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'Bird Scooters Are Ruining Venice' (latimes.com)
Nate Jackson, writing for LA Times: Although I would like to avoid them, I have no choice but to consider them because I live in Venice, which is where the first Bird (electric scooters) hatched and where the flock is thickest. Bird's founder and CEO, Travis VanderZanden, says, "We won"t be happy till there are more Birds than cars," so I guess I am supposed to get used to it. [...] Suddenly, almost daily, I have some near-collision with a Bird scooter rider -- he who sees nothing but the phone in his hand, thinks of nothing but the next text, and hears nothing but whatever music he has chosen to pump through the white inserts protruding from his wasted ears. He who, despite all that, is still traveling up to 15 mph on the street or sidewalk.
Aside from road safety, which has been discussed thoroughly in this and other papers, Bird is also tearing away at the fabric of our Westside society. In Venice and Santa Monica, where Bird is centralized, thousands of people live on the streets, which helps explain the scooter's popularity. With a press of a throttle button, one can be whizzing along, leaving it all in a blur. Bird calls this solving the "first/last mile" problem. Problem? Is it a problem for a twentysomething to walk a single mile? To most residents, Venice itself is the solution: The weather is perfect, the ocean is a stone's throw away and each block has something interesting to see. But to walk through Venice is to understand that human misery exists just outside the frame of your Instagram feed.
Aside from road safety, which has been discussed thoroughly in this and other papers, Bird is also tearing away at the fabric of our Westside society. In Venice and Santa Monica, where Bird is centralized, thousands of people live on the streets, which helps explain the scooter's popularity. With a press of a throttle button, one can be whizzing along, leaving it all in a blur. Bird calls this solving the "first/last mile" problem. Problem? Is it a problem for a twentysomething to walk a single mile? To most residents, Venice itself is the solution: The weather is perfect, the ocean is a stone's throw away and each block has something interesting to see. But to walk through Venice is to understand that human misery exists just outside the frame of your Instagram feed.
WTF is a bird scooter?
Sounds like a shitty entitled asshat complaining about others expressing their right to drive a scooter, and he doesn't like them.
His assertion about phones in hand is just put me off as well. The scooter drivers have a right to be on the road. If they don't follow local laws (cell phone driving laws) then ththey police will deal with it. You don't get to decide what others use. So yeah, used to it.
If I'm wrong, let me know and I will RTFA.
Me too...
In Venice it's forbidden to feed pigeons, as they shit everywhere and their excrements corrode the historical buildings.
While scooters (called vespas in Italy) are nowhere to be found, as they aren't watertight - you use gondolas to travel around.
If you're homeless and need a way to get between the overpass where you sleep, the minimum wage job across town, and soup kitchen, then scooters or something else might be pretty well needed.
The founder of Bird is quoted as having said he wants there to be "more Birds than cars".
I'm pretty sure what he wants to see is people riding mass transit and using a Bird to get from the transit to their home. This might actually work in Los Angeles, but I am dubious about the idea in any place where winter involves snow and ice.
It would work great if we all moved into giant underground cities, but if we do that, I want to see slidewalks as shown in The Caves of Steel .
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Problem? Is it a problem for a twentysomething to walk a single mile?
I dunno about Venice, but here in the U.S., apparently, it's hard enough to get people to even go outside let alone walk a mile, so yeah maybe it's a problem.
It's not the scooters that are ruining Venice, it's the idiots that live in Venice that are ruining Venice. This generally applies to most of southern CA as well.
From my understanding Italy in general has bad drivers, especially in urban areas. Combined with Italian view of law, compared to English Law that most of us are accustom to. Makes it difficult to get people to change their ways. Police will stop someone who is being dangerous or causing problems. But if they are currently being safe, but doing a behavior that can be potentially dangerous they will not stop them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.