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[JaimeC]

Interesting article:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-bird-scooter-20180515-story.html

[Richard230]

San Francisco has been suffering with the same issue.  There are at least 1500 electric scooters flying around the City and driving pedestrians and politicians nuts. So the City is now regulating them, besides charging the three companies renting these scooters a fee for every one, they are requiring them to be parked legally, that their riders wear helmets and only ride in the bicycle lane.  How they are going to get their riders to obey those rules are a mystery to me, as they much prefer to ride without helmets, whizzing by pedestrians on the sidewalk and droping the scooters on the sidewalk when they reach their destination.   Good luck controlling that. 

[Doug S]

How they are going to get their riders to obey those rules are a mystery to me...

Same way as they control any other vehicle traffic -- by giving violators tickets. Sooner or later the message will sink in that these are vehicles and will be regulated as vehicles.

From what I've read, the city of San Francisco itself is as much to blame as anybody. They said early on that they were going to decide how to regulate this sort of vehicle, but hemmed and hawed until the manufacturers just decided they weren't going to wait forever and forced the issue by releasing them before rules were drawn up.

Then again, I don't remember the last time any group of lawmakers got in FRONT of a problem.

[Richard230]

How they are going to get their riders to obey those rules are a mystery to me...

Same way as they control any other vehicle traffic -- by giving violators tickets. Sooner or later the message will sink in that these are vehicles and will be regulated as vehicles.

From what I've read, the city of San Francisco itself is as much to blame as anybody. They said early on that they were going to decide how to regulate this sort of vehicle, but hemmed and hawed until the manufacturers just decided they weren't going to wait forever and forced the issue by releasing them before rules were drawn up.

Then again, I don't remember the last time any group of lawmakers got in FRONT of a problem.

But in San Francisco, the cops are not interested in giving bicycle, scooter riders, or J-walking pedestrians, tickets for that matter.  Just auto drivers with driver's licenses. That generates the big bucks for the city, state and court system and also makes the car-hating city politicians happy.   

[Dyer]

SF is not tolerating the little sidewalk scooters very well, and rightly so. They are all over the place, and people are literally leaving them in doorways of busy places. I was glad to see a group of SF city workers scooping up the ones that were obviously blocking sidewalk traffic and throwing them in a truck that was half full of them.
On the other hand, the company Scoot, which rents scooters (like an electric Vespa) and regulates the users seems to be doing much better. They worked with the city to do a launch making agreements on where they can park etc... If you sign up with Scoot, it is kind of like Zip car and they are pretty clear if you are seen to be a menace, seen without a helmet or breaking other rules, your membership is revoked.

[ctrlburn]

Interesting opinion piece written by an author with an admitted bias.
Unfortunately PEW just published:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pew-news/americans-grapple-with-recognizing-facts-in-news-stories-pew-survey-idUSKBN1JE1MF

In my opinion it does appear that both Bird users and Bird news stories need to be more responsible.

[Richard230]

It seems to me that the big problem that the e-scooter companies have is how to regulate their customers.  How do you control their behavior while they are riding?  How can you keep someone from not riding on a sidewalk when riding in big city streets seems so hazardous?  And how do you make them wear a helmet, especially when many bicycle and motorcycle riders don't do so?  For that matter, where do they get their helmets from?  They are not attached to the scooters when they are parked by their previous riders. While the cops could regulate these sort of things, I can't see that happening. There are just too many other much more important illegal things going on in San Francisco. If I was a scooter rental company, I wouldn't know how to make their customers toe the line regarding all of San Francisco's many scooter rental regulations.

Several cities in San Mateo county (the next county south of SF) have been allowing green and orange rental bicycles to be dropped off anywhere on their streets for about a year now.  I keep wondering why no one seems to complain about that, but if they do it hasn't made the news yet. The only difference that I can see between the e-scooter rentals and the bicycle rentals is the lack of congestion in the suburban cities, compared with that of San Francisco.

In other e-scooter news: Today it was announced that the mayor of Sausalito is upset that e-scooter riders from San Francisco are riding the things across the Golden Gate Bridge into her city and dropping them all over the place.  She says they are supposed to stay in San Francisco and have no right to enter Sausalito.  From now on, they will be scooping them up and charging the scooter rental company a $150 fee for their return. And so it goes.......   

Like I said before, you can have all of the rules and regulations in the world, but if no one pays any attention to them, what is the point?  And what can these rental companies do about their customers' behavior - short of banning them from using their scooter and then watch them just rent another brand.