> terrorizing its wretched NIMBYs
C'mon with that.
> I pushed down the throttle and lurched forward. I released it and the scooter stopped, nearly throwing me off. As I tried to figure out my balance, a teenager ran up to the scooter next to mine, activated it, and drove away. I had never felt so old.
This is a young person's service. No helmets or elbow pads.
> It’s best ridden with one leg on the platform and the other hanging off the side for emergency braking, or fleeing.
So it's dangerous.
> I was more likely to respect traffic laws on a scooter than on a bike, because I wasn’t as worried about conserving my momentum on a scooter.
Author is an admitted scofflaw.
Folks, momentum is the killer. It's velocity squared, so half as fast is one quarter as much "oompf" to cause injury or death. I bike (I don't own a car) and it always cheeses me off to see cyclists pulling dumb stunts in traffic.
These eletric scooters are mostly a great idea. It's that margin of failure modes that we have to watch. People being people there are going to be riders who ride like idiots and crash into people, there are going to be people who park them in stupid places. There are already "turf wars" starting among the folks who collect and charge them at night.
This article is a puff piece.