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Pedestrians, E-Scooters Are Clashing In the Struggle For Sidewalk Space (latimes.com)
Slashdot reader mileshigh writes: Activists in California have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that parked scooters littering sidewalks interfere with sidewalk accessibility for people with multiple types of disabilities and violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Many people have been wondering when this would happen since California courts are notoriously friendly to ADA complaints and lawsuits. Realistically, this type of lawsuit may well be the Achilles' heel of scooter-sharing services, especially if they're granted class-action status as this lawsuit is requesting. Will likely be the first of many. "Without full use of the sidewalk and curb ramps at street intersections, persons with mobility and/or visual impairments have significant barriers in crossing from a pedestrian walkway to a street," the suit alleges. "This is exacerbated when the sidewalk itself is full of obstructions and no longer able to be fully and freely used by people with disabilities."
The suit accuses the city of not maintaining streets and sidewalks in a way that doesn't discriminate against the disabled and allowing "dockless scooters used primarily for recreational purposes to proliferate unchecked throughout San Diego and to block safe and equal access for people with disabilities." The lawsuit also alleges the scooter companies have been allowed to "appropriate the public commons for their own profit."
The suit accuses the city of not maintaining streets and sidewalks in a way that doesn't discriminate against the disabled and allowing "dockless scooters used primarily for recreational purposes to proliferate unchecked throughout San Diego and to block safe and equal access for people with disabilities." The lawsuit also alleges the scooter companies have been allowed to "appropriate the public commons for their own profit."
Why would anyone think it was ok to ride a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Next they'll be raising taxes again and using eminent domain to appropriate away some of your money and property for use as electric scooter parking/charging stations. Hey, if they can get away with taxing your grocery store bags and plastic straws, why not?
Maybe After the ban they can be like normal people and drive an SUV. /s
even if you're not disabled.
In California (and most States), it is illegal to ride a motorized scooter without a driver's license, without a helmet, or on the sidewalk. You cannot operate them on streets with speed limits above 25 MPH. And you cannot park them so they block the sidewalk.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The contractors who move the Lime bikes around seem to have instructions to put them in people’s way - in the middle of walkways and open spaces. The other day I watched a wheelchair rider at UW attempting to maneuver around some bikes which were basically blocking the entry to a sidewalk. I moved them off to the side, but this is happening often enough that I’m almost to the point of just tossing them into the bushes.
#DeleteChrome
You have zero idea what you're blathering about again.
The difference is that with most laws the state writes a citation and the fines go to the state. If the local authorities don't care (or don't see a profit in pursuing these fines), then nothing happens.
The ADA law allows for the disabled person to bring the suit and sends the fines ($4000) to the disabled person plus the violator pays the legal fees.
It's a big business in California that is spreading to other states. There are legal firms that specialize in bringing ADA suits.
They got laws passed to treat e-scooters like a human-powered bicycle, not a motorized vehicle. It's gotten to the point where the pro-electric crowd is overriding common sense laws created based on vehicle mass and velocity.
Because its a cultural long term issue that has been delayed to deal with for quite a while.
Basically kick bikes are considered sidewalk worthy by US and British law. Where bicycles has to go on the road, due the same legal history from the early 1900s.
And this isn't the case all over the world, but thats a different issue.
The actual problem is that due the way cities are built, streets are somewhat undersized for actual populated areas. By itself it became this way because legally your options where to bike on the road, drive to work, or walk on the sidewalk. Combined with sidewalk's in USA generally not being structure to being a walkable long path that goes to your destination, combined with light crosses and terrible zebra stripe placement.
Now, if biking on the sidewalk where the norm, you could have had this lawsuit a few decades earlier, since electric kick bikes(scooters) is basically doing what bicycles would do in the same area, plus the speed of commuting. Objects like hooverboards occupy the same niche with the same principles, but are generally not littered across the streets because they are personally owned objects.
So this is not about motorization, this is about undersized streets and rental companies flooding the marked with a product that people will hire for amusement or commute speed. And once hired, it will be left somewhere. US culture will increase the litter of these products, but that would still be the case in other countries due the rental model flooding the marked and not paying for the cost of pick up.
send meter maids around to collect the scooters that are illegally parked and auction them off. This is what most municipalities are doing and it pretty much would wreck their business model, which they seem to be aware of .
I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea. It could potentially make commuting by bus viable in major cities that were laid out with cars in mind and do so long before self driving cars are a thing. But more thought needs to be given to it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I sometimes see them parked in the bike lane as well where I live.
Suffice to say they quickly and mysteriously relocate to nearby bushes or ditch.
thwy had gone into hibernation for the winter
The scooters that is
although there aren't as many pedestrians around at the moment - some of the sidewalks are very slippery. Thats the problem when it gets just above freezing guring the warmest part of the day, and cools down to single digits at night.
If a City wants to allow e-scooters, the e-scooter companies should pay for use of City infrastructure via a permit or licensing mechanism so that the scooters can be placed in designated areas carved out near bus stops and the like and not clutter sidewalks. Any e-scooters not licensed or permitted should be impounded.
Other scooters?
These little scooters have very little mass or velocity. The part that overrides "common sense" is thinking they can be operated on a sidewalk safely. A bicycle on the sidewalk is just as dangerous or more.
The problem is there's no median area between the pedestrian sidewalk and the SUV-packed street. It's one or the other. Both pose issues for all involved.
If only there was a scooter expert somewhere. Hmmmm.
Of all the things that are wrong and broken in this country, that's what you're worried about? Your masters laugh at you.
ANYTHING that can propel a human greater than average walking speed, SHOULD NOT be on a sidewalk. ANYTHING that can NOT go 30-45 mph should NOT be allowed on the highway or city street, unless there is a designated bicycle path.
The only reason you're here is because abortion wasn't legal in your red state, we get it inbred Republican faggot. Trump will hang, Kavanaugh will be removed for perjuring himself. Enjoy bitch traitor.
Give the 8 million lawyers an excuse and they will come.
They got laws passed to treat e-scooters like a human-powered bicycle, not a motorized vehicle.
Citation needed.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I moved them off to the side, but this is happening often enough that I’m almost to the point of just tossing them into the bushes.
Did the scooters accidentally malfunction after you moved them? Sometimes kinetics happen.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
In Rome they park Fiat cinquecento on the sidewalks, well everywhere really. Likewise Smarties in Paris. And donâ(TM)t even get me started on auto rickshaws in Bangalore. Or scooters in Hanoi.
People need to park vehicle and there isnâ(TM)t enough room.
No faggot, you cited a bullshit website. Go fuck yourself troll.
There is literally no way to sanely combine a single passage for both pedestrians and vehicles of any form. Governments that allow the abuse of pedestrians by any vehicle do so quite purposely, do DISCOURAGE walking. It is notable that many SF short stories in the 50s and 60s explored this theme, with citizens arrested and given psych evaluations if they insisted on still walking to places outside.
In the recent past, plebs were purposely controlled by severly limiting their ability to travel any distance beyond tiny limits, and plebs tended to live and die in a very small radius. Today, the SJW movement demonises most methods of travel used by ordinary people. The Deep State intention is a future where the plebs once agian live and die in highly contained regions.
The 'electric' car and 'oil is bad' movements are a key part opf this strategy. Humans that travel are a problem to the Deep state demons in many ways- not least because they learn that their own societal rules are pretty much arbitary.
Every quality of life ordinary people enjoy is currently under concentrated attack by warmongering neoliberal outlets like slashdot. Tony Blair's orwellian planetary agenda is hurtling ahead in every major empire power, and forced on the people of the nations controlled by these empires. Those voices that oppose the demonic Blair, and the blairites that impose his will in pretty much every nation are carefully attacked.
(and yes, I'm aware Britain is one of those nations that currently limits electric vehicles on pavements, but that isn't a counter argument since the Deep State has to tailor its methods for greatest impact in any given society)
Ding ding ding - we have a winner! You dear AC have combined almost every wing nut touchstone into a nice concise package, and adequately proven that the solution to everything is getting rid of e-scooters!
Now bonus points if you can wrap the whole thing in a bow, and tell us how this promotes dogs and chinchillas living together in sin, and the damn teenagers dropping thought control pods disguised as fertilizer pellets on your lawn.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A.B. 1096
Hmmm... Seems to amend for pedal-driven bicycles, but that's it. Scooters are mentioned as far as requiring an M2 to operate but that's it (there are 3 references to scooter on that page). I don't think that makes them legal to operate on sidewalks, nor does it free you from the requirement to have a driver's license.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No, the "pro-electric crowd" is using common sense to update laws based on vehicle mass and velocity. An e-scooter, when considered with its rider, is not significantly different in mass and velocity to bicycles, nor is an e-bike.
Complaining about the nuisance of scooter dumping is one thing, lying about their utility is quite another.
They're all over my campus. When I encounter one either blocking a sidewalk, or anywhere near a ramp, I toss the fuckers into the bushes/landscaping. They're not mine. They're not the universities. They're not supposed to be there. If anybody else, individual or company, puts anything in the middle of the sidewalk, it's abandoned trash, and as far as I know, anybody can take it. I once saw a blind person walking on a sidewalk and running into one of those things, and I lost my mind.
See anything abandoned in a sidewalk? It's your moral obligation to get it the fuck out of there for people who can't navigate around them. I've actually gotten good at getting some distance with the fuckers with a single foot under the center of them.
I don't respond to AC's.
That would be a real shame if something happened to them after they were moved. A real shame.
I don't respond to AC's.
"So you are telling me that China just dumps the US trash in their rivers?" China recently stopped taking it more than not, but ALLLLLL countries where US trash ends up, it ends up in waterways. Sorry, snowflake.
Banning plastic trash makes sense, the world is doing it. It's a big change. Nobody needs your moronic permission though nor cares if old whiny bitches approve.
Accidental kinetic damage would at least be a better option than cutting the brake lines, which some jerk has been doing around here. That’s just sociopathic.
#DeleteChrome
Here's the basic Republican belief about law and how it differs from Democrat belief.
Republicans believe laws are things enforced by an armed government. They aren't suggestions, politicians and bureacrats don't get to follow them *when they feel like it*. North Korea has a government based on personality - whatever Kim Jong-un says and does is fine. Republicans traditionally don't want a government based on blindly following a personality, we want a government based on law.
Because laws are enforced (en-force), we should be wary of having too many of them. We don't want armed government agents arresting you for using a straw.
Democrats have a softer, more mushy view of law. Anything that seems like a good idea most of the time, they are happy to make a law requiring it. It's not like the law is actually enforced anyway. Obama doesn't get the immigration law he wants? That's okay, he can just do whatever he wants, because he's Obama. (Kinda like Jong-un can do whatever he wants because he's Jong-un Republicans would say).
So yes, we want know what the actual (enforced) law will be on any given day; we don't want bureacrats picking and choosing whatever they feel like doing that day. So we want the actual written law to be what is enforced, and because it's enforced by armed government agents, we want to avoid having more laws than necessary.
That includes the idea that a law which is needed in Florida and not needed in Alaska should be law in Florida, not in Alaska.
Someone is about to reply "but Trump ...". Yes Trump is a jackass. At least half of what Trump advocates is the opposite of traditional Republican viewpoints. So saying "Republicans don't ... because Trump doesn't" is a lot like saying "Democrats don't ... because Elmo doesn't". Trump is in no way a traditional Republican, he's darn sure not a clean-cut family-values kinda guy, is he.
There is enough poop on the streets to for both pedestrians and scooters. California is full of "natural" resources like that.
Who was the first admin to surveil the opposition party? LBJ is the first I know of (where it's proven). Surely it was done before that.
Anybody? (I'm thinking it was likely Washington.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They exceed 10KM/hr on sidewalks, so you simply can't get the things.
Which is a bit of a shame, I'd like to try one. As annoying as they apparently are, we have a ridiculous insane population boom here (fuelled by the govt) and public transit and roads have become a nightmare (my morning commute has doubled via public transit, simply due to more stops, more starts, more traffic and more people getting on and off the cable car / tram)
I'd love to jump on a scooter and get to work that way.
a 2.5mile trip shouldn't take 45 minutes via public transit. (and yes, Americans, I know I'm the lucky one here with such a short commute)
Is that like when businesses allow their customers to park on the street?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Nice one.
Now that Boing Boing showed us how to convert the Bird eScooters and other suing the same standard Xi scooter into a stock one sans lockouts and GPS via a $30 circuit board, enterprising individuals can pickup the illegally parked scooters blocking sidewalks and recycle them. Sell them for 1/2 to 1/3 the price of a new one and profit while solving a problem for the city and saving them money all the while adding to the local economy.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
All you do is make shit up anyway, who cares what your lying faggot ass guesses about history? You'll never know, you don't read.
Lyinwuss got smoked on the facts again, yep.
They should just start issuing parking tickets to the ones that are parked badly and people will stop doing it. You have to take a photo of where you parked it. The city should ticket Lime and the fine should be passed on to the person who parked like an asshole. It would stop people being assholes instantly and raise money for the city.
There is literally no way to sanely combine a single passage for both pedestrians and vehicles of any form. Governments that allow the abuse of pedestrians by any vehicle do so quite purposely, do DISCOURAGE walking.
Near my home, we have miles and miles of these things we call "multipurpose trails." On a nice day on the path I frequent, there are many bicycles of all kinds and lots of people walking, jogging or skating. In fact, we actually go out of our way to use them. We all seem to make it work just fine.
Worked for us: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...
Surely, the invisible hand of the free market will solve this. Why, let people do what they want and magically they won't leave things lying around and getting in people's way, because free market.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Serves me right for saying 'anybody'. They are anybody.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
> According to wikipedia, you people had a field of 17 major candidates in your primaries.
> Did you select any of the reasonable candidates?
That's right, there were at least a dozen traditional Republican candidates, this big group of "reasonable candidates" (per Republican criteria for reasonable) including Kasich, Cruz, Marco Rubio, etc. And then there was this weirdo, Trump, who stuck out like a store thumb. There was Trump vs "everybody else", and the whole #nevertrump. The fact that he stuck out as clearly different from the dozen or so normal Republican candidates demonstrates something right there.
You asked "Did you select any of the reasonable candidates? " - well yes, I did, most Republicans did. Most of us favored either Kasich, Cruze, or Rubio, with many supporting other choices such as Jindal. Generally, anyone who chose Cruze would have been okay or Rubio and vice versa, they were similar enough. Kasich had pretty similar policy proposals, so most Republicans would have been fine with him. Then there was Trump, who was well outside the norm. To put it simply, the votes for "reasonable" were split many different ways, while the 30% who wanted weird all chose Trump. Which is sad.
I have a hard time finding anything to like about the guy. By luck or whatever, so far the country is doing pretty well - maybe despite Trump, maybe he's a jackass who also happens to sign off on good policies. Anyway, I'm glad he hasn't done much damage. The economy is good shape, though worries about the partial shutdown and confronting China are a drag. The shutdown sucks because both Trump and the Democrats have dug in their heels with exact opposite positions; there doesn't seem to be much room for negotiation. Democrats could have gone back to the positions they advocated in 2014, which basically agree with Trump on border security (he basically wants to finish what Obama started), but currently they are saying they insist on going the opposite direction and won't budge.
And in California, riding bicycles on sidewalks is left to the cities. It's illegal in San Francisco, and many of the LA suburbs - you have to use the street. Additionally it is illegal to turn without signalling. And per the link provided above, electric scooters are bundled with motorized bicycles/mopeds - and are thus prohibited from use on the sidewalk. This isn't about utility, this is about legal operation of a vehicle. Riding an electric scooter without an M2 endorsement, without a helmet, or on a sidewalk is illegal.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm OK with sane protocols, but the idea that companies shouldn't be allowed to or users shouldn't be able to rent scooter is just ridicules. The problem is with end-users either not following directions or maybe there not being directions on how to use the scooters properly. The solution is probably really simple. Get the companies to include directions about appropriate deposit of the scooters when done using them and if need be add a penalty for leaving the scooters in places that would not be appropriate.
people riding them on sidewalks and on the road ignoring traffic signals.
Because a scooter has less metal surface than a car, an induction loop in the approach to an intersection with a demand-actuated signal set might not pick it up. This has happened several times to me with my bicycle in my home town. When stuck at a red light for several minutes, what's the operator of a scooter supposed to do?
We have bike lanes in Arlington, VA, but they follow the traffic on its major one-way streets.
Idiots on these scooters choose to use the sidewalks instead of the bike lanes to go the wrong way instead of scooting one block over to the street with the bike lane going in the right way.
These stupid scooters need to go away. I've been clipped more than twice on the sidewalk by idiot scooter users, and they also seem to think that the strict yield-to-pedestrians-in-crosswalk laws we have in Virginia don't apply to them. (Life Protip: They do, stupid.)
I like Lyft but they should have never entered the scooter sector.
Kriston
There is a key difference between private person parking their bike on a sidewalk and a company enabling/encouraging their paying customers to do so.
It's called commercial use.
There are many activities allowed by law to a private individual which are disallowed to a commercial business.
The road IS the pavement you fucking limey.
Thank you for being outraged! Please address all replies to:
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Dockless bikes cause the same problem, but they're even worse because they're heavier and harder to move than the scooters. And if people don't leave them in the middle of the sidewalk then instead they leave them on the grass between the sidewalk and the street so that the homeowner has to move them when they want to mow the grass. Yes, you can text/call the company to have them removed, but it takes a while for them to get around to doing ti and sometimes they text back moronic questions like "Do you want us to come get it?" as though I'm complaining about it but want them to leave it there.
The whole business model of these e-scooter companies is bad. Putting all these annoying e-scooters out there on sidewalks with no place to store them puts an undue burden on the people using those sidewalks. Plus, how is this not considered "littering"? No company would be allowed to dump their trash on sidewalks. One man's e-scooter is another man's garbage.
I greatly enjoyed reading your article :) Please continue publishing helpful topics like this. Regards, from Scooters 'N Chairs.
In Madrid they have been banned.
The major obstacles I encounter on sidewalks are fixed; telephone poles that leave no room for a wheelchair on either side, cable boxes, trash boxes, traffic light poles, etc.
In Corpus Christi, the city council plans to charge 1 dollar a day for each e-scooter. So that totals up to about 365 dollars a year for EACH e-scooter. Each vendor has about 500 units in town.
Needless to say, the vendors are up in arms over it.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
and here we have the right wingers trying to tell others what to do once again.
The same thing a motorcycle does? My motorcycle never triggers most traffic signals (especially the damn IR ones), so legally what you're supposed to do is make a right turn instead.
In theory, one could make a right turn, drive one block, make a U-turn at the next place a left turn is legal, drive one block, and then make another right turn. In practice, if the next signal set one block away is also demand-actuated and marked "LEFT ON ARROW ONLY", it will likewise fail to detect my vehicle waiting in the left turn lane if there isn't also a cage waiting in the same left turn lane.
Granted when this is a real problem is usually when there's nobody around because if other people are around, a car will usually pull up and trigger the light for me.
My experience agrees. The problem has occurred during times of day when there is little traffic in my direction, such as 9:20 AM for an intersection near a shopping center that opens at 10 AM weekdays. Once, it didn't even pick up a bicycle and motorcycle put together, parked on opposite sides of the crack in the asphalt where the induction loop was buried.
Other option I've done if there's significant traffic on the cross street and none on my street is I'll get off my bike and hit the cross walk.
The intersection to which I refer lacks even a crosswalk marking. Another intersection in the same city used to fail in a similar way, but the city recently put in a crosswalk to connect a city park to a trail under construction.
I can provide coordinates of the problematic intersection through email upon request.
Many people have been wondering when this would happen since California courts are notoriously friendly to ADA complaints and lawsuits.
notorious: famous or well known, typically for some bad quality or deed.
I wonder if the person who wrote that meant "famously friendly" or was editorializing about how receptive courts ought to be toward ADA suits.
I agree Trump is terrible, the economy is in decent shape only because that's what he inherited from Obama--and we're probably in a bubble.
What I don't believe is the nonsense about the unemployment rate. I didn't believe it when the same criticism was leveled at Obama.
I would be more concerned with the human feces and used needles littering the sidewalk than scooters.
I'm tired of these stupid scooters littering the sidewalk. I see no reason why these companies should be allowed to leave their scooters on public property. I don't get to just store my stuff on the sidewalk anywhere I please. Please help destroy, or dispose of as many scooters as possible. The only way to stop them is to make them a financial loser for the companies who offer them. Bonus points if you destroy them in a way that brings negative media attention to the scooter vendors. I suggest a legal option, but legislators are not going to end them, so the more anarchist methods are reasonable in this case.
Sounds like the same MO of the ambulance chasers that have been shaking down businesses for "ADA violations" since the ADA was instituted.
They're coming to your country too, it's only a matter of time.
Rick (and evidently yourself) was the triggered person. The second someone said something negative about his precious motorcycle, he had to come running his mouth. Cyclists- motor or bike- are the biggest douche nozzles on this planet. Douchier than the biggest bro-dozer, and smugger than a Prius owner. They are a pox.
The left lost
Tell that to Kevin McCarthy, who can't go on an anti-communist crusade like his namesake because his party lost the House of Representatives.