Comment by fiiisssh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fiiisssh | Hacker News Reader

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I've been electric longboarding for 3-4 years, and longboarding for longer, and I find rental electric scooters way more dangerous than electric longboards. It feels like there's just no way to bail, since there's a big stick in front of you and you're much higher off the ground. To be honest, I feel similarly about bikes but I can buy that that's a skill issue.

This sentence doesn't make sense to me:

> Unlike long boarding where you’re forced to learn to slide in order to stop anyone can go 20mph+ and get themselves killed.

I agree that electric longboarding is dangerous for beginners who never learned to longboard, but I don't see why that argument doesn't apply to scooters or bikes. Anyone can go 20mph+ on an escooter or ebike too, and it's harder to bail. Moreover, beginner longboarders often go faster than is safe down hills, since they're not practiced at controlling speed and stopping. For the disciplined rider, regardless of skill, electric longboards are safer since it's so much easier to control speed down hill.

Nitpick: sliding is a pretty rare way to stop on a longboard.

I dunno, scooters and bikes have mechanical brakes so there is no need to bail to begin with.

Sliding is rare, true. But at high speeds is the only way to stop. At low speeds I do agree, but the issue is that footbraking requires balance, and even people decent at long boarding can lose control while footbraking.

My main argument against longboard is that there’s no way to stop at high speeds and that steering inherently requires shifting your weight in a way that makes you vulnerable.

This is not to say that no one should longboard, but personally I only do so on flat terrain now.

> Nitpick: sliding is a pretty rare way to stop on a longboard.

To explain for anyone unaware, I primarily footbrake to stop on my longboard - you put one foot out and hold it against the ground and the friction slows you down.

> It feels like there's just no way to bail, since there's a big stick in front of you

Ironically, the most ridiculous and most common way to hurt yourself on a scooter is to bail instead of continuing to ride the perfectly good scooter. You can find hundreds of videos on YouTube of people who upon seeing an obstacle just confidently step off the scooter (still going 15 mph) and eat dirt 0.5 seconds later instead of using the brake and safely stopping almost immediately (these usually brake just fine).

I don't think there's a good way to bail from a bike, but I can't think of a situation I've been in on a bike where bailing would have been a good choice.

There's more chance of bailing if you're on an undersized bike (bmx style) or maybe on a step through design rather than a straight top tube. But I still don't know where you'd apply that; maybe at a skate park, but not on a road and I don't think on a trail either.

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