Hopefully cities will enforce strict rules against blocking sidewalks and confiscate any scooters left in unsafe spots.
No one in your neighborhood perhaps. This varies considerably.
The car might be a rental too, doesn't really make a difference.
I tolerate far worse externalities from my neighbors because they're my neighbors and I want to minimize pointless conflict for their emotional benefit as well as mine. Business that create externalities in my neighborhood for the sake of corporate profit, on the other hand, can either pay me and my neighbors in cash to deal with the externalities (with a decent profit margin for our time and effort) or they can go f* themselves.
I have also wondered about the practice of leaving the scooter simply just anywhere after a ride is done. They are left on sidewalks, and gutters, in driveways, and are often plainly in others’ way. How does this not constitute littering or obstruction of a public walkway?
Yes and the company is also using the public right of way to store their inventory.
People seem to hate on scooters because it's "private" and people might be profiting somehow. It's trendy for the get-off-my-lawn crowd to hate on the Ubers, Birds, AirBnB and other similar businesses. "Hacker" used to mean people that didn't care much about the status quo, but here on "Hacker" news, it sounds like a bad threat on NextDoor or some kind of homeowners association meeting complaining about the mauve garage door on Mrs. Davis's house. Many of the people hating the scooters because they're "storing their inventory on public property," don't seem to have any problem Torrenting movies they didn't pay for or stealing other content they don't own. It seems the trend is "it's ok to steal from private companies because I shouldn't have to pay for stuff, but it's not ok for private companies to profit off of public infrastructure."
Yep, near downtown Denver there are signs about how after a certain date, any private property shall be removed from public walkways. This was targeting homeless camps. It should extend to scooters left littering the sidewalk too.
>Food trucks use public roads and sidewalks as their dining rooms.
Food trucks park in legal parking spaces or designated food truck areas - this is strictly controlled in most areas. Individuals use sidewalks as a dining room, since it’s legal to stand on a sidewalk and eat.
>How about in places like New York were the damned bike share racks take up half the sidewalk
How about it. Exact same problem? Can we do something about this too?
> How about graffiti "street artists" that paint their nonsense on privately owned buildings? They're displaying their "inventory" on property they don't own.
That’s not blocking a sidewalk or otherwise impairing use of a public asset. People can paint their private building however they please.
> Many of the people hating the scooters because they're "storing their inventory on public property," don't seem to have any problem Torrenting movies they didn't pay for or stealing other content they don't own.
That’s a stretch. I don’t see how use of a network or minor copyright infringement is related to leaving scooters on the sidewalk. Again, it doesn’t deprive others of the use of any public resource.
>People seem to hate on scooters because it's "private" and people might be profiting somehow.
No. Actually, people are complaining that these scooters are left everywhere, in the way littering the streets and sidewalks.
The experience of first finding the bikes was surreal. They were littered everywhich way across public spaces. One in the middle of a busy sidewalk that people had to walk around, one dumped off beside an obscure tree outside a convention hall, one hiding behind a vendor booth (for which I assume the vendor was stashing for the commute back or just that was the easiest place to leave it), etc.
Then, I felt like a public nuisance while trying to log in and get the bike unlocked while people where having to walk around me.
I'm sure you can walk around them. Calling them "real hazards" is stretching things to a ridiculous level. Yes they're messy, but they're not hazards.
I personally love those scooters. They open up mobility in a way that public transport can't. I'm more concerned about dangerous, mentally ill, drug addicted homeless people robbing or harassing me. A scooter never shit on the sidewalk.
Second, the issue of whether the impoundment is justified is really quite irrelevant to the issue of whether the conversion of a bike legally purchased from the impound lot is legal - which is the subject of the EFF note. That bike is the purchaser's property, to do with as they choose, and people who generally treat ownership as a sacrament would be hypocrites if they started making exceptions whenever it suited them.
Lastly, even aside from both of those issues, the attempted invocation of DMCA is clearly bogus. It's a horrible law generally, but still explicitly precludes the kind of abuse they were attempting. For them to go after the very person who had anticipated their behavior and worked to have those provisions added is ... well, not bright. It's a very stupid hill to die on, but if they and their fans want to then I'm glad to see them held up to ridicule.