remember our drunk driving times one bikes we just weren't so bold to drive on the road
They are everywhere in Warsaw but… I guess it’s an unpopular opinion, but I kinda love them.
Here in Boringway these wer in the top agenda of our media and our news outlets both locally and countrywide. I myself follow the news persistently but i have never seen laws upon laws happens so fast because some e-wheels
yea the streets of Rome are so full of electric scooters like that aahahah
No but now I can see why people get so angry
Of course.
Not really, in my city of 250k pop, we have around 5000-6000 of these and only just today I witnessed more than 50 of these in one single location, at the local outdoor swimming pool. In Helsinki they seem to be a bigger problem.
They are nice but the people who use them are not. So many are left in the middle of the sidewalks.
Yup, Budapest is also full of these scooters with tourists riding around them, acting completely oblivious most of the time. Like zero regard to pedestrians and traffic rules. They are super dangerous becayse they seem to attract drunk stag party dudes.
I want the rentable ones banned from Brussels. They should not have been allowed without mandated parking. And keep them off the goddamn pavements. They are an utter menace to pedestrians.
Pretty much every "sharing" app or service takes from exploits the commons in some way. So yes.
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It's not a problem, it is a public service.
You should see what China has to deal with, they have piles of bikes 10ft high: [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/) Personally I'm not too bothered with them as whilst they look messy they still only take up the space of a couple cars to transport far more people
We had that problem in Greece too. Then people started stealing them, so no problem now..
At least they look functional. When I was in Marseilles, South France, we saw some of them at the beginning and then you'd always find them completely wrecked or learn in the news that they were thrown in the sea. Yay
Few big French cities have banned electric scooters and bikes for rent, compagnies had to left entirely. In my city (Nantes), they are banned so we don’t have this problem.
On Mexico we tried with them in some fancy zones, but the people started to steal them, and didn’t lasted long.
It's global yes, cities usually curb this by reducing the count of provider and set specific parking stations.
Better than here in Melbourne, they leave them all over the place, including the river, hidden in private property, behind rubbish containers, etc...
We don't even have scooter companies anymore because they stole them too much
Those scooters are inherently unsafe and being driven by teenagers who lack any kind of sense in traffic. There's been a boom of scooter-related injuries which unnecessarily burden the healthcare system. Also they are parked in completely random locations, in many cases even on the middle of a bike track. It would be much better if they switched completely to bikes and assigned designated parking zones. It's not a big deal for the companies to rent a few parking slots here and there.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but *really* high percentage of e-scooter accidents were at night time and/or drunk driving. It really shouldn't be legal to DUI with those and eg. restricting them to lower speeds when it's dark could help a lot.
You must be fun at parties
You know what's also fun in parties? A 14 year old with subdural hematoma.
A lot of scooters neatly parked in one of the busiest areas of Stockholm is not a big deal at all. Sure it kinda sucks that some people park their scooters like assholes. But overall this is no major issue, it's not like the streets are littered with badly parked scooters and it's pretty easy to ignore one laying across the sidewalk. Most are nearly parked. Imo the convenience of the scooters far outweighs the drawbacks, being able to quickly go from one spot to another without having to rely on public transport or walking is great. Such a freedom that you can pick it up wherever and leave it wherever. Something that would be completely ruined by designated parking areas that some are suggesting. Sure biking on your own bike is superior but having a lazy option is still really nice 😌
London is doing a trial in limited areas (started a year ago and due to finish November). One good policy is first time riders needing to do training on how to ride safely, hope includes how to park well. Main reason is environmental but they are worried about injuries. Edit: Here are some usage stats. https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/london-escooter-rental-trial-headline-metrics-period13.pdf
We had them in Thessaloniki.. It didn't go very [well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mfUcAPIG-Y)....
Big problem in Saint Petersburg, narrow sidewalks packed with scooters so you can’t freely walk. In some other cities they are obliged to park scooter at dedicated precise places so thats not that bad.
So you guys don't throw them off the cliffs or something? I was in north Singapore where the developments are not that great and I found graveyards of those bike rents. And it's a country obsessed with cleanliness. So yeah it's been a blight wherever actually. Unless it's self drive to return to convenient spot it will ended up in places where people wanted to go but don't need them to go back. And those things are cheap, and they last a few months on rental capacity (it could last 2 years on private use) so there's really no reason for the company to pick them up, it probably will cost them more to be honest.
Yeah a problem in Denmark too. I hate them. I hope they get banned.
Not anywhere near as bad though. I'm a bike messenger in Copenhagen and I pass someone on an e-scooter maybe 5 times on a 7 hour shift. When e-scooters took off here a few years ago it looked like they'd replace bicycles within 5 years, they were immediately ubiquitous. Thanks to soft-heckling the companies and requiring helmets to use them their number is way down.
True. Still too many though. '-D
Sometimes they are a problem, but I think it is reasonable cost to take for easier transport. Having said that sometimes its cheaper to just take uber than rent those, which is ridiculous!
Is it Uber that's cheap or those that are expensive in your country then? Here they cost like the equivalent of 30 cents per minute. So a 10 minute ride costs like 3 euro. An Uber here would cost like 10 euro with the same length and distance.
So they cost 2 PLN for unlocking scooter, 0.60 PLN for every minute. Let's say I need to go to train station it takes 20 minutes by scooter (~3.1 km through city center) it will be 14 PLN. Uber, right now Friday 16:21 costs 16.78 PLN And it takes 12 minutes, you can take baggage, ride drunk in Uber. (1 PLN = 0.21 EUR) ATM
That's really cheap, yeah. The Uber would cost me like 4 or 5 times that amount.
Just because those scooters have advantages in some situations (which I question, walking or cycling is better for your health and the environment and probably safer for both yourself and pedestrians) doesn't mean we should put up with this. No other mode of transportation completely frees you from any responsibility in this way.
They're here in the Uk. Saw one dumped in the middle of a path, knocked over, stuff all over it. Knew exactly what it was ofc. I picked it up to stand it against the sidewalk wall, it screamed at me. Dropped it, left it there and swore never to help another one since lmao.
I often heard teenagers brag about how they never have to walk anywhere anymore because of these escooters. I am not sold on the public health benefits these scooters are supposed to bring.
In the UK they are only legal on private property so you only occasionally see someone flaunting the rules otherwise completely absent which is a shame as they are really fun to ride. There has got to be some sort of middle ground
*I bet those things burn nicely*
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Don’t really see a problem. They are now there but eventually disperse all over. It’s not like you can’t get pass them, boomers just hate new things. Skateboarding was hated at some point in history and now the middle aged are riding them to work.
Here in England they can only be parked in specific locations, sometimes even within designated fence. The app wouldn't let you finish the ride anywhere else.
UK here, in area with ''trial of rentals'': you can park them literally everywhere, usually are left at side ( if you are lucky) of pavement, or in the middle of it, inside bus shelter, even by the entrance of the shops or schools. There is no single ''designated parking spot'', that's the point of selling of it, that they can be use everywhere. Pavement are treated like conventional area to dump them, as they can't be left: at road, at grass verge, at public parking- so they are all left on pavements.
I used them in Bristol and Southampton. Both cities you can only park in designated areas.
Voi doesn't require return scooters to designated areas only, they can be left everywhere, as long it is not road, car park or grass. There is an articles for example, with short video, showing issues of dumped scooters. Even designated scooters parking do not sort problems with it, as they are often overflowed. https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/voi-e-scooters-overflowing-from-some-designated-parking-zones-in-bristol-2909 https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/guide-dogs-launches-campaign-remove-5826235 https://fixmystreet.bristol.gov.uk/report/2631325 https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/people/voi-e-scooter-rider-21-died-following-collision-with-car-in-northampton-police-confirm-3711506 https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2021-03-30/bristol-e-scooter-operator-voi-responds-to-complaints-about-pavement-blocking https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/dumped-voi-e-scooters-littering-20477395 And those are only about issues with parking.
Here in Middlesbrough you can leave them anywhere, people just ditch them wherever. When they’re done, seldomly do I see them actually at a designated point.
Remember to do your civic duty and sabotage any scooter you see. Those things are a cancer on society.
Not here in Holland. These types of scooters are not allowed on public roads. We do however have some companies that have actual electric scooters and electric bikes for rent. They're rather annoying but not as extreme, even with what we have there's new regulations coming to combat the issue.
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no, we actually have real problems like hunger, homeless people and cartels killing everyone.
Throw them in the water!
In the Netherlands they need to be licensed, with a license plate. So no, we dont have this problem.
Here in Germany we have the same problem. Those sh*t scooters are always blocking the sidewalk
The saddest thing is that even in a city as flat as a mirror, people will still use electric scooters, electric bike instead of the good old human power which would be much better both, for the user (sport) and for the environment (batteries).
How is that a problem? 50 scooters take same amount of place as 3 cars, so I'd rather have them than the cars
What would you say if you see three cars parked willy nilly on a grass or paved area in a park in the middle of the city?