💾 Archived View for agnos.is › section › micromobility › scooters › safety captured on 2024-05-10 at 10:55:44. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Electric kick scooters have both proponents and detractors, with good arguments on both sides. The primary argument against them is that they lead to more injuries wherever they are deployed. There's a demonstrable uptick in emergency room visits because of these things. But the solution is not simply to ban them. Better regulation of both the scooters themselves and those who ride them are needed.
In many cities that have allowed electric kick scooter sharing companies to come in, the scooters litter the sidewalks and many of the people who use them do not use them safely. They go too fast in crowded areas, the wrong direction down the street, and so on. Also, very often the people using the scooter are too young, or there are two people on the scooter. And God forbid any of them are wearing a helmet...
Some of the scooters themselves are also engineered for extreme use that isn't relevant in urban settings. There are scooters that can hit up to 70 km/h, or even 90 km/h. These are completely unnecessary in an urban setting. The pan-European speed limit of 25 km/h is perhaps a bit too low, but certainly nothing much higher is necessary. Even going at 40 km/h feels too fast.
Sensible regulation would fix a lot of these issues:
The scooters themselves should be more directly limited. In Europe, they're supposed to be limited to 25 km/h maximum, but this is easy to circumvent, oftentimes by changing a setting in the official app. This should be more difficult, and the onus must be on the manufacturer to do so.
See also: Electric Scooters: Why?
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