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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

On a different note -- I refuse to take these scooters around any typical city.

You are one pothole or crack in the road from being knocked on your ass under a passing bus. And given the state of our US city roads, this not just a remote possibility. The size of the wheels is just not safe at high speed + you being able to avoid situations like this. Don't even try it at night -- very dangerous.

Ride a bike.

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Once I heard a story of an acquaintance that busted an arm and lost his front teeth after finding a pothole on his personal electric scooter, I have avoided them entirely. Liability seems to be the big hidden risk here from my POV.

I tend to agree - they'd work better on smooth, wide, grade-separated pavement. In other words, bike lanes.

i have the same safety concerns around bikes, having had a close shave before. the problem is the infrastructure

A bike's wheel has a considerably larger diameter than a typical scooter's. It should be able to handle cracks and potholes much better, since the ratio of pothole-depth to wheel size means it can essentially climb out of the hole, whereas to a scooter, it's like hitting a wall (that the higher center-of-gravity human is then going to be flung over).

That's not to say there's aren't potholes large enough to take out bikes, just that there are a set of potholes that bikes can ignore and scooters cannot. Nor is the above point that bike's don't have danger associated with them. (Largely, idiots in cars.)

What about this big electric scooter? https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2018-Newest-Popular-C... rode one on demo a few weeks ago in Seattle -- super fun!

Any scooter that has an actual suspension instead of fixed wheels will handle bumps for the most part instead of trying to throw the rider off.

The newer scooters have relieved this problem a bit. Something about the construction of the wheels in combination with small shocks makes small cracks much less problematic.

You definitely need to be an active rider to ride these safely.

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