London has a really weird situation whereby there are 5-6 hire schemes running in the city, so 100s (1000s?) of scooters about. But using your own private one on the streets or cycle lanes is actually illegal. However the police don't even attempt to enforce it and loads of people have and use them daily. It's not just teens dealing drugs either - hang around Bank at 8:30am and you'll see hoardes of smartly dressed business people flying by on them. It's quick, easy, cheap, lots of fun, and you don't tend to get as sweaty (like you can on a bike).
25 Apr 2023
2.0K
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The public licence allows local government to put restrictions on their use, like slowing down speeds in pedestrian areas. So you'd struggle to knock someone over on Old Market Square on a rented escooter because the scooters slowed to a crawl.
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I used a e-bike once and they’re set to cut off in a nearby park, where bikes aren’t allowed. All fine, except I was riding down the road adjacent to the park. So that was annoying, if understandable. GPS isn’t perfect. But yes, those kinds of restrictions are a very good reason to try and limit usage to ‘trusted’ operators for the time being. E-bikes (which are everywhere because of food delivery apps) and scooters are a menace to pedestrians and, here, at least, we could do without a free-for-all.
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You would think that local rules, and personal responsibility, would adequately cover that if you had a mindset to de-regulate things?
It's okay, I know that they don't mean for the likes of us.
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I don't think local government have the resources to create and police local rules.
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Hmm. Automatically forcing scooters to slow down in specific areas and situations. To save lives. Cool. Now can we implement this in cars?
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I was responding to Jim saying they should (or more accurately, that they should be classified as public transport and not allowed to make a profit, which is essentially the same thing).
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Who said they couldn't make a profit? We were, I thought, talking about investment in public infrastructure. Not who benefits in cash terms.
Businesses benefit from access to staff and customers. They should pay, right? And contribute to roads and social infrastructure, rather than have staffing costs subsidised through the public purse.
I'm all for fair profits, but to maintain a sustainable marketplace/society that has to come with fair contribution to real costs.
Not just legislatively supported parasites, leaving no cash for us to have any social capital.
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I told you, Jim did. Please try and keep up.
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Make electric scooters and bikes require insurance and a provisional license. Only for use on the road and cycle paths with appropriate speed limits.
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No. That would immediately stop people from using an obviously and broadly beneficial mode of transport.
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Not really, where there is propulsion there needs to be accountability. These machines will only get faster. The evolution of the legislation regarding 2 stroke motorcycles is a good historical example to start from.
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I did no such thing.
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He's obviously trolling. I'm not taking the bait
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Did I misunderstand this?
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Yes. I don't mind if e-scooter schemes make a profit. But I'd prefer that the schemes are tax-payer owned and the profit was reinvested into expanding the scheme and other environmentally friendly public transport services such as buses, trains and trams etc.
