Scooters are very limited in cargo capacity are not particularly viable in rainy or winter weather, not to mention just statistically increased injuries and danger for riders, which eventually translates into liability with scale. If you have to make multiple trips when one car trip would have sufficed, that completely undermines the cheap & fast argument. If you have to have cars around for bad weather days or bad weather seasons anyway…
> Scooters are very limited in cargo capacity
Only Americans would be regularly ordering so much takeout as to worry about scooters not being able to transport it. You really need to reconsider your dietary choices if this is a serious concern.
> Scooters […] are not particularly viable in rainy or winter weather
Scooters are perfectly viable in rainy weather. Nobody does food deliveries with a car in London.
I’m sorry you felt the need to get snarky. Making assumptions undermines your argument. It’s not hard for the orders for 2 families of light eaters to not fit in a single scooter.
This, again, is the norm in Europe.
Why should the average delivery guy be driving a car to be able to accept big orders that probably make up less than 1% of all deliveries?
Now I still dislike the services and it's really annoying that they caused this revival of motorscooters who are now driving recklessly on the bike paths, but transport volume is really not an issue.
I don’t need to present any evidence to the contrary because I didn’t make any claims to the contrary. I’m not claiming scooter usage isn’t high, I didn’t say it’s not more than cars or bikes. I was more careful than that.
You made a strong claim that you can’t back up, and you’ve already admitted that you’re just making up. That’s on you, not me. I’m simply sensitive to people making assumptions and insisting on calling them facts, and that is what you did.
Just like your unfortunate and unnecessary anti-American comments that got you downvoted, you could have ended this by simply acknowledging gracefully that it’s your opinion, and you believe it’s most, rather than continuing to add hyperbole after hyperbole, exaggeration after exaggeration on top. Claiming scooter usage of scooters for food delivery is the same as the sky being blue is a pretty bad analogy, and weakens your point.
Adding an ad-hominem on top accusing me of trolling just becuase you can’t answer my question also reflects poorly on you and tends to undermine what you’re trying to say. It would be so much stronger if you simply qualified your claim as your own belief and left it at that, or did some Googling to find stats. I’m sorry that asking for evidence of what you said upset you so much.
anti-American? Seek help buddy.
> It would be so much stronger if you simply qualified your claim as your own belief and left it at that, or did some Googling to find stats.
Look, my claim is obvious to anyone who isn’t completely out of touch with the world outside of North America.
“Googling to find stats”? There obviously isn’t going to be any meaningful numbers to be found on Google wrt this.
Using cars for food deliveries is a completely ridiculous idea in most cities of the world. There’s no parking! How are you going to deliver food with a car when there’s no free parking?
Shit, what do you think are the odds that a food delivery guy can even afford a car in most of the world? There’s something like 1 billion passenger cars in the world, that leaves you with something like 1 8th of a car per person.
This really is as obvious as “the sky is blue”.
To suggest that you’re trolling is simply the most charitable way to interpret your comment.
Even in Dubai scooters are the norm, despite the city embracing a very American take on urban design.
No, I don't have data to back this up. I don't need to, this is obvious to anyone who has traveled the world. If you read this thread, you will only see Americans talking about food delivered by car.
The exception was riding a standard bicycle.
Sure, I live in mainland Europe, but you talk as if you talk for everywhere.
Scooter deliveries are the norm even in the warmest areas of Europe.
Same goes for places like Tehran, in fact almost all of Asia.
Depending on geographic location, no doubt. Can you imagine risking your life on a scooter weaving through idiots in their lifted pickups in any American metro?
Last I lived in Calgary, trucks were absolutely the norm.
>That's especially true in Alberta, where 89 per cent of spending on new vehicles this year has gone to trucks, vans and SUVs. That compares to about 80 per cent, nationwide.
>"We're basically a truck market," said Denis Ducharme, president of the Motor Dealers Association of Alberta.
Having been to both (but not having driven a scooter in Atlanta) I'd suggest scooting around Paris is very different than scooting around Atlanta.
For example, the Wagoneer is the SUV version of the RAM.
The Suburban and Tahoe are the SUV versions of GM trucks.
The Land Cruiser, Sequoia, and Lexus LX are the same platform as the Tundra.
Etc.
Automakers don’t do one-off light trucks. They are all shared platforms.
And, I mean... I lived there. Saw many more trucks than anything else on the road.
Traffic camera feeds suggest this is not the case by a long shot? I don't have a particular stake in this race though.
Sure, in the winter the proportion of couriers driving cars increases. You also see tons of people on fatbikes and similar.
My town has just under 120k people and the majority of deliveries are done by car.
Truly, a shocking new development.
You said "americans avoid two wheeled vehicles for no reason".
They have cars anyway so they use them.
The reason they need cars is because it gets cold, there are highways that go fast and it's dangerous and illegal to take young kids or more than one kid on a scooter. This is not complicated.
Also the honda scoopy and yamaha scooters are 115cc and can't get up to american highway speeds. In Thailand it isn't even legal to drive scooters or even motorcycles on their highways.
Maybe you should go on holiday to Vietnam in the winter, you might realize there is no snow in Vietnam.
Americans usually need a car anyway so they already have one.
It has everything to do with your refutation of that claim, however.
My actual implicit claim is that there appears to be a degree of truth in the idea that US residents have a cultural aversion to two-wheeled transport that extends beyond the justifications you proffered to dismiss the claim.
No there isn't. People have jobs to go to and there isn't much public transportation, it gets cold, snows and people need to use the highways. People need to have a car so they already have a car and that's why scooters are usually something people buy for fun and not neccesity.
People in developed economies shouldn't be carrying around sofas on the backs of mopeds as they do in Vietnam, but it should be reasonable enough to deliver a pizza on one where the weather allows in the USA.
FWIW: I'm very much a car guy.
The 'sub' is a reference to the proximity to the (likely denser) city, not a step between urban and rural.
So for instance, the small town I live in is also considered urban (but is located in a rural county).
In any case, we’re discussing the sustainability of delivery services. Most of the world lives in cities, it really doesn’t matter if they’re unsustainable in rural areas.
While you’re at it, maybe also explain how this has anything to do with the subject at hand?
This is the weirdest straw man. Scooters are cheaper to operate and faster if there’s any traffic.