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A comment on Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation. Parent comment

Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by kylec on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @03:19PM (#17296969)
I played around with the scooters in San Jose during WWDC last week, and I have to say that I preferred the Bird ones. While the Lime ones did have a faster top speed, they were also slower to accelerate. When driving on the sidewalks there's a lot of slowing down, so getting back up to speed quickly is more important in my opinion. Plus ~12mph is fast enough IMO, it feels dangerous to go much faster than that.
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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by jessaustin on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @08:15PM (#17299228)
Why are you driving on the sidewalks? Please stop doing that!
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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by cr1895 on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @06:31AM (#17301851)
Worth noting that this depends on the locality.

For example, in Singapore it is very much illegal to ride them on the street. They're relegated to sidewalks, footpaths, and cycle paths.

https://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/articles/20...

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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by kylec on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @08:18PM (#17299243)
With a top speed of ~12mph, the scooters are way too slow for the road. It's much safer on the sidewalks. The sidewalks in downtown San Jose are also quite wide, so there's plenty of room for pedestrians and scooters to share.
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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by jessaustin on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @08:26PM (#17299270)
I'm going about that my speed on my bicycle, much of the time. "Too slow for the road" has a meaning on the interstate highway. Someone who says that about city streets needs to go back to driver's ed. It's fine that the speed limit is 35mph. If you can drive that and safely pass slower traffic, do so. If you can't, slow down!
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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by nathanaldensr on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @09:12PM (#17299483)
Perhaps the argument amounts to "driving a scooter on the road makes me feel unsafe, and I'd rather make others (pedestrians) unsafe to make myself feel safer." Seems typically selfish.
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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by microdrum on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @11:33PM (#17300032)
12mph is way too fast for a sidewalk. (Thus these scooter sharing startups will die.)

If an olympic athlete who runs at 12mph did his daily run on a sidewalk, people would be really, really angry. 12mph is fast. A police officer would stop him.

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Re:Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation by zeronight on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @11:57PM (#17300122)
I disagree. Bikes aren't much faster .
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