A proactive approach to e-scooter safety

https://onezero.medium.com/demystifying-e-scooter-safety-one-step-at-a-time-956afcf12d75

by deegles • 6 years ago

59 129 6 years ago

onezero.medium.com

jandrese2• 6 years ago

No matter what the evidence says people will be decrying how dangers those are because they are perceived as a nuisance. Ultimately they move too fast for sidewalks, and too slow for streets making them a problem in either location. Bike lanes would seem to be the best place for them, but that comes with all of the issues with bike lanes in the city.

danielbln2• 6 years ago

What are those issues? Shouldn't every city strive to create as many bike lanes as possible to improve non-car transport?

mattbk1• 6 years ago

Perhaps the comment was lamenting the lack of bike lanes.

As a person who rides a bike as much as I can, I'd be much happier sharing a bike lane with a bunch of scooters than a street with cars.

jandrese2• 6 years ago

Delivery vehicles parked in the bike lanes. Cars cutting off the bike lanes at every intersection. No traffic light sensors in the bike lanes. Bike lanes that are poorly connected because they're being retrofitted into the city peacemeal and don't cover the major thoroughfares. These have been discussed to death in other articles, I didn't want to sidetrack this conversation with another digression.

olliej• 6 years ago

I don’t think they’re particularly dangerous, the problem I have is them littering footpaths and thoroughfares (they frequently block most of the plaza in front of the BART station I use.

Then there are idiot riders going on and off the footpath essentially playing chicken with pedestrians - I had one this morning going the wrong way on the road scoot onto the footpath immediately in front of me while I was crossing the road, pushing me back into traffic.

So it’s a combo of the companies littering the l scooters everywhere, and the riders being idiots and having no consequences for said idiocy.

hannasanarion9• 6 years ago

Just curious, what is your opinion on street parking?

Since you're so mad that a public scooter for rent takes up 3 square feet of public space, you must be absolutely furious that a private car can take up 300 square feet.

gameswithgo• 6 years ago

We have a ton of these in Austin. If they just dropped the allowed max speed by ~25% it would be a lot less horrifying to have them flying around.

danielbln2• 6 years ago

Here in Germany all scooters have to be capped at 12.4mph. What's it in Austin?

TrueDuality3• 6 years ago

They used to be able to hit 30mph when they were first deployed. They've reduced the max speed a couple of times and I think its now limited to about 15mph.

mech1234• 6 years ago

I was really hoping to see statistics regarding fatal accident per mile in comparison to other forms of transport, guess I'll have to dig deeper for it.

Makes sense that scooters would be roughly similar to bicycles though.

alasarmas• 6 years ago

In my opinion, the reason why small-wheel (wheel diameter ~6 in / 15 cm) e-scooters are dangerous, is their small wheels. The front wheel can suddenly stop on a a pothole, crack, storm drain, curb, etc, and the rider's momentum will fling them headfirst into the ground. I do recall reading some reports that if the front brake locks up, the same can happen, but I don't know if the risk of that is greater than on a bicycle.

(edit: bad metric conversion)

nkrisc• 6 years ago

As well, the pivot point on the front wheel of a scooter is much further from your center of mass than on a bike, so you're going to go over much easier.

The same can absolutely happen on a bike, but in my experience you need to be going much faster (or be much heavier) than on a scooter for the reason I mentioned above.

mdorazio2• 6 years ago

It's worse than just small wheels, too. Most e-scooters have rigid wheels rather than air-filled ones, so the issue is compounded since the wheel can't deform enough to deal with bumps. This is one of the reasons I've stopped riding e-scooters in favor of bikes - after the third time having to dump the scooter and almost falling on my face because it hit a half-inch lip or pothole, I decided there are better methods of getting around.

hannasanarion9• 6 years ago

Since when do most e-scooters have solid tires? Many of them have solid tires available as replacements, but they ship with pneumatic tires.

abawany• 6 years ago

Saw it happen once in Austin: one moment person was sailing along a bike lane and next moment it was pivot over the handlebars due to a pothole. They had to call an ambulance and I believe he experienced considerable damage on the face and front teeth.

dkarl• 6 years ago

You are right about the wheels. When a big cycling charity ride — thousands of people — crosses railroad tracks at an angle, there are always multiple people who catch a wheel in the tracks and take a spill. For bike wheels you need that special condition of a narrow groove the right size, but for the tiny wheels on the older scooters, it's much easier for almost any angled imperfection in the pavement to grab your wheel or simply knock you off balance if you don't take care to hit it right. Anecdotally, it's something you have to be constantly aware of on imperfect city streets, and I took a bad spill when I hit something on the street that I didn't see in the dark.

That said... the biggest danger is always collisions with cars, which is the same danger you face on a bike, and the danger the article concentrates on. I almost got hit on my bike by a car turning right across the bike lane just yesterday, and the outcome was a matter of luck, not a matter of what vehicle I was on. The article mentions the "Three E’s of Traffic Safety: engineering, enforcement, and education" and I think we need more of all three. The driver who almost hit me (I caught up to him and spoke to him) was an older man who looked to be from out of town and probably had no idea he needed to check his blind spot when turning right, because that simply wasn't a thing until the advent of bike lanes, not when he was learning to drive and maybe still not in the town or city where he lives.

EDIT: You're also right about braking. The wheels skid easier than bike wheels, and it's harder to keep your weight back and down so the braking force gets transferred to your body.

anonymou23• 6 years ago

The danger is actually the bike lane, because it puts you in the drivers blind spot, that kind of accident is so common it even has a name, it is called right hook (in right driving countries). It is easy to learn to avoid collisions with cars while driving a bicycle, one of the main lessons is do not ride on the bike lane, specially in intersections you should be in front of the other driver not on its side.

fencepost• 6 years ago

A couple years ago at least one of the scooter rental companies had larger-wheel (12"?) scooters in San Diego, not sure if they still do. Didn't get to try one since they seemed to be concentrated around downtown (where I wasn't), but they I'd expect them to have a better ride and be safer.

mikestew2• 6 years ago

I do recall reading some reports that if the front brake locks up, the same can happen

On any single-track vehicle (bicycle, motorcycle, scooter), if the front wheel quits spinning, the overwhelming odds are that the vehicle will be lying on its side very soon.

Very skilled and very experience riders can overcome this, but don't rely on it. I've seen professional racers lock a front wheel and keep going. I've done it once myself on a motorcycle (don't care to ever have to it again, because there was a lot of luck involved). Bicycle, different story for me. I've locked the front racing, and on slick pavement. Pretty sure I went down each time. I haven't lock the front on any of my scooters, and I'd rather keep it that way.

Which is why ABS is so great on motorcycles: squeeze that lever with all your might, and let the computer sort it out.

throwaway_tech2• 6 years ago

That happened to me about 20 years ago on a gas powered goped from a sidewalk crack where one slab was slightly raised due to some tree roots. I had a serious helmet which cracked on impact, to this day I swear I would be dead from that impact without the helmet.

That experience (and I suppose being a lawyer who constantly thinks about liability) makes me hope all these companies fail. 1) I don't like the "littering" of scooters all over city sidewalks/bike paths (that is dangerous in and of itself and should be illegal); and 2) renting these things without helmets I think goes well beyond negligence.

hannasanarion9• 6 years ago

If you're mad about space being wasted by electric scooters being dropped all over town, just wait til you hear about these nasty things called "cars"!

troydavis• 6 years ago

I agree. Razor’s “EcoStand“ scooters are the most bump-resistant ride I’ve found. It has very large pneumatic wheels: https://www.instagram.com/p/B2hy722hf0R/

They’re roughly twice the diameter of most scooters and feel more like a folding bike. At least as of December 2019, it’s only available through their rental service, not for purchase.

TrueDuality3• 6 years ago

Washington, DC doesn't seem like a great sample city from my experience. I don't have any empirical data but travel quite a bit and the density of scooter deployment in DC is significantly less than in cities such as Austin, TX. This is based exclusively on my ability to find / use these scooters and the density I've seen on the maps they provide.

I suspect there will also be cultural elements to each region they're deployed in that will have a significant impact on injuries (New Jersey drivers/scootees are wildly more aggressive than Minnesotan drivers/scootees).

Once again this is all anecdotal but trying to infer anything from one city is likely going to be just as flawed for any meaningful conclusion.

jmull• 6 years ago

Once again this is all anecdotal but trying to infer anything from one city is likely going to be just as flawed for any meaningful conclusion.

Well, DC-based data is quite relevant to DC. You're providing reasons to do similar work in other areas, not reasons to dismiss this work.

TrueDuality3• 6 years ago

The article is attempting to infer general safety data from a single intersection in Washingtion, DC. In that context I hold by my statement. Even for Washington, DC in general it likely isn't representative.

_jal• 6 years ago

I think this is true, also based on my own (different) experience. I both live and work in SOMA, SF, which as far as I can tell was one of the worst ground-zeros when they started shoveling these things on the sidewalks.

The situation is far better than it was at first, but my experience as a pedestrian around them is still pretty negative. Some of the Moscone Center (which I walk past daily) conference-goers seem to treat them as a sort of entertainment thing and can be entitled pricks (it is always men) to deal with - I must admit I've become a bit of a grumpy local at the worst of them. I personally really don't care if ever choose to come back to my city - if you're too incompetent, drunk or whatever your problem is to avoid running in to stationary pedestrians, get off the damn thing.

But I realize the problem is not nearly so bad elsewhere.

dijit2• 6 years ago

FWIW there is a law in Sweden that prevents any assisted motor transport going over 20KM/h, which is pretty normal cruising speed for a cyclist.

There is definitely a different perception here regards to safety because of it I think.

However, people are absolutely awful at parking these things. They're almost more dangerous stationary; because people just leave them in the middle of the walkway or cycle path sometimes.

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

20km/h is a lot for newbies. I've seen a few users who couldn't drive their scooter safely. Curves taken too late and too wide. Also they use the roads freely and it's even worse than motorbikes.

dijit2• 6 years ago

20KM/h is a lot for newbies? really? I don't think that's true, how do they handle bicycles (which easily exceed that).

rjbwork• 6 years ago

That's really slow. I can do that on a bike unassisted easily, and would make my class 3 e-bike less than useless. It's great for doing hills fast and hitting 25+ MPH (40+ KM/h) in the city and makes it a great commuting option. I can top out at about 35 MPH (~55KM/h) on flat land if I really push it and this keeps me moving with street traffic instead of being an impediment to it and a target of rage.

nl2• 6 years ago

Here (Adelaide, Australia) they are limited to 15km/h.

That's slow, but means they are fine for pedestrian traffic.

btrettel9• 6 years ago

Interesting that they found cyclists are more likely to run red lights than scooter riders. Here's what a near collision between a cyclist and a scooter rider (who ran a red) looks like from the perspective of a cyclist (me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN_DGR7isB4

Over the years I've been amazed by the arguments other cyclists have used to justify running red lights. The "physics" argument mentioned in the article isn't convincing to me, because a cyclist's kinetic energy is lost relatively quickly to drag and friction anyway. Stop pedaling. How long will you coast? Probably not very long (i.e., over 100 meters) unless you're going downhill. Seems to me that cycling requires constant energy input and stop lights and signs aren't likely to contribute much to energy expenditures. (Maybe I should do the math...) Edit: I did the math here and the energy from stopping was higher than I expected: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22257938

I think the time saved from running reds is much lower than most red light running cyclists believe, because anecdotally I observed that red light running cyclists tend to go fairly slow. I can recall keeping up with or catching cyclists who run red lights despite never running them myself.

I think cyclists as a whole need to stop running red lights. Yes, there's a double standard here, as most drivers seem okay with speeding if they're doing it, but can't tolerate rule-breaking from cyclists. But we shouldn't give drivers excuses.

bdamm2• 6 years ago

There’s been some pack of the napkin research on this, and the conclusion is that a cyclist stopping at every intersection and then speeding up to 20mph vs a cyclist that doesn’t stop and just cruises at 20mph burn 500W vs 100W. Unfortunately I can’t find a link right now but based on my own experience I’d say that is spot on. Stopping and resuming at every stop sign or stop light is far more taxing, so much so that many people wouldn’t even be able to do it and maintain a better than walking reasonable pace through a city.

scrumbledober• 6 years ago

I think the reasonable alternative then is to walk, not to dangerously run through intersections when it's not your turn.

Edit: I will admit that I rarely come to a complete stop at a stop sign. It definitely is a considerable inconvenience to get back up to speed, but a lot of safety precautions are inconvenient.

btrettel9• 6 years ago

I made an estimate and while it was higher than I expected, the increase in power is not anywhere near what you mentioned.

I'm using the value of Cd * A from here (0.6 m^3): https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/aero/formulas.html

That page also indicates that the vast majority of the energy expenditures on a bike are due to drag.

The fraction of energy needed to get up to speed divided by the energy expended due to drag works out to: (mbike + mhuman) / (Lblock * rho * Cd * A) where mbike is the mass of the bike, mhuman is the mass of the human, Lblock is the length between stops, rho is the mass density of the air, Cd is the drag coefficient, and A is the projected area. I can post the derivation if anyone is interested.

Assuming an 8 kg bike, 90 kg human, 200 m between stops, and an air density of 1.2 kg/m^3, stopping adds 68% more energy.

This is dependent on the weight. If I crunch the numbers for my own weight, stopping adds about 56% more energy.

So, this is higher than I expected, but I don't think it's so much higher that it justifies running red lights.

pintxo4• 6 years ago

20 mph sounds way over the top for average city cycling. Anecdotally most people running stoplights seem to not exceed 12 mph, as I frequently overtake them shortly after getting my green light.

carapace5• 6 years ago

(20 mph is really fast for a bike, eh?)

Anyway, 400W to avoid getting creamed by a car seems cheap to me.

Eat a Clif bar; stop at red lights.

Goddamnit.

tantalor• 6 years ago

pack of the napkin

That's back of the napkin. Bone apple tea!

z2• 6 years ago

As a casual cyclist commuter, I can coast probably 100 meters after stopping pedaling. It's not the slowing that is hard though, it's the anxiety of needing to exert a lot of effort to get back up to speed. From that angle, I'd posit that cyclists may be doing this out of laziness, while scooter riders don't have that same mental/physical cost to fear when they stop.

That said, I don't run lights, and am just as baffled how some cyclists will barrel through a red light at intersections without even slowing down...

anonymou23• 6 years ago

I don't understand that, as a cyclist I find it much more relaxing to just follow the rules and stop at a red light, if there is a car already waiting I wait behind it as he got there first. I would be much more anxious running a red light and doing a track stand trying to see if the intersection is free of other vehicles as I see many fools doing.

wffurr• 6 years ago

Shift into an easier gear as you stop. Makes it significantly easier to accelerate. Stopping at lights is no longer "anxiety-inducing".

Bonus points, use a bike with internal geared hub and shift down after you stop.

plorkyeran• 6 years ago

On flat terrain a bicycle can coast a very long way without peddling. If your bike comes to a stop quickly then you have something out of alignment or loose.

pintxo4• 6 years ago

Or a cheap bike

btrettel9• 6 years ago

Okay, I think I was unclear. I was thinking 100 meters or longer. I made a slight edit to my comment. My point was that for starting and stopping to be a major contributor, getting up to speed had to be comparable in energy to drag. Turns out that getting up to speed took more energy than I expected when I did the math in a later comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22257938

roflchoppa2• 6 years ago

your reaction to the guy crossing the street is hilarious.

ben_w2• 6 years ago

From what I’ve heard (UK study reported about a decade ago in local news), drivers and cyclists jump red lights at about the same rate. However, because cyclists cycle at cycling speed and drivers drive at driving speed, any given cyclists sees fewer cyclists and more drivers than a driver, and vice versa, so both groups see evidence of more red light jumping by the other group than by their own group.

pintxo4• 6 years ago

Anecdotal observation is that drivers might run the red light for the first few seconds. But cyclists will run the red the moment they arrive at he light, independent of when it turned red. These are two very distinct types of running a red light.

Spooky23• 6 years ago

I wouldn't buy that.

I sat in a corner desk right on top of a major central business district intersection. Cars never ran the light, it's too busy and complex. Cyclists did reckless, stupid shit all of the time, running lights, cutting across the diagonal on the wrong side of the road, etc.

From my POV, drivers are more predictably dumb, and dangerous when they perceive low risk, for example, they run red lights in a low traffic neighborhood and are awful about a number of things. Cyclists are less consistent and perceive risk differently. Younger people who perceive themselves as invincible in particular.

End of the day, we should have better dedicated infrastructure for bicycles and other things.

brokenmachine2• 6 years ago

I'm both a driver and a cyclist and I've seen orders of magnitude more cyclists running red lights than cars.

Wohlf• 6 years ago

Speeding is dangerous but running a red light is straight up reckless.

btrettel9• 6 years ago

I think drivers speeding is considerably more dangerous than cyclists running red lights.

In my experience, the vast majority of the time cyclists run red lights, they check both directions before going and there are not conflicts. The examples shown in the article are fairly rare.

Plus, the danger from a cyclist running a red light is mostly to the cyclist, while the danger to a driver speeding is to everyone nearby on the road.

Add on top of that the fact that there are many more drivers on the road than cyclists. The net effect is that speeding is a much bigger safety problem in total than cyclists running red lights.

(Note that I'm not endorsing running red lights.)

freddie_mercury• 6 years ago

Without wanting to endorse it: I live in a Southeast Asian country where people run red lights all the time. As in, I see it happen probably a half dozen times every time I drive.

I've never seen an accident arise from running a red light.

Which isn't to say that I think running a red light is "safe" but I think the context in which one runs a red light is probably a bigger factor than blanket denunciations imply.

In America, running a red light usually means something like "while driving a 4,000 pound car at 40 miles per hour [6.4 million mv^2], the driver blows through the red light due to complete unawareness of the signal."

Whereas where I live it is more like "a guy on a scooter (360 pounds net), slows down (somewhat), sees a gap in the traffic and zips through at 15-18mph." [116,000 mv^2; the car is 55x worse]

friendlybus2• 6 years ago

That guy is clearly in the wrong and I'm surprised how intense your reaction was. There's got to be something else in that.

btrettel9• 6 years ago

Yes, I was angry, and I'm sorry about that. My reaction was emotional. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to be angry when someone almost causes you serious harm. I think how unseriously the scooter rider took the incident is much worse.

If you don't think it was that close, consider that the wide angle lens on my helmet camera makes the incident appear farther away than it actually was. Out of all the incidents I've had in the past year, this was one of the worst in terms of potential for serious injury. If I was a foot or two closer, there would have been a collision.

The main thing I learned from this incident was to not focus too much on people turning from my right. That's where my attention was approaching the intersection. I need to also consider the possibility that someone will run the light.

Scene_Cast2• 6 years ago

Getting up to speed from a stop feels super slow and takes a bunch of energy. Combine that with cycling being a game of energy conservation, and the result is that slowing down to a stop feels like an utter defeat in a video game.

With that mentality, one can see why so many cyclists disregard safety around intersections and stop signs - mentally, the feeling of doing an unsafe thing doesn't suck as much as the feeling of "losing" (even if it's just an emotion not grounded in any logic or reason). Regardless of whether it's logical or not, there's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

pintxo4• 6 years ago

Idaho stop: What a great sounding idea. Would like to see some data showing there is no negative accident/health effect to have some solid arguments.

pkulak• 6 years ago

I used to get that mad. haha. I'm so jaded at this point that I just swerve and go on my way. It's hard on your psyche to fly into a rage a couple times every week.

2zcon• 6 years ago

I find many (other) cyclists' safety arguments don't place enough emphasis on the danger of annoying someone in a car. They can hurt you intentionally and they can get away with it.

ginko• 6 years ago

I'd say one main reason why cyclists want to avoid stopping is that with a well-adjusted bike seat you should only barely be able to reach the ground with your foot when stopping making the whole process quite awkward.

schwap• 6 years ago

I sincerely doubt that's the main or even minor reason. With a well adjusted bike seat you likely would not be able to reach the ground at all. You want your leg to be at near full extension when you are at the bottom of your pedal stroke.

To solve this problem, just get off the seat when you stop.

salt-licker2• 6 years ago

Many veteran cyclists I know treat red lights as stop signs. It can be safer and better for the flow of traffic to get a head start on the cars stopped at the red light rather than jockeying with them for road space out of the gate when the light turns green.

huebomont2• 6 years ago

Treating red lights as stop signs is sensible and safe - I'm even fine with not stopping if you have clear line of sight at all angles. One thing car owners like to forget is that cars make you mostly blind to your surroundings. While it feels incredibly unsafe to blow a red in a car, it's not the same on a bike- you can see so much more.

Cyclists who speed towards or through an intersection when they can't see what might come into conflict with their path are as stupid as drivers who run reds.

btrettel9• 6 years ago

I've been cycling for transportation for over 10 years. I don't know anyone who advocates for running reds who has rode a similar amount of time or longer. I have heard that argument before, but I think it underestimates the damage to the reputation of cyclists involved. Also, more experienced cyclists tend to take the lane at intersections, which would be a better way to avoid jockeying for space.

viraptor• 6 years ago

I'm definitely not a veteran cyclist and almost always end up on the other side of the intersection faster than the first car. Cars have a lot of inertia. I don't believe going on red is necessary to be in front.

wenc• 6 years ago

In Illinois, bicyclists are allowed to proceed through a red light if the the fails to turn green after 120 seconds and after they've yielded to traffic [1].

I can understand the spirit of the law but in practice cyclists interpret this as "it's ok to red lights if I don't see any oncoming traffic". This turns out to be extremely dangerous because a situation can change in seconds especially when high velocity metal objects are concerned. Blindspots are always a problem.

This issue has salience with me because a cyclist who ran a red light at the intersection near my house got hit by a car that was following the rules of the road. There was a dramatic video on Youtube of the cyclist getting hit and flying off his bike. I don't know if he survived.

As both a cyclist and a driver, I can't emphasize enough: cyclists need to follow the rules of the road. It is not ok to run red lights.

[1] https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/publications/pdf_publicat...

edynoid• 6 years ago

Yes, cyclists should not run red lights. But we need to improve cycling infrastructure a lot. Right now there is a lot of incentive to break the rules in small ways here and there, because the situation is pretty bad.

There are quite a few places in my city, where I have no idea what the legal way to get from one side of a large road to the other. Sure you can always act like either a car or a pedestrian, but that is either dangerous or slow. For example, I find it quite unfair, that many left turns require me to either ride between cars or stop twice.

Some bike paths just look like the planners reserved space at the roadsides and simply skipped coming up with a solution at the intersection. And that is frankly disappointing.

ogre_codes• 6 years ago

As a cyclist, there is a much bigger energy expense in starting and stopping than on an e-scooter. With the bike you have to dismount (or track stand) when you stop then get back on the bike and get your momentum going. With the scooter you just stop, you are already standing up. Similarly getting going again on the e-scooter you just push off and you are moving.

I don't see a problem with bikes running red lights. It's not that much different from crossing any other intersection where cross traffic isn't stopping. Generally I avoid traffic signals on my commute, but there is one place on my commute where I almost always run the signal. In this particular intersection, it's less dangerous crossing by myself against the signal than crossing with the signal next to a bunch of cars trying to pass me.

The fundamental problem is in most places traffic controls are designed around the needs (and safety) of people in cars. Bikes and pedestrians are usually an afterthought.

swiley• 6 years ago

I really like personal vehicles and I think we need to move in that direction, pollution aside (incl break pad dust etc.) cars (or worse, the trucks that are so popular with Americans) don’t scale. It’s really not possible to move accross DC in a car in a reasonable amount of time (even when you’re moving between suburbs and not just DC proper.) Hopefully all that is enough to convince you how important I think personal vehicles (including bicycles) are.

All that being said: DO YOU GUYS ACTUALLY WANT TO DIE? I’ve never seen any group of people ignore traffic laws and common sense more than cyclists. They consistently ignore signals and four way stops and ride on two lane highways with high speed limits, no shoulders, and blind curves.

Yes the roads need to be shared (and personally I think cars should be banned before things like bicycles and scooters) but dang people need to behave.

Afton• 6 years ago

Meh, likely you're just used to the ways that cars fail to obey the law. Every day on my driving or biking commute I see cars failing to signal, rolling through stop signs "because you can't see from the actual stop sign", speeding, honking because they're mad at someone, directing traffic, illegally turning, failing to yield right of way, etc.

Straight up running red lights or stop signs does seem like it is overrepresented by cyclists, but I really don't they they're overrepresented for generic 'breaking the law'.

opportune2• 6 years ago

As a pedestrian in San Francisco I have much worse experiences with cyclists than I do with cars, despite cars outnumbering cyclists, mostly because of cyclists running reds and taking shortcuts by getting on crosswalks and sidewalks.

shuckles2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, the 25 pedestrians killed by cars every year in San Francisco are not here to share their anecdata.

monksy• 6 years ago

Same can be said in Chicago.

malandrew• 6 years ago

Personally I like coming to a complete stop because it gives me the opportunity to practice accelerating from a stand still.

gowan• 6 years ago

i'm surprised by how many people on this forum have not stopped indefinitely at a red light on a bike. most lights i've come across are not calibrated for bikes so this isn't a rare occurrence.

many states have a "dead red"[1] law for when lights are not operational. which permits the cyclist to proceed with caution after stopping.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light#%22Dead_Red%22_l...

masonic• 6 years ago

  cyclists are more likely to run red lights than scooter riders

E-bikes are lumped in with bicycles, so those stats became meaningless to me at that point.

chrisstanchak• 6 years ago

I lived directly in the scooter epicenter. Mission Beach, CA.

They are dangerous if not throttled down and geofenced from walkway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQv6YP5UGV8

isuckatcoding• 6 years ago

What do you guys think about e-bikes? I feel like they are a good compromise between bikes and these escooters

mikestew2• 6 years ago

I own two scooters (cheap Xiamoi, pricey Boosted Rev). Between the two of us, we have two mid-upper range e-bikes. I've ridden both extensively to work and elsewhere. My conclusion is that e-bikes are the future.

Scooters are easy to ride, but hard to ride competently. If you know how to ride a bike, you're unlikely to fall off unless you hit something. Not so on a scooter. I hit a manhole cover on the way to work one morning, and ended up standing next to my scooter with a broken helmet in my hand, while not being 100% sure how to get to work (I'm fine now). I fall of bicycles only when I a patch of black ice, or something solid.

I can load my bicycle up with front and rear panniers, a trunk, and carry enough to do some shopping. Scooter: whatever fits in the backpack.

Scooter: hands on the handlebars at all times. If you get good, you can carefully choose the smooth spots in the road to take a quick second and scratch your nose. Bicycle: go ahead, take another sip of that coffee from your handlebar coffee cup holder while you cruise down the trail. Hell, take both hands off the bars to zip the jacket up.

I love my Boosted Rev, it's well made and a hoot to ride. But it's a recreational vehicle. It's the impractical Lotus Elise that has room for two people and a messenger bag, but what fun to drive. For real transportation work, the bike comes out.

dopeboy• 6 years ago

I own an ebike (Ancheer) and a escooter (Xiaomi) as well; cool to see your analysis here.

You're dead right about ability to handle bumps. With my scooter, I will watch the road in front of me very carefully to scan for rough areas; there's a fair bit more of cognitive load. And this is even with air tires. I might disagree with on what's the future; there's two things that make them so amazing:

- Their ability to coexist with pedestrians. I'm very easily to weave in and out of traffic on sidewalks and maintain my safety and that of those around me. It's a lighter foot print with much lower clearance.

- Portability. I can fold it up, take in an uber, take it in a train (without doing the excuse me dance in and out). Bikes, electronic ones especially, aren't there yet.

hannasanarion9• 6 years ago

Better in every way, obviously, except for weight and stowability, which is what matters most for a last-mile vehicle. You can't really pick up a 50 lb ebike and carry it onto a train, or stash it under the desk at your office, or carry it up the stairs to your apartment.

Ebikes are a car replacement for the suburbs, e-scooters are a walking replacement for the city. They go about the same speed and use the same right of way, but their utility is pretty different.

burlesona• 6 years ago

It’s pretty easy to observe escooters are roughly equivalent to bikes in terms of speed and visibility, and generally in terms of behavior as well. The biggest variable seems to be whether they ride on the sidewalk: I rarely see bikes on the sidewalk anywhere, but scooters seem to use it in many cities.

Just as with bikes the main problem is cars. Road networks designed as car sewers make life miserable for any non-car in close proximity. The single most important way to fix that is to lower the speed of the cars. Practically speaking you can only do that if you have a network of both streets (low speed shared use) and roads (high speed exclusive use), such that cars can get to a road and then go fast, rather than going slow everywhere.

But in North America what we have is worse, we’ve designed everything to be a “stroad,” where houses, shops, schools, everything, are directly attached to high speed car sewers and nothing else. That’s the most dangerous configuration you can make. The cars need and want to go fast, but they never know when someone is going to pop out of a driveway or into a crosswalk or there will be a bike in the road etc.

The number of scooters isn’t really creating anything new, it’s just highlighting the problems of Stroads by putting a lot more people into the life experience of a cyclist.

mark-r2• 6 years ago

It's a mistake to only consider fatal accidents. I fell while roller skating last year and hit my head. I had to be rushed to the hospital for brain surgery, and spent over a month there recovering. It took over 6 months to get back to work.

Obviously this experience has nothing to do with E-scooters, but it does point out how easy it is for a minor accident to mess up your life.

moron4hire• 6 years ago

I'm glad you were able to recover, eventually. I hope it wasn't with too much change to your life :(

This is why I drive. All arguments aside about how cities "should" be, I don't live in one where I can magically waive a wand and make things exactly like I want them. And a permanent brain injury (or a major hand/arm injury!) would be really bad for my career.

So I also don't actively practice contact-martial-arts anymore.

mark-r2• 6 years ago

Thanks for the well wishes. I think the health care professionals genuinely expected me to have more long-term issues than I ended up having. Early on they told me the key is to be serious about the therapy, and I was.

JoeAltmaier• 6 years ago

I wonder if those stats should be normalized for velocity. Bikes can go 20MPH, scooters less, pedestrians 1-3.

Velocity means less time in the intersection. But it also means less time to observe their approach, less time to react and less likelihood to even know you are going to have to react.

hannasanarion9• 6 years ago

It doesn't mean less time in the intersection if the cyclist is starting from standing. Bicycles are slow to get up to speed, motor vehicles, cars and e-scooters, will always get through the intersection before a cyclist will. That's why they run red lights so often: cold starts take more effort and time and can be less safe than running it.

EugeneOZ3• 6 years ago

I have a bicycle and e-scooter, so I can share how it "feels" (I strictly follow rules and never cross the road on a red light):

* Scooter is more safe than a bicycle (for a rider). In case of collision it's trivial to step off from the scooter - moving your body from the bicycle takes much more time.

* Bicycle is more maneuverable - bigger front wheel gives much more control.

* You need less of your attention to drive a scooter, so you have more "CPU time" to monitor the road situation.

* Making stops is significantly easier on scooter, so you have less temptation to quickly cross the road in a second before the red light.

* Speed should be limited on scooters and it should be "sealed" somehow to prevent "jailbreaking" - after a few days you'll stop "feeling" max speed on e-scooter and you'll want it to go faster, even if you are already faster than any bicycle. It's really dangerous for pedestrians.

* By the previous reason, e-scooters should be restricted to bike lanes only.

* You have higher chances to sweat when walking, than when riding e-scooter. For some travelers it's important :)

Overall, e-scooter is a great tool to deliver you from A to B, but bicycle gives much more satisfaction from the process of riding itself.

notJim3• 6 years ago

Scooter is more safe than a bicycle (for a rider).

Weird, I feel the opposite. You can't really just step off a scooter when its at any decent speed (I accidentally tried when the brakes failed on one… would not recommend.) Scooters feel way less stable, and have really weak braking compared to bicycles.

EugeneOZ3• 6 years ago

Yeah, stepping off on a high speed is painful, but on a bicycle it's just impossible.

Brakes on my scooter are pretty decent, I can quickly stop even when riding fast (tried it a lot of times). Some scooters have 2 breaks - for the front and back wheel. Mine have just back wheel breaks.

leetcrew• 6 years ago

I guess it depends on what a "decent" speed is. all the rentals where I live top out just under 15mph. it's awkward to dismount at that speed, but it's not a big deal; you just end up running for a few steps.

notJim3• 6 years ago

Portland's Bureau of Transit did a 120-day study of scooters here which has some interest bits of information. The PDF is here: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/709719

Findings include that injuries did rise, but most didn't warrant a hospital visit. There were no deaths during the study period.

Another interesting finding is that scooters strongly prefer riding on cycling infrastructure, especially neighborhood greenways and protected bike lanes, and are unlikely to ride on the sidewalk when those are present. As the degree of protection increases, however, more people ride on the sidewalk.

huebomont2• 6 years ago

Of course they're not, and anyone concern-trolling about e-scooters while accepting cars as a normal and irreplaceable part of our streetscapes isn't really concerned about safety.

carapace5• 6 years ago

I am now convinced that the more appropriate question may be “Are our streets safe?”

Ya think?

It's insane to mix car traffic and people.

It was deliberately normalized by a systematic campaign of propaganda. (This is true, it really happened: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM ) We went from "speed demons" to "jay walkers". Fast-forward several decades and more Americans have died from cars than from wars. (The rest of the world also has horrific death rates from cars but more time of war.)

These clips make the civil engineer in me cringe.

As well they should. We're looking at a system that is, inadvertently but fundamentally, designed to kill people.

One potential solution is to add a bike box to increase visibility of cyclists and scooterists.

And that's the Stockholm Syndrome, if you will, causing cognitive dissonance leading to blatantly illogical statements from otherwise sane and intelligent people.

Anthropologists point out that every society succeeds at getting it's children to act like it's adults. Part of this is the normalization of whatever weird stuff your society/culture has going on. I'm reminded of what the New Guinea man said the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made them out of meat."

Putting car and non-car traffic on the same road is our cannibalism. "Once you see it..."

llukas2• 6 years ago

It's insane to mix car traffic and people.

It is not. Non-car traffic just needs to be prioritized properly, that is being more important than car traffic. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woonerf

carapace5• 6 years ago

Okay those look pretty decent, especially if they are designed with bollards and doglegs and such, so you can't get up to a dangerous velocity around people. It's still a little insane, you're still going to get e.g. kids on bikes getting crushed by multi-ton metal horseless wagons, but it's not as insane as e.g. the clips in the article.

jerome-jh• 6 years ago

No mention that e-scooters lack braking power to be safe. Many only have a rear brake, which is much less efficient than a front brake for stopping, for any vehicle. But having a front brake on a scooter would be very unsafe as well, because it would be too easy to flip over the front wheel. E-scooters cannot be made safe beyond 10mph/15kph.

Ever wondered why bicycles have large wheels?

A proactive approach to e-scooter safety

Related Stories