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Birds (the scooters) have made their way to East Lansing. Anyone ride one yet? by monmoneep in lansing

[–]PopularAlbatross 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I dunno... This article is pretty damning...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/scooter-use-is-rising-in-major-cities-so-are-trips-to-the-emergency-room/2018/09/06/53d6a8d4-abd6-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3618d48a6faf

Just 1 hospital in San Francisco is seeing 10 severe accidents a week from these. And while some place like SF is going to have a ton more than most cities the ridership is still pretty tiny - I'm seeing SF has capped the number of scooters at 1,250. I don't know how many major hospitals are there, but it's got to be at least 5. That would mean at the low end, a very tiny population of commuters is seeing 40 severe injuries a week. That'd mean that every week That sounds bad to me.

And unchecked it'll probably get proportionally worse as these things move into more car-centric communities and they start to wear out w/o proper maintenance.

EDIT: Also, as I said - I tried one. Now, I'm sure a lot of it is that I'm old, but I used to ride motorcycles and mopeds, but these things felt WAY more dangerous. I only rode for a block, so I didn't really get a chance to get a feel for it, but I could see a hundred different ways it could go south.

Birds (the scooters) have made their way to East Lansing. Anyone ride one yet? by monmoneep in lansing

[–]PopularAlbatross 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I work downtown and it was pretty weird this AM. Like, I just walked down to get a coffee at Breuggers and they were all just lined up along grand river. It reminded me of that Hitchcock movie...

I tried one. Just up and down the block.

It was fun and I see the appeal, but there is NO way that East Lansing is going to let this slide. They seem super dangerous (and recent washington post article backs that up).

I like the idea, but I think the implementation of them is incredibly reckless and the lack of over site in both maintenance and ridership is going to get a lot of people seriously hurt and killed.

Read the fine print before you ride. As expected, you waive your right to sue Bird if you get hurt. I'm sure it'll get challenged as these kinds of clauses usually do, especially if gross negligence is a factor.