In Portugal, e-scooters had to be severely regulated as many gruesome and bloody accidents happened because their users entered high speed ways, heavily modified the scooters to achieve over 80km/h speeds, were left abandoned by users of rental services everywhere, invaded sidewalks and endangered pedestrians or public transports lanes.
The ever growing size of cars is a worthy cause of worry: I drive a Ford Ranger for professional reasons and the vehicle is ridiculously cumbersome, wide and clumsy for the roads I have to use. Lawmakers need to cull the auto makers arms race on bulky vehicles.
But lets not overlook that e-scooters are a very big source of traffic accidents by themselves and let this micromobility solution run amok.
Are escooters a “very big source of traffic accidents”? I’m sure there have been crashes and there should be regulations, but are these crashes just much more publicised than car crashes and that’s why you think there’s been a lot?
I have a national entity that collects and processes such data and elaborates the statistics.
Just out of sheer number, car accidents have to be more numerous: more cars, more accidents.
But car related accidents do not have to be fatal by default, or bring severe bodily damage to passengers and bystanders.
escooters have no protection neither for the user nor bystanders, with the added risk factor that a gross number of the users of these scooters invade, willingly, walkways and other reserved lanes, with often serious consequences.
escooters brought an entire new pletora of problems
I drive a Ford Ranger for professional reasons and the vehicle is ridiculously cumbersome, wide and clumsy
The Ranger used to be decently small, for a truck. Not truly tiny like a VW Rabbit Pickup or whatever, but decent.
It’s the first time I drive one. In my private life I drive either hatchbacks or station wagons (because dogs) which handle and are built very differently.
One has tax revenue
Except cars cost the tax payer a lot more than they raise, and larger vehicles cost even more.
But e-scooter companies don’t pay as many bribes and don’t have as many lobbyists.
e-scooters killed all my friends
I myself was killed by an e-scooter! Twice!
An E scooter turned me into a newt!
🤨 A newt?
Anewd?
Because the politicians are deep up in the automobile lobby’s ass.
Cars have been normalized. Fortunately e-scooters haven’t. So fighting against e-scooters as run and deployed by private companies is a good fight.
Every e-scooter is one less Uber on the road. Building bike lanes is the answer, not banning scooters. “Oh the Urbanity” did a fantastic video about it on YouTube, highly recommended.
E-scooters, especially rented ones, are pretty awful for cities and the environment. This isn’t a strong argument.
So people should rather drive SUVs, then?
No, there are options outside of scooters and SUVs. Biking, public transit, and walking are all more reasonable options.
works fine in my town, almost like things suck when you don’t have bike infrastructure
How?
SUVs and trucks are UNIMAGINABLY worse. I’m not a fan of e-scooters, they need a little bit of training to use safely and are still dangerous compared to an ebike. I would rather have ebikes replacing e-scooters everywhere they are now.
However, they are comparatively a nuisance compared to the menace of SUVs and light trucks killing pedestrians every single day.
