Been in Paris two weeks ago as well to visit my girlfriend who's been living there for 11 years.
Scooters are in the process of being banned in Paris because they are too dangerous and in Rome, where I come from, they are going yo be heavily regulated (mandatory helmet, reduced speed, designated pick up and drop locations, etc. ) because they caused a +35% increase of brain traumas to teenagers
Not everything that looks cool on first sight it's an actual improvement.
In principle it's a great idea but from the picture it looks like they're monopolizing a shared resource. This isn't fundamentally different than adults parading around during Critical Mass.
In my opinion they certainly bring the fun factor, but regarding efficency they offer no real advantage over electric mopeds, especially when riding them with a passenger.
Electric mopeds are amazing, best way of transporting yourself in a city when the weather allows. It has all the benefits, the only downside is that you can't really use it in rain or snow.
I wonder if they’ll actually enforce the scooter ban on private ones. Because they certainly don’t enforce traffic laws on motos lane splitting constantly anywhere.
I rented a car. This gave me the feeling that it is inofficially tolerated by the police. But driving on the bus lanes is very strictly verboten even for motos and using the bike lanes is frowned upon. I once saw a lorry unloading on a bike lane and a police car stopping by the driver and after some gesticulating the police seemed to admonish the driver like this: okay but get away from here ASAP!
Speculating here because I am not aware of the details, but I guess they will be regulated the same way mopeds are: license plates, helmets and all that stuff.
I've crashed a Lime/Bird at least 3 times, none of them related to cars or other people in any way.
1. Taking a pedestrian bridge off-ramp in the rain at max velocity because I wanted to see if I could take the corner going that fast.
2. Finding a quarter-pipe set up next to a bridge. How can you resist trying to shred it? It went well on run 1 thru 9. Run # 10, not so well.
3. Driving one home drunk at 230am and trying to drive it with only one hand.
My point is that it's pretty easy to fall off if you are pushing the envelope in any way at all. Who the hell falls of a scooter? Hah! Who the hell rides one exactly how you are supposed to? Totally boring.
Have never ridden one, but I assume you could easily crash into a person, car, curb, signpost, other scooterers, hit a rock etc..
Simple instructions don't solve anything, and represent a design flaw. If the design doesn't inherently address the problem you want to solve, then text definitely won't.
Well, I'm saying that because people don't even realize they need to treat the road somewhat like a car driver.
Like, literally, they install the app and get on the scooter and do 20km/h on the opposite side then are surprised that there's people and bikes coming right into them.
A simple "stick to your right" would help a lot of them imo.
And it's really hard to crash one ime, but then again I somehow never fell or crashed a bicycle for half my life.
Scooters are in the process of being banned in Paris because they are too dangerous and in Rome, where I come from, they are going yo be heavily regulated (mandatory helmet, reduced speed, designated pick up and drop locations, etc. ) because they caused a +35% increase of brain traumas to teenagers
Not everything that looks cool on first sight it's an actual improvement.