Old 12-20-18, 06:53 AM
  #162  
tandempower
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Originally Posted by badger1
That is true, but you are ignoring several factors. First, the use of 'scooters' is weather-dependent. They are utterly useless in anything other than more or less perfect, temperate/mild conditions. No one in his/her right mind is going to use or depend upon 'scooters' in anything other than clement conditions, with the exception as always of a few outliers who will constitute a tiny percentage of potential users. So in North America, for example, they (scooters) are simply stupid anywhere outside the sun-belt (where, oddly enough, you live) as a 'serious' possible transportation mode.
I brought up this exact same issue earlier in this thread or in another scooter thread. The fact that scooters are the smallest-footprint possible for a vehicle doesn't mean they are necessarily the ultimate vehicle. It just means that there is an entire spectrum of possibilities between scooter and SUV for motor-vehicle developments.


The problem with size in US motor-vehicle trends has to do with many factors, but safety is a major issue. Even the smallest Smart cars and other (sub)compacts are designed with crumple zones for crashes. This, along with passenger seating, having a big motor with four car-sized tires, etc. wastes space. SUVs, cars, buses, and other highway-speed motor-vehicles are not going to be replaced by small vehicles, but for mobility and parking within municipalities a few miles across, they cause sprawl with all their pavement and parking space they consume. Then, the more the sprawl expands, the more people think they can deal with it by driving faster, which leads to more highways, etc. within an area that is meant to be used for human living space. We need to get back to Eisenhauer's vision when he launched the federal highway system to begin with, which is to keep the fast highway traffic out of the cities so people in inhabited areas are free to get around without driving and parking everywhere.


Second, scooters and the users thereof are inevitably going to be competing for space with pedestrians, first and foremost, bicycles, and heavier vehicles (whether ICE or electric; driven or autonomous) on paved surfaces, on which 'scooters' are utterly dependent. Unlike bicycles, and unlike Shank's pony (one's legs), scooters are useless on anything other than perfectly smooth paved surfaces.
Models are already being designed with bigger wheels/tires. I'm sure they will continue developing in the direction of more comfort and safety. The problem is that they have to start small and work their way up to avoid all the restrictive regulations that have been put in place to protect cars from other cars.


Third, the accelerating record of accidents/serious injury -- especially head injuries -- resulting from the use of these contraptions cannot be overlooked. You will no doubt come up with some specious conspiracy theory to explain these incidents away, but the simple fact is that persons using these stupid devices in dense urban environments are injuring themselves and others, at times severely.
The same has been said about bicycles, I'm sure, and it was most certainly said about motor-cars; but neither bicycles nor motor-cars have been canceled yet because they are dangerous contraptions, so why scooters?


Given that, the utility in real-world terms of these toys is at best severely limited: they require unobstructed paved surfaces and mild weather conditions. In other words, they are not the panacea you seem to think they are, and they in fact of their very nature work against your particular/peculiar vision of urban living.
Neither are cars and bicycles, but we keep trying to make those work for transportation, don't we?


Scooters -- whether 'kick' or "e" -- are toys; funny little contraptions that a few outliers might take a sort of misplaced pride in using, ostentatiously, to show off their facility/hardiness/defiance of convention and so on. In the longer term, they solve nothing in terms of the problems associated with overuse of motor vehicles etc. Their present proliferation in select cities in North America is the result of nothing more than the speculative ventures of a few start-ups using other people's money to attempt to profit short-term off of peoples' impulse to show off or to demonstrate some sort of 'awareness'.
All vehicles are essentially toys. Really they are all just wheels with a means of propulsion, human-powered or motor-driven.


No matter how one cuts it, these ventures are disgusting on every level given their complete disregard for user safety and of municipal authority.
All vehicles are risky nuisances but most humans aren't ready to live in totally walkable habitats yet, so we have to keep working on better transit. Since smaller size is obviously a benefit where space is limited, scooters are doing their part to tow the line of historical progress; and space is increasingly limited not just because of population growth, but because of the realization that deforestation due to human development poses long-term threats to carbon re-uptake, which affects climate.

In short, we need to make more room for more people and more trees, so paved lanes and parking areas can be widdled down for better uses if more smaller vehicles are employed by more people instead of larger cars and trucks.

Last edited by tandempower; 12-20-18 at 06:56 AM.
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