I regularly ride my e-bike in SF but have also dabbled with the rental scooters. I have a hard time understanding the scooters' popularity, compared to a rentable e-bike like the Jump or Lime bikes. In my experience e-bikes have the advantage in top speed, stability, comfort and safety. Other than taking up marginally more space when parked, I can't think of any downsides. This matches the article author's conclusion. Can anyone explain to me what I'm missing?
I take both Jump e-bikes as well as various scooters on the regular. Honestly I prefer Jump Bikes - it's almost always cheaper and faster and safer. I definitely feel more "seen" by cars as well.
That being said, with a scooter you aren't pedaling at all. Even on an e-assist bike you're still getting the adrenaline pumping and sorta sweaty. And a lot of people are afraid of riding bikes in traffic, so while even though bikes are actually much safer, there's a lower mental barrier to entry with scooters. People who almost never ride normal bikes (which is most people) have a harder time adopting the mindset of taking a bike share, e-assist or not.
Plus scooters are straight up more fun to ride with a group of friends - it's a genuinely fun thing to have out of town friends do.
> And a lot of people are afraid of riding bikes in traffic, so while even though bikes are actually much safer, there's a lower mental barrier to entry with scooters.
In LA it's not legal to ride scooters on the sidewalk, so, in theory, people should fear riding scooters too because they're supposed to ride scooters in traffic -- just like the bikes. Of course, in practice, almost everyone rides everything on the sidewalks in LA. Traffic codes are mainly unenforced here.
Oh yeah - I've seen plenty of not-confident-bikers hop on scooters and ride them in the street.
Even though riding a scooter in the street is often fairly terrifying, I feel like there's some kind of easy mental jump that has people getting on without nearly as much reservation as they would have hopping on a bike.
Yeah, taking out-of-town friends to the Emergency Room is fun too. Sorry if I sound snarky, but as a former EMT who has ridden scooters I know the damn things are deathtraps.
Yep, found this out the hard way and almost killed myself. Not clamoring for prohibition though. Also would never climb on one again. My remaining balance on Lime will be forever unused. Best part was the notification asking me to rate my ride which I received as I was regaining consciousness. :)
Wish there was a way to get notified of replies on HN.
Anyway if you happen to see this I was not wearing a helmet, on flat ground. Not proud to say but I was on sidewalk and the rear wheel slipped off the side into soft ground bringing the entire apparatus to a quick halt from prob 15mph. Woke up a few min later with my face on the sidewalk and my legs curled up beneath me. Luckily I was wearing a thick stocking cap which prevented me from more serious injury. Total damage was bruised brow ridge and lip/chin, missing chunk of leg flesh apparently from hitting the handlebars, broken hand, and broken ribs.
I ride a push bike, and had an electric one for a while. I've had my fair share of accidents. The last one was when the local council put in a drain at the bottom of a hill - and then didn't bother to place a proper road mix over it before sealing it with asphalt. Trucks then turned into something that looked more like corrugated iron with 300mm corrugations, which being at the bottom of a hill I hit at about 70km/hour. I lost a lot of skin (I pitched over the handle bars and slid along the bitumen) - but walked away.
That would not have been the outcome had I been on a e-scooter. I've tried an e-scooter when on holidays, found myself effortlessly doing doing 30km/hr, my first thought was "gee this is dangerous". The wheels are tiny, so a small obstacle is going to bring you undone. Your position is all wrong - standing on the thing you are a pole waiting to be vaulted through the air and slammed head first into the road, or possibly skewered by the handle bars on the way down. (Push bikes tend to send you over flying the handle bars which sounds bad but you don't hit the road - you slide along it.)
I'm not at all surprised to see serious accident and death rates and took a sudden surge upwards with the introduction powered scooters. They are inherently far less safe than bikes, yet as you say appear attractive and safe to inexperienced riders. It's a recipe for disaster.
Have you tried the rental e bike? I've only tried Lime's and it was hell to ride.
All these devices are absolutely abused. My lime's seat was skewed to the right, the handlebars skewed to the left, and it was the best one out of the clump when I picked it up. As soon as you touch the pedal the thing flies off nearly to top speed, which wouldn't be so jarring if the geometry of the bike didn't have you leaning forward on the seat and awkwardly holding the wide and unhelpful handle bars.
I'm sure a 'proper' e bike is much nicer, but these things are beach cruiser style bikes which have all the cons associated with beach cruiser style bikes. They really should have been mountain bikes with nice comfortable handlebars and a balanced upright position.
The scooter on the other hand, all you do is stand up straight and twist the handle. No clumsy positioning, no jarring electric assist. They are pretty fun to ride assuming you've picked a relatively unabused scooter, otherwise that too is pretty terrible and dangerous to ride.
