> injury-inducing street litter

If you abandon a car in the middle of the road across two lanes, you'll fairly likely see relatively hefty fines, possibly lose your car. This hurts you, the abandoning party directly.

If you abandon a rental e-scooter in the same way, you'll most likely have no repercussions, and at worst the cheap e-scooter is forfeit which doesn't impact you, the abandoning party at all, and not really the e-scooter company either since they're most likely on a VC funded mission to try to flood the market with cheap e-scooter rentals until the competition drowns.

There's some seriously skewed incentives at the root of the rental e-scooter plague.

This. It's a wild west with these e-scoots, and unlike cars they're everywhere. My city has only 100k people and even here they're a huge nuisance.

They are super convenient. Cars are the nuance. We will figure out how to deal with scooters the same way Asian cultures figured out theirs. And the same we we figured out how to socially deal with cell phones.

Straight banning them because a bunch of fuddy duddies who never took one don’t like them is pretty short sighted.

>We will figure out how to deal with scooters the same way Asian cultures figured out theirs.

They did? When? Here in Tokyo, they've only very recently allowed e-scooters to be used.

China?

This seems trivial to address. If you misuse HN, you get your account banned and can no longer post on HN. If you mistreat an Uber driver, you get your account banned and can no longer hail a ride. What stops this system from working with e-scooters?

Suppose you rent a scooter, park it "properly enough", I come by and move it a few feet into an improper parking place. Do you want your account banned for that?

If not, this might not be as "trivial to address" as you first think.

The scooter has gps as well as your phone and they require a photo anyway. The company can check that you ended your ride correctly, what happens after that isn't your liability.

GPS won't help you here, though the photo will. GPS simply isn't anywhere near accurate enough to verify you placed the scooter in spot X, and not 1-2 meters away from spot X where it's now a hazard.

A gyroscope on the scooter and location awareness of the renter’s device seems to take care of that. If the scooter’s gyroscope indicates movement after the renter has returned the scooter and left the premises, then assuming the renter didn’t move it seems pretty safe.

> This seems trivial to address.

Yet it is not.

Cars don’t drive randomly around pedestrians on a sidewalk. Thanks for the concern though, I got knocked out by one of these things and it wasn’t pleasant.

Plus, these things usually stand right on a sidewalk, right in the way of pedestrians.

Good riddance. Hopefully more cities follow.

Why ban them instead of incentivize better behavior?

How. You can’t fix stupid.

Edit: I can think of a way. These things move in a regular traffic. To drive a car, I had to do a driving license. 40 hours with an instructor, a theory test, and a practical exam. How come any clueless chimp can get one of these and ride in traffic? They are dangerous to themselves and others. It’s a celebration when they wear a crash helmet.

So here are my ideas:

1. Require a license for these things.

2. Collect and remove illegally parked scooters. Rental companies know who rode one, they can claim the cost of a scooter removal fee from the rider who parked it illegally. If they are concerned about people randomly moving scooters into illegal parking positions… well, come up with dedicated parking areas where the rider has to bring them back and lock them.

Until then: ban them.

A license for an electrical scooter... It's like getting a (hypothetical) license for a bicycle. Completely unnecessary. No special skills are needed to ride one of these, it's super simple. You should try it sometime. A license won't fix stupid anyway, you just said so yourself.

I don't tell people what they should be doing. Everyone so entitled to tell others how they should go about their lives. But there you go: you should try to understand my argument about these things moving in between the traffic.

But it's interesting you mention a bicycle license. In the 1990s I did one in Poland as a young teenager. It was called "karta rowerowa". Not exactly a license but it taught me about traffic rules and probably saved me from trouble. It was worth it. Some cyclists in Aachen could make use of something similar, maybe they'll know that cycling 5kph in the presence of the StVO VZ 277.1 just aggravates everybody.

Furthermore, I have learned today that in Poland until the age of 18 one is required to have the cycling card (karta rowerowa), or a moped driving license. „Karta rowerowa” is a one day training where one learns traffic rules, signs, and proper technique in navigating the traffic. Of course barely anyone checks for it. But if one gets involved in an accident, there will be financial and insurance consequences.

You don’t need special skills to drive a car.

A big part of licensing is that you can take it away. Cyclists and scooter riders often ignore traffic controls that apply to them. We ignore it because the likelihood and impact of injury to others is low.

Unfortunately, 2 cannot make the difference between a renter who parked illegally and a renter who parked well but a random person kicked the e-scooter on the ground. I see this a lot with e-bikes in my neighborhood.

People lose the ability to read to the end:

> well, come up with dedicated parking areas where the rider has to bring them back and lock them

I did read to the end but in large European cities those dedicated parking spaces are in contact with the sidewalks and the other parking spaces. Apparently some people enjoy dragging all the nicely parked e-bikes into the ground.

In Aachen these things stand right on the sidewalk, often sideways. I’m still young and can easily walk over them but a mother with a stroller or a person on a wheelchair doesn’t have it so easy.

> lock them

I think GP mean lock them to a solid pole, as a bike. Make the pole deliver electricity (non trivial) and you have a recharge station.

That’s what I meant, yes.

Makes sense. I do think that would change the game entirely but the margin of operators goes mmmmmm…

Yes, the profit opportunity before legislating the hell out of it.

Not having a license is crazy.

I walk daily for exercise and have almost been hit several times by some kid doing crazy things on them.

I would say it is at least once a week I see someone do something stupid on one.

Without needing a license there is nothing to lose for driving stupid.

Comparing these to a bike is obvious bullshit.

The simplest solution is to let scooters have priority in the streets. Aggressively police the aggressive vehicle drivers that are pushing scooters onto walkways. Especially as the car drivers already have a license system.

Imagine how much nicer cities would be if most people drove around on e-bikes and e-scooters instead of cars.

Sure you might have the occasional delivery truck or car but it would generally be much safer and more pleasant for everyone.

It'd be quite ironic if the US pulls this off in their cities and European cities become car-infested urban jungles.

They appear to be well underway:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18568456

This is a measure to encourage EC, not ban cars at all.

In certain areas of the city, no motor vehicles are allowed to enter, ICE or EV or hybrid. Only pedestrians

This happens in other cities too. Sidewalks, parks, and squares, right?