Why are cars allowed to litter the public roads and park all over the place, taking up a massive amount of space with mostly empty seats and driven around less than 10% of the time?

Cars are parked in designated areas in an organized matter and get ticketed when they obstruct pedestrian traffic.

Also, your comment is a logical fallacy.

As cars gained mainstream adoption, governments passed legislation regulating their use in the way you described. I'm sure scooters will follow a similar trajectory; we're just waiting for legislation to catch up.

It's not littering since local statues have rules about parking. FYI, in some areas, parking is illegal, and in most areas leaving your car in a spot for too long will allow the city to tow it.

Since the majority of places don't have statues for scooters, the default actually is littering, it's no different than dumping anything else on the sidewalk.

Scooters are definitively vehicles. What would governments do if people just started parking bikes and scooters in free full-size car parking spaces :)

Scooters aren't vehicles licensed for public roads. So it will probably still be littering, of public roads and parking spaces this time.

But you're supposed to ride them in the roads in most cities.

Yeah, but those statutes came after cars were popular. Early on, I bet people were parking all over the place and it was people complaining about it that lead to those rules being put in place.

Because I pay taxes + reg and crap to the DMV yearly to allow it to be on public roads?

>Why are cars allowed to litter the public roads and park all over the place, taking up a massive amount of space with mostly empty seats and driven around less than 10% of the time?

Because car owners pay extra in taxes, specifically to cover the additional costs to society.

The taxes are a drop in the bucket compared to the wasted space, pollution, and clutter.

Yup, especially when any attempt to raise gas taxes is met with hostility by the voters.

We massively subsidize drivers in this country. It's a natural consequence of people voting for their own short-term self-interests.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the...

The taxes are a drop in the bucket compared to just the road costs alone (ignoring the other societal downsides).

Because the law says they are. You don't like it, vote.

This but unironically

Because people derive value from the service. It's faster than walking, more convenient than an Uber, and doesn't require a car.

Let's leave the "get off my lawn" comments off HN.

It's not a "get off my lawn" comment. Regulations about these scooters don't exist in the large majority of places- meaning the default local regulations about illegal dumping apply. Whether people derive value from it or not is not important to local laws.

These scooter companies are operating in a grey area; that's a fact. Please don't quickly dismiss discussion about this issue, especially in such an ignorant manner.

Scooters occupy ~5% the space as a car. Dedicating 2-10% of the spots on each block/public lot to bikes/scooters should already be built in as a public service.

If you've ever biked as a mode of transport, even in most US 'bike-friendly' cities, you'll know how few bike racks are available.

Ebike startups are even making it required that the bike gets docked. So, it's not impossible.

> These scooter companies are operating in a grey area; that's a fact

That's not true at all where I live. Santa Monica often bans them for not following rules, makes deals with other companies, etc.. Every app is forced to implement geofencing for not allowing riding on the beach walkways, for example. On popular roads like Abbot Kinney there are small fenced off corals where the government has replaced a car parking spot with a scooter and bicycle one. So yes, scooter companies do have specific laws they have to follow. It's actually a drawback since the city favors Jump over local companies like Bird, and Jump has a lot less availability.

San Francisco now has limited the use of these scooters so much that they are effectively useless. You can’t find them anywhere, it’s not practical, and you need a driver license to ride one. They effectively killed an alternative to cars...

Just because lots of people derive value from a service does not give them carte blanche to push externalities onto everyone else.

I mean, do you say "No no, you can't complain about all those chemicals being dumped into that river... look at all the value people are deriving from thing the factory is producing!"

Yes, there are externalities, but perhaps the question to ask is, are the externalities of scooters less than those of cars when solving the last mile problem in transportation?

Cars and drivers, in my view, push MUCH more externalities onto everyone else (and let's not limit ourselves to thinking locally, all that CO2 we emit from driving disproportionately affects those in the third world and those yet unborn).

Yes, those are certainly good conversations to have. I agree we need to do a better job of handling the externalities created by cars.

I don't think we should be using the argument of 'well, the externalities for cars are worse' when deciding how to deal with the externalities of scooters, though. By that argument, we only have to ever make sure our externalities are better than the very worst offender in order to be beyond reproach.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not arguing that scooters are beyond reproach. I'm for development of scooter regulation in a way such that we as a society can harness the benefits from it. Being against them just because they don't work in the current regulatory + road system setup in my mind is at risk of forgoing potential massive benefits for us as a society.

This is hardly a'get off my lawn' comment. Because 'some' people 'derive value' doesn't mean they should be free of regulation.

> Let's leave the "get off my lawn" comments off HN.

I like the Bird idea, but why should people who find them a nuisance not be able to voice their opinions here? They are literally being thrown on people's lawns. I think those companies have some responsibility to develop spaced waypoints with the city which act as hubs for birds. Private businesses should be allowed to register their space as a hub for a payment by the Bird company.

The different users would be: Hub owners (colleges, cities, private homes, businesses), riders, chargers. Hub owners and chargers would get paid to host hubs and charge birds, respectively. The riders would pay for use between hubs.

As someone who has literally had Bird scooters discarded on my lawn...

Maybe this is a little over the top in complaining, but it bothers me that they get to take up space in the city without paying rent/property taxes/etc.. like every other business that takes up space has to do.

They covered my city with them recently and I'm yet to see anyone use them for actual transportation. I tried Bird out over the Thanksgiving holiday with my parents for fun. The app was a bit complicated but overall were pretty fun. Riding the scooter felt a bit dangerous and I wouldn't be able to bring anything back from a store on a scooter, so I'm not sure when I would use one. Also you can't ride them at night, so they're in no way an uber replacement. Also my city is meeting tomorrow to discuss banning them. The writing seems to be on the wall for all these scooter startups. If anyone knows a good vehicle for shorting these companies, let me know ;)

Why can't you use a backpack to do grocery shopping?

Scooters have markedly improved life around where I live. Fewer noisy cars and less emissions.

Is the night riding banned by the app? I though they had lights built into them?

I wish I had them in my cities :( they are so practical.

Remind me why most of the street length you need to cross is because cars need a lot of space to circulate ANd park? Remind me why we allow deadly vehicule to drive by us while we have literally zero public streets reserved for pedestrians? Remind me why most of the noise pollution in cities come from cars driving and honking?

> litter all the public sidewalks

Is it really that big of a nuisance? You literally walk around them, I don't see the issue.

You should give them a ride one day to "see what all the fuss is about." They really are an incredible idea and allowing them to be "parked" anywhere is one of its main appeals.

People are comparing them to litter. You can also walk around trash, but you probably don't want trash everywhere. They're an eyesore and take up more space than a piece of trash. It makes the city look more 'dirty'. All they would have to do is have actual designated spaces for them to fix that, like how cars work.

So you wouldn’t mind people parking the scooters in front of your house then, since you can just walk around them?

I’ve seen scooters literally blocking entrances and pathways, heck people even take them inside buildings up to the 5th floor; not to mention that at night they emit a high pitched disrupting sound. Some people are plain lazy and highly inconsiderate. We need some rules because some people lack common sense.

> You literally walk around them, I don't see the issue.

It's not an issue for most people but I live up the road from an old folks home and often see the residents heading to the shops in their mobility scooters. If there's a dumped lime scooter blocking the footpath it completely stops them from using the footpath until someone moves it out of the way for them.

At least in the city I am in this seems to becoming less and less of an issue (despite there being more and more scooters) as people get used to them, and learn to properly park them.

Sidewalks aren't always wide enough to support foot traffic and parked scooters. I live in a residential part of a major city, with sidewalks designed a century ago, and a Bird (usually a cluster of them) is long enough to block 2/3 of the walking area.