A few years ago, a company began offering Segway tours of Boston. Those Segways took over the sidewalks – and I do mean take over: it was definitely a matter of caveat ambler. Nothing like sharing our narrow sidewalk space with a bunch of nervous rubberneckers tootling around on a motorized, stand-up version of a manual lawnmower.Then the city stepped in and reminded the tour company that Segways are vehicles and, thus, they belong on the street. Victory was ours, the righteous pedestrians. Yay!
The victory was sweet, but short.
All of a sudden there were rent-a-bikes all over the place. And, for whatever reason, those hopping on and off those rent-a-bikes feel that they belong on the sidewalks. S
Sorry, but bicycles – other than those pedaled by those under the age of 11 – don’t belong on the sidewalks anymore than Segways do.
And now, this:
If you haven’t paying attention to the shared electric scooter craze sweeping the globe, this might be a good time to start. A fleet may be headed to the Boston area this spring as part of a pilot program, and if experience in other cities where they’ve landed is a guide, we may be in for a whole new breed of aggressive and erratic drivers. (Source: Boston Globe)
I’ve had a few of the electric scooter-heads zip by me, mostly when I’m crossing the Boston Common. They’re sneaky little bastards, those scooters. You don’t hear them until they’re right on your heels. Wheee!
On the upside:
The scooters are an efficient way through traffic-choked cities.
Okay, as long as they stay in the road with the other traffic.
Such is their promise, that two big players in the scooter game — Bird and Lime — are each valued at more than $1 billion, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Oh, those unicorns…
On the downside, the rent-a-scooters coming to town are of the dockless variety. (The rent-a-bikes in Boston, on the other hand, have to be docked.) The fear here is that folks will just drop them wherever they feel like, including in the middle of sidewalks, on handicap ramps, in doorways. Although there are reports that jerks are leaving scooters strewn all over the place, I don’t know how reasonable a fear this is. I’m sure there are occasional a-holes – aren’t there always? – but I’m sure that most people will leave the bikes out of harm’s way: leaning up against a fence or a tree. (I am prepared to be proven wrong here.)
A bigger downside: lots of accidents, which are:
…so frequent that personal injury law firms are now chasing scooters.
Ambulance chaser, meet scooter chaser. And I’m guessing that they’re also chasing scooter victims, as, surely, there will be scooter victims.
I hope not to be one of them, and will be on the lookout. Segway riders in Boston are generally on tours, being lead by a guide. And they don’t tend to go that fast – just fast enough, it seems, to stay upright and balanced.
Cars are, of course, a menace, but, while I’m a jaywalker, I’m a head’s up, eye contact jaywalker.
I’ve always felt that there was a non-zero possibility that I’d be hit by someone – generally, I will have to say, a morbidly obese someone – going too darned fast in their sit-down mobility scooter.
But my biggest fear as a pedestrian has long been the bicyclist. Far too many, in my experience, have no problem riding the wrong way down a one-way street, taking to the sidewalk when it’s more convenient, and ignoring red lights because, hey, it’s a pain in the neck to stop. (A close friend of a friend was struck many years ago by a bicycle messenger running a red light. He suffered tremendous physical and neurological damage and made nowhere near a full comeback.)
If scooters, however, take off, I do believe that scooter drivers will supplant the bicyclists as the number one enemy of the pedestrian. While there are all kinds of bicyclists who give their fellow cyclists a bad name, most are really just folks trying to commute in a healthful and environmentally friendly manner. Most look like nerds.
Scooter-ists, I suspect, will be less nerd and more bro. And there is no doubt in my mind that they’ll be rampaging down the sidewalks.
As I said, caveat amblers.
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