Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works, and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech and I thought maybe we should do
Speaker 1: a little update about electronic scooters. For those of you
Speaker 1: who have been listening to the show for a while,
Speaker 1: you might remember that back in November two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: it's a little less than a year ago, I did
Speaker 1: an episode about where these East scooter companies came from
Speaker 1: and how they were forming their business models, and how
Speaker 1: they were popping up in cities all across the world,
Speaker 1: and how those cities were reacting to them. And since
Speaker 1: it's been about a year, I thought we should revisit that.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason I decided to do this,
Speaker 1: it's actually because there have been some high profile tragedies
Speaker 1: on fortunately in two thousand nineteen with regards to UH
Speaker 1: these eat scooters, UM, some of which have happened here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. We've had UH three or four accidents with
Speaker 1: East scooters recently in Atlanta News, including a couple with fatalities,
Speaker 1: which is a horrible horrible tragedy obviously, and it raises
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about what do we do to
Speaker 1: make sure that these scooters, if we're going to have
Speaker 1: them in our cities, that people are using them appropriately,
Speaker 1: that we're having all the right legislation in place so
Speaker 1: that people know what the rules are, and that we
Speaker 1: can make sure that if in fact they're here to stay,
Speaker 1: that no one is going to have a tragedy like that, again,
Speaker 1: to the best of our ability, knowing that we can't
Speaker 1: prevent everything. And there have been other accidents as well.
Speaker 1: There was a very high profile accident in London where
Speaker 1: a YouTuber was in involved in a cry fashion around
Speaker 1: about and she sadly passed away from her injuries. And
Speaker 1: I should add that in London it's against the law
Speaker 1: to ride east scooters at all. You can't. You're not
Speaker 1: supposed to ride them on the roads or on the
Speaker 1: sidewalks or pavements as they say. So in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look a little bit about what's been going
Speaker 1: on in the scooter world over the last year, some
Speaker 1: of the challenges that the industry faces and the ways
Speaker 1: that they're trying to go about meeting those challenges. So
Speaker 1: before I jump into all that, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about my own personal experience, not writing scooters, because spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: I have not done that. I have not hopped on
Speaker 1: one of these scooters, but my experience navigating a world
Speaker 1: in which these scooters play a large part. Now Here,
Speaker 1: in Atlanta we have specific law regarding scooter use. I
Speaker 1: don't know how widely understood or unknown they are, but
Speaker 1: in Atlanta it is technically against the law to ride
Speaker 1: a scooter on the sidewalk or pavement. This is not unusual.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of cities that have similar laws.
Speaker 1: And if you are riding a scooter, you are supposed
Speaker 1: to do it either on a road, preferably in a
Speaker 1: bike lane if there is one. Atlanta has a shortage
Speaker 1: of those, or you can ride it on a kind
Speaker 1: of a special pathway. There are a few of those
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Big one is called the belt Line, and
Speaker 1: the belt Line is part of this pedestrian walkway and
Speaker 1: bicycle lane and and now scooter lane as well that
Speaker 1: stretches a good way around downtown Atlanta. And the office
Speaker 1: that I work in is right off the belt line,
Speaker 1: so I walk to and from work and about a
Speaker 1: mile of my walk is along this particular pathway, and
Speaker 1: on nice days it gets fairly congested with lots of
Speaker 1: people who are out there to enjoy the day. Perfectly understandable.
Speaker 1: And the thing that really prompted me to talk about
Speaker 1: this today happened on the Saturday before I record this episode.
Speaker 1: Typically on a Saturday, you wouldn't find me anywhere near
Speaker 1: the belt Line because I would probably be playing video
Speaker 1: games at home, or running errands with my wife for
Speaker 1: walking my dog, or something called on those lines. But
Speaker 1: on this particular Saturday, I had decided that I needed
Speaker 1: to go to the gym, which is in the same
Speaker 1: building as where my office is. So I took the
Speaker 1: three mile walk to get here, and that last mile
Speaker 1: was torture. It was so crowded. It was a nice day,
Speaker 1: and there were tons of people on the belt line
Speaker 1: and about half of them were on scooters. And it
Speaker 1: was odd to be in a traffic congestion situation where
Speaker 1: the vehicle in question wasn't a car and it wasn't
Speaker 1: even a bicycle, but it was this, you know, just
Speaker 1: this huge number of scooters. And in Atlanta we have
Speaker 1: quite a few of those companies represented. You know, you
Speaker 1: have Lime, you have Bird, and you've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of others. Um Lift has some scooters around town as well, So, uh,
Speaker 1: this was you know, there's no shortage of of representation
Speaker 1: on the belt line. And as I was walking there
Speaker 1: and watching people wobble around on these things, some people
Speaker 1: going quite well, but you couldn't know one could go
Speaker 1: fast because there's just too many people out there on
Speaker 1: the belt line that it it occurred to me that
Speaker 1: we need to have some deeper discussions about safety and
Speaker 1: responsibility and accountability as far as these scooters are concerned.
Speaker 1: And UM, I also saw a lot of people violating
Speaker 1: some of the rules for scooters, one of them being
Speaker 1: that it's only supposed to be one person per scooter,
Speaker 1: and I saw quite a few cups doubled up, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's against that's against the law in Atlanta, folks. For
Speaker 1: those of you who are in Atlanta and listen to
Speaker 1: this show and also write scooters, just want to let
Speaker 1: you know that you're you're you're breaking the law there.
Speaker 1: It's also against the law and a lot of other places.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the challenges that scooters
Speaker 1: have faced in the past year. UM and one of
Speaker 1: the big ones that I think I should cover is
Speaker 1: just the challenge of the business model itself. For the
Speaker 1: business model to work, this is pretty common sense stuff.
Speaker 1: But you've got to make sure you're bringing in more
Speaker 1: money than you're spending. I mean, that's just typical business, right,
Speaker 1: there's nothing special about that. You have to make more
Speaker 1: than it costs to operate the business, otherwise you're in
Speaker 1: a money losing situation and sooner or later you have
Speaker 1: to go out of business. And Bird, one of the
Speaker 1: big companies doing this, was is in a situation where
Speaker 1: some people were questioning whether or not the company was
Speaker 1: going to survive. It had raised something like seven hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in investment funding, and it apparently had lost
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars in the first quarter of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen and was in uh some serious trouble and
Speaker 1: was already looking at its next round of fundraising in
Speaker 1: order to stay in business. Now on to get the
Speaker 1: full picture here. The CEO of Birds said one that
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars actually represented it right off, and it
Speaker 1: was a rite off for older scooters that didn't have
Speaker 1: the durability that they needed for this business model. To work,
Speaker 1: and two that they were actually making a profit on
Speaker 1: a per ride basis of more than a dollar per ride.
Speaker 1: So they were saying this is representative of a business
Speaker 1: that can scale and it will be profitable in the
Speaker 1: long run. But there are investors who questioned this and
Speaker 1: ask does it actually cost more to maintain, to repair, replace,
Speaker 1: to ship over all these scooters, not to mention to
Speaker 1: ensure them in some cases. Also in a lot of cities,
Speaker 1: you have to apply for a permit to operate that
Speaker 1: business within the city, which could be several thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: All these costs start to add up, and if they
Speaker 1: add up too much, then you cannot make money off
Speaker 1: that business. You will just be constantly trying to raise
Speaker 1: funds while you try to dial in your business plan
Speaker 1: to complicate matters. There's all this competition in the field,
Speaker 1: so if you were the only game in town, then
Speaker 1: you could presumably start to raise the prices on the
Speaker 1: per ride basis for your customers and they would either
Speaker 1: pay that or they'd be walking or taking a bike
Speaker 1: or taking a car everywhere because there's nowhere else to go.
Speaker 1: But because you have all this competition in this space,
Speaker 1: there's also the opportunity for these different services to kind
Speaker 1: of undercut each other on price in the hopes of
Speaker 1: waiting out their competitors and get them out of the market.
Speaker 1: So if I'm running my own e scooter business and
Speaker 1: I've got a decent enough cushion financially to land on,
Speaker 1: I might say, well, you can use my service, and
Speaker 1: it's cheaper. So you can use the exact same sort
Speaker 1: of scooters. They just have my branding on them. They
Speaker 1: go the same speed. You will be able to use
Speaker 1: them just as frequently as you would any other and
Speaker 1: it's going to cost you less money. I might be
Speaker 1: able to win over some of the other customers. They
Speaker 1: might actually seek out my scooters as opposed to someone
Speaker 1: else's and then exacerbate the problem of a company that's
Speaker 1: already having some issues. Whether or not Bird really is
Speaker 1: in financial trouble is a matter of debate. Uh, they
Speaker 1: are looking to raise more money, they are the leader
Speaker 1: in the space, and um, it's possible that everything's working
Speaker 1: out just fine now. If in fact their new scooters
Speaker 1: are more durable and they need you were repair and
Speaker 1: maintenance costs, it might be fine. But it's one of
Speaker 1: those questions that has remained unanswered in the investment world,
Speaker 1: in the tech world, and it is entirely possible that
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is just a scooter bubble and that
Speaker 1: it's going to fizzle out, not because of any regulation issue,
Speaker 1: but simply through an economic barrier that they can't surmount.
Speaker 1: What is not in question is the the enthusiastic corresponse
Speaker 1: among users on the East scooter market. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: clear that they're a hit, so we know at least
Speaker 1: there's a demand for it. The question is will the
Speaker 1: demand and the supply workout, Will it with the economics
Speaker 1: workout so that it makes sense to operate as a business.
Speaker 1: That part remains to be seen. So that's one update,
Speaker 1: is just the fact that we still don't know whether
Speaker 1: or not this is this is a business that's going
Speaker 1: to stick around. Uh. It also is, of course encountering
Speaker 1: lots of potential resistance. Um that's tricky as well, because
Speaker 1: laws are not uniform on the industry across the world,
Speaker 1: let alone across not even in in in the country,
Speaker 1: it's not even across the countries. So in the United States,
Speaker 1: there's no federal law that mandates how these companies must perform.
Speaker 1: How they must behave, or even how you must operate
Speaker 1: an e scooter on US roads that falls to a
Speaker 1: city by city basis, so we're talking city governments, which
Speaker 1: means you might be following all the rules in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: for example, when you rent one of these, and then
Speaker 1: you may go visit another city like Austin, Texas, or
Speaker 1: San Francisco, California, and you might not even be aware
Speaker 1: that you're violating local laws because they're different. There there's
Speaker 1: no unifying set of regulations and laws that oversee this,
Speaker 1: so that makes it a very tricky situation as well.
Speaker 1: Then you have places, like I said in London where
Speaker 1: you can buy these e scooters, but technically you can't
Speaker 1: write them anywhere, at least not in public, and uh,
Speaker 1: that is causing confusion. Not everybody knows about this, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions about who is ultimately responsible
Speaker 1: for learning all these things as up to the individual writers,
Speaker 1: is it up to the companies. Most of these companies
Speaker 1: have user agreements that you're supposed to click through or
Speaker 1: you can actually rent one of the scooters, but we
Speaker 1: all know nobody reads those agreements, and some of them
Speaker 1: are incredibly long. One of them had more than eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand words. That's too long if you're ready to rent
Speaker 1: a scooter. I don't know anyone in Atlanta who is
Speaker 1: going to put on their reading glasses and page through
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand words in order to fully understand the agreement
Speaker 1: that they are signing on too before they hop onto
Speaker 1: a scooter and jet down the belt line. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: just the beginning of the challenges around East scooters. I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit more about some of
Speaker 1: the other issues in just a second, but first, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Okay, let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the challenges around scooters. Besides the fact about the confusion
Speaker 1: around laws, we don't really know how the business model
Speaker 1: is going to fan out. Let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the complaints a lot of people have, whether they are
Speaker 1: people who are using these scooters or more likely the
Speaker 1: people who aren't using the scooters, so grouchy old people
Speaker 1: like me. Uh And I fully admit I'm a grouchy
Speaker 1: old person who doesn't use scooters, and I have a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about scooters in particular. Now, to get
Speaker 1: it out of the way, I do think these scooters
Speaker 1: are a good idea. I like the idea of people
Speaker 1: having an alternative for that last mile problem of getting
Speaker 1: around those short distances, and I would much prefer to
Speaker 1: see them using something like a scooter than a car
Speaker 1: to do that. But it's not really certain that that's
Speaker 1: what people are doing. If people were in fact replacing
Speaker 1: car rides with scooter rides, then you could argue this
Speaker 1: is alleviating traffic issue. It's got a lower environmental impact,
Speaker 1: it's kind of lower wear and tear impact on the infrastructure.
Speaker 1: You would think of that as a good thing. But
Speaker 1: according to at least some surveys, that doesn't appear to
Speaker 1: be the way a lot of people are using these devices.
Speaker 1: There was a survey and Raleigh, North Carolina where they
Speaker 1: were asking people who were using the scooters why were
Speaker 1: they using it, like, for what purpose? And about a
Speaker 1: third of them answered that they were using them for
Speaker 1: trips that they would otherwise use a car to do.
Speaker 1: But two thirds of them we're using them for either
Speaker 1: just you know, just to go out and have fun
Speaker 1: on a scooter because they are fun to ride. That
Speaker 1: they from what I understand, I haven't done it personally,
Speaker 1: but you can really zoom around on those things, and
Speaker 1: once you've got your balance, it's apparently pretty addicting to
Speaker 1: go out there and just kind of have fun. So
Speaker 1: there is an appeal there, so some people will just
Speaker 1: ride them just to ride them. They're not riding them
Speaker 1: in order to get from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: It's all about the journey, not the destination. But that
Speaker 1: means that you're not saving anything by doing it right.
Speaker 1: You're not sparing the city another car ride. Maybe you
Speaker 1: would have just stayed home instead of getting on that scooter.
Speaker 1: In other cases, it may be that they were replacing
Speaker 1: a trip that they would have otherwise taken, either by
Speaker 1: foot or on bicycle. Well, here's the downside to that
Speaker 1: is that, yes, E scooters have a lower curbon footprint
Speaker 1: than a car, but they have a higher carbon footprint
Speaker 1: than walking or bike riding. And this is where we
Speaker 1: have to remember that environmental issues are very complicated. You
Speaker 1: have to look at the big picture. You can't just
Speaker 1: look at an individual action and then judge everything on that.
Speaker 1: So in the case of EA scooters, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: where's the carbon footprint? These are electronic scooters, They're using electricity,
Speaker 1: they're not burning fossil fuels, so there's no exhaust that
Speaker 1: you're giving out or anything like that. But you have
Speaker 1: to look at the full picture of what it takes
Speaker 1: for the East scooters to work, and that includes manufacturing, maintenance, repair,
Speaker 1: and just the the operation of the business itself. So
Speaker 1: let me explain that. With manufacturing, you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: manufacturing the aluminum frames, you're talking about the lithium ion batteries,
Speaker 1: which have their own environmental impact, and then you have
Speaker 1: the shipping from overseas because almost all of these are
Speaker 1: made in China, so there's that part that's also in
Speaker 1: the overall carbon footprint for the scooters. Those ion batteries
Speaker 1: apparently aren't the best. They have to be replaced every
Speaker 1: three d to one thousand charges, sometimes less than that,
Speaker 1: so a replacement typically is required every one to three months.
Speaker 1: So we're going through these lithium ion batteries pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: So you think about that every three months or so,
Speaker 1: you're replacing the lithium ion batteries on your fleet of
Speaker 1: of scooters. And if you have thousands of scooters, that's
Speaker 1: thousands of these lithium ion batteries you have to ditch. Now,
Speaker 1: ideally you would have to find some way to recycle
Speaker 1: those because lithium ion batteries contains stuff in them that
Speaker 1: you don't want to get out into the environment. In general,
Speaker 1: you want to be responsible with how you dispose of those,
Speaker 1: but electronic recycling is pretty limited. I've done episodes about
Speaker 1: E recycling and how E waste is a huge problem.
Speaker 1: It's very tricky. There are organizations out there that are
Speaker 1: all about E recycling. Some of them are less than
Speaker 1: um reliable or ethical. Uh. There have been reports of
Speaker 1: recycling centers that end up just shipping everying overseas to
Speaker 1: a different country where they'll handle it much more cheaply
Speaker 1: than you would see here in America or in other
Speaker 1: parts of of the world, and that ends up creating
Speaker 1: its own problems. Really, you're just shipping this potentially hazardous
Speaker 1: stuff to a different place and making those people deal
Speaker 1: with it. So that's not great. On top of that,
Speaker 1: the general operation of these eat scooters, especially that you know,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about the dackless east scooters, the kinds
Speaker 1: where you can pick up and ride and then drop
Speaker 1: off wherever you want within the operating area of the service. UM.
Speaker 1: A big problem with that is that at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the day and at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you have crews going around. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they're picking up scooters from all over the place and
Speaker 1: bringing them back so they can be recharged. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of the day, they're dropping them off in different locations,
Speaker 1: um usually by the the high traffic of use. So
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot more being delivered at places like
Speaker 1: the belt line, for example, than in a corner on
Speaker 1: my street where I live. There's we never see them there,
Speaker 1: but they're always at the belt line. Um well, those
Speaker 1: cars that are being operated, it's typically being operated by
Speaker 1: private contractors who are working from their own personal vehicles,
Speaker 1: and most of those are fueled by fossil fuels. So
Speaker 1: you're still using cars with these scooters to deliver and
Speaker 1: pick up all those scooters. And yeah, that's not the
Speaker 1: direct operation of the scooter itself, but is in the
Speaker 1: operation of the scooter business. So you still have to
Speaker 1: count it with the carbon footprint for the business itself.
Speaker 1: And you have to also factor into the idea that
Speaker 1: those are car rides that wouldn't exist without those scooters, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole reason why the people are going
Speaker 1: out there to pick them up or drop them off.
Speaker 1: Is because the scooters. Without the scooters, there's no reason
Speaker 1: for those trips, so those are added trips with a
Speaker 1: fossil fuel burning vehicle that wouldn't have existed otherwise. The
Speaker 1: bottom line is, at least according to some estimations, a
Speaker 1: scooter ride creates about half the carbon footprint of a
Speaker 1: car ride when you take in all the factors together,
Speaker 1: and that to me is shocking. I I am very
Speaker 1: curious to find out more about the methodology of determining
Speaker 1: that figure. It is hard for me to believe that
Speaker 1: it's that much. But with the requirement of replacing that
Speaker 1: lithium ion battery every three months, maybe you know, when
Speaker 1: you measure the length of the average lifespan of a scooter,
Speaker 1: maybe that's how it all shakes out. Anyway, that's a
Speaker 1: real drawback. That's a real challenge for these scooters is
Speaker 1: that they're being marketed as eco friendly, but when you
Speaker 1: take a closer look, you realize it's not that eco friendly,
Speaker 1: at least not more so than walking or biking would be.
Speaker 1: Assuming you're not riding a electric bike that would have
Speaker 1: some of the same issues as an electric scooter. So
Speaker 1: that's another issue. Beyond that, you've got all the things
Speaker 1: that are irritating people, like the fact that you'll see
Speaker 1: people using these dockless e scooters and then they'll just
Speaker 1: drop them off wherever, either or not even parking them,
Speaker 1: because I see them just laying down everywhere where no
Speaker 1: one bothered to, you know, use little kickstand to keep
Speaker 1: them standing up, or uh. Worse than that, they'll be
Speaker 1: blocking sidewalks. So let me tell you another story, one
Speaker 1: that is from personal experience. I was walking home not
Speaker 1: very long ago when I saw about half a block
Speaker 1: ahead of me there was a scooter that had been
Speaker 1: left and it was essentially blocking about half the sidewalk. Now,
Speaker 1: for me, that's not a big deal. Right when I
Speaker 1: walk up there, I could just walk around it. But
Speaker 1: between me and this scooter, also heading in the same
Speaker 1: direction I was going, was a woman on who was
Speaker 1: using an electric wheelchair. And so here's a woman who
Speaker 1: is in a wheelchair that takes up a good amount
Speaker 1: of the sidewalk and she's zoomed ahead of me. She
Speaker 1: actually managed to maneuver around the scooter before I could
Speaker 1: get to it. My plan was to run up there
Speaker 1: and move it out all the way for her, but
Speaker 1: she actually ended up going a little bit off the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: off to the edge and around. Now that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a big big deal either, but it had been
Speaker 1: raining in Atlanta not long before that, and her wheel
Speaker 1: was spinning for a little bit while she was trying
Speaker 1: to get around this thing, so she had a possibility
Speaker 1: of getting stuck out there. Um, and you start looking
Speaker 1: at things like this and like this is just one
Speaker 1: example in one day of how the scooter, which presented
Speaker 1: a minor inconvenience to me, could be a real issue
Speaker 1: for somebody else. This is something that a lot of
Speaker 1: cities are trying to deal with right now. There's generally
Speaker 1: rules and just about every city that has allowed these
Speaker 1: businesses to operate about where you can and cannot leave
Speaker 1: these scooters. Not that I think most people are paying
Speaker 1: too much attention to it, because I never really see
Speaker 1: a lot of adherence to those rules. That makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if those rules are actually being communicated out to
Speaker 1: the people who are using these scooters. I would like
Speaker 1: to think that most people would say, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: that was fun, we had a good time. Let's just
Speaker 1: make sure these are tucked off to the side and
Speaker 1: we stand them up properly, rather than that was fun.
Speaker 1: This isn't mine. I don't care what happens to it.
Speaker 1: Let's just let it hit the ground and lay wherever
Speaker 1: it is, and then we'll just keep on going on
Speaker 1: our married a little way. Um, maybe that's me being
Speaker 1: too hopeful, but it's something that we definitely need to
Speaker 1: address because the more of these inconvenient and inconsiderate incidents
Speaker 1: that happened within the community, the more likely you're going
Speaker 1: to have people opposing them from being there in the
Speaker 1: first place, and the more likely you're going to see
Speaker 1: actions on a civic level against these companies, thus making
Speaker 1: it even harder to have a working business model. And
Speaker 1: that means eventually you'll see these dockless East Scooters go
Speaker 1: away if those things actually happen, And I think that
Speaker 1: would also be a shame, because I think they can
Speaker 1: provide a valuable service. It's just that in the implementation
Speaker 1: as it stands, that's not what's happening. Well, I have
Speaker 1: a few more final thoughts on this sort of rambly
Speaker 1: update episode to East Scooters, but before I jump on
Speaker 1: all that, let's take another quick break. Okay, I know
Speaker 1: this is a bit rambley. It's largely because this is
Speaker 1: more of an extemporaneous episode than when I typically do.
Speaker 1: But um, I wanted to talk also about something that
Speaker 1: Tarry and I were talking about off Mike. Actually was
Speaker 1: on Mike, but she probably edited all that part out
Speaker 1: because you would only hear me anyway then you just
Speaker 1: hear me get increasingly frustrated at my producer. No, we
Speaker 1: were having discussions about the feasibility of these East scooters
Speaker 1: on roads as opposed to sidewalks, and that's largely because Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I mean, Atlanta is one of those cities where you
Speaker 1: really kind of need a car to get around effectively,
Speaker 1: and only a small percentage of the roads in Atlanta
Speaker 1: have something like a bike lane. And if it does
Speaker 1: have a bike lane, that's what you're supposed to ride
Speaker 1: these scooters in. If you're on one, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be in those sort of lanes to try and stay
Speaker 1: all the way of the main flow of traffic. But
Speaker 1: there are very few of those lanes in Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: that raises some additional problems. The East scooter writers are
Speaker 1: supposed to follow the sact same rules of the road
Speaker 1: as a motorist. So that would mean that you would
Speaker 1: have to come to a complete stop at a stop
Speaker 1: sign or stop at an intersection where there's a red light.
Speaker 1: You are supposed to stay on the road. You're not
Speaker 1: supposed to drive through the crosswalk. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: drive on the sidewalks at all. And that's scary. Like
Speaker 1: these scooters offer no protection between you and the traffic
Speaker 1: that's around you. So those of us who have studied
Speaker 1: physics know that four sequels mass times acceleration. Well, the
Speaker 1: acceleration and the mass of a car is much greater
Speaker 1: than that of someone on a scooter, and thus we
Speaker 1: have this potential for a disaster. Even if the person
Speaker 1: writing the scooter is being careful, accidents can happen, and
Speaker 1: when they do happen, it's always going to end up
Speaker 1: much worse for the person on the scooter than it
Speaker 1: is a person in a car. Um this is a
Speaker 1: real challenge. You would argue it makes more sense to
Speaker 1: ride on the sidewalk to stay out of the flow
Speaker 1: of traffic, but then you also have the issue of
Speaker 1: pedestrian safety, and there's also a problem in Atlanta of
Speaker 1: sidewalk stability. I would argue certain areas of Atlanta do
Speaker 1: not have the best sidewalks. Then again, certain areas of
Speaker 1: Atlanta don't have the best roads either. Case in Point
Speaker 1: pontsti Lean Avenue, which are offices off of about half
Speaker 1: of it is under steel plates at the moment, just
Speaker 1: waiting for those potholes to get filled. But this raises
Speaker 1: a real issue you start looking at this last mile solution.
Speaker 1: But there are other elements to the problem that the
Speaker 1: last male solution does not address. Scooters are not acceptable
Speaker 1: to ride on all road conditions, and yet the laws
Speaker 1: of the city state you can only ride them on
Speaker 1: the road. And like I said, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other cities that follow the exact same pathway. There
Speaker 1: are also these rules that you have to follow, the
Speaker 1: rules of traffic that again, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the scooter operators don't know, not not the companies renting
Speaker 1: them out, but the people actually using them. And as
Speaker 1: far as I know, there's no education program from any
Speaker 1: of these companies to alert people to actually follow those rules.
Speaker 1: And it's usually in those terms of service where one
Speaker 1: of the thousands of words that's in there, not one
Speaker 1: phrase will say make sure you follow all local rules
Speaker 1: and regulations for the use of east scooters. Well, if
Speaker 1: you don't know what those are, and if you're not
Speaker 1: reading these terms of service because you don't have an
Speaker 1: hour and a half to dedicate to it, that doesn't
Speaker 1: do much good. And then we end up seeing these
Speaker 1: other kinds of situations pop up. There are cities in Asia,
Speaker 1: for example, in Japan in particular, where you actually have
Speaker 1: to have a license to ride one of these scooters,
Speaker 1: which means you have to go through the whole process
Speaker 1: of of training and to demonstrate that you are capable
Speaker 1: of operating one of these vehicles safely and accountably. And
Speaker 1: that to me is interesting. It's it's essentially putting you
Speaker 1: through the same sort of process as getting a driver's
Speaker 1: license for a car UH, and the scooters are required
Speaker 1: to have stuff on them to indicate things like turn
Speaker 1: signals and UH and other elements that are standard on
Speaker 1: motor vehicles. I don't think we're necessarily going to see
Speaker 1: that translate over to the United States or other parts
Speaker 1: of the world. I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily,
Speaker 1: although it obviously starts to restrict who can use them,
Speaker 1: and part of the appeal of these services, is that
Speaker 1: anyone with a smartphone and a credit card can essentially
Speaker 1: use one of them, uh, despite local laws that restricted
Speaker 1: So we're on an impass here. This is one of
Speaker 1: those issues where business and technology has outpaced regulations and law,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, there's a lot of confusion, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of frustration, there's a lot of resistance and
Speaker 1: various communities around the world when it comes to these
Speaker 1: East scooters. My personal opinion is that there does need
Speaker 1: to be some form of training that has to happen
Speaker 1: before you can actually use one of these vehicles. I
Speaker 1: would make that part of the app, but that comes
Speaker 1: with its own challenges because you're going to have to
Speaker 1: make sure that you have versions of that app that
Speaker 1: are specific to particular municipalities. You would have to have
Speaker 1: an app that is applicable for Atlanta versus San Francisco,
Speaker 1: versus Portland versus Boston, and that does mean that you
Speaker 1: have to have a larger investment on the part of
Speaker 1: the companies that are renting these things out. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: more you're asking the companies to invest, the more it's
Speaker 1: going to take for them to see a return on
Speaker 1: that investment. And we already talked about how this is
Speaker 1: a business model that is questionable as far as whether
Speaker 1: or not it can actually maintain profitability. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things you have to balance. Ultimately, I want,
Speaker 1: I think people's safety is the thing we have to
Speaker 1: be concerned about most. After that utility and availability should
Speaker 1: fall in there somewhere. But if we aren't concerned about safety,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep seeing incidents where accidents are going
Speaker 1: to result in people having, you know, tragic outcomes. I
Speaker 1: saw one statistic that stated that on average, it was
Speaker 1: you would see an accident with every five thousand miles
Speaker 1: driven on these scooters collectively. That is and that is
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible accident. Right, if you're talking about cars,
Speaker 1: accident rates tend to be in the hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of miles driven. You start talking about accidents on that
Speaker 1: scale rather than on the thousands of miles. So that
Speaker 1: tells us that people aren't being terribly careful or they're
Speaker 1: in situations that just lead to more accidents, So we
Speaker 1: need to be more cognizant of that. On top of that,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these cities have helmet laws associated
Speaker 1: with these scooters. But when you're grabbing a dockless scooter,
Speaker 1: chances are there's no helmet there either, which means they're
Speaker 1: either having to carry a helmet with you everywhere you go,
Speaker 1: or you're just doing without in defiance of local regulations.
Speaker 1: And that's a real problem too. So what's the solution here,
Speaker 1: I think, again, following Japan's lead a little bit, maybe
Speaker 1: not to that crazy. I shouldn't say crazy that extreme
Speaker 1: extent where you're requiring a full licensing procedure. Um. Some
Speaker 1: thing along those lines, though, I think would be helpful. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I worry that these scooters are going to cause more
Speaker 1: problems than they solve, And since people are not actually
Speaker 1: using them frequently to replace card trips, you could argue
Speaker 1: they're not really solving a problem at all at the moment,
Speaker 1: at least not a real one. There giving people opportunities
Speaker 1: to have fun, which I think, you know, we need,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that that's enough to justify having
Speaker 1: these scooters everywhere cluttering things up, causing potential safety issues.
Speaker 1: I'm very curious what you guys think. Um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: realized that again I'm coming across as the grouchy old
Speaker 1: man here who doesn't use scooters. I do recognize their
Speaker 1: utility from certain from a certain point of view. UM,
Speaker 1: I just haven't been sold on it. But maybe you
Speaker 1: are a passionate evangelist for scooters. Maybe you have of
Speaker 1: your own personal experiences that show the real use case
Speaker 1: for these scoots scooters and why they should be everywhere.
Speaker 1: If so, then I think you should get in touch
Speaker 1: with me. Let me know what you think. I would
Speaker 1: really like to hear your thoughts on it, and if
Speaker 1: you have thoughts on how they can be deployed in
Speaker 1: a way that's responsible and safe and is going to
Speaker 1: meet the needs both of the users and not cause
Speaker 1: huge headaches on a city level. I would love to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts, so you should email me. The email
Speaker 1: addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a line by popping on over
Speaker 1: to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll
Speaker 1: find an archive of all of our past episodes, including
Speaker 1: the e scooter episode that prompted this update and everything else,
Speaker 1: as well as our presence on social media, and you
Speaker 1: also find a link to our online store, where every
Speaker 1: purchase you make goes to help the show. We greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate it. An upcoming episodes, I'm going to have some
Speaker 1: friends of the show on to talk about some interesting stuff,
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, why this episode is so
Speaker 1: rambily in the first place. Uh, full disclosure, peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain. I'd been working on an episode, was really
Speaker 1: excited about it. Realized I knew the perfect person to
Speaker 1: have on the show after I had already done quite
Speaker 1: a bit of work on it. Reached out and they
Speaker 1: agreed to be on the show. So that's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: But it also meant that I spent a whole lot
Speaker 1: of time working on something that I couldn't actually record today.
Speaker 1: So that's why we get the update to East scooters,
Speaker 1: and also the recent stories in Atlanta of the accidents
Speaker 1: kind of prompted it. I also had a weirdly enough
Speaker 1: a ride with a lift driver who told me that
Speaker 1: because I have a voice in media, I should speak
Speaker 1: out about this more of vehemently, and uh, I'd be
Speaker 1: lying if I said that wasn't weighing on me a
Speaker 1: little bit. It did. Um. Although I still think that
Speaker 1: the scooters definitely have a place, we just have to
Speaker 1: figure out the right place for it and I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced we've done that yet. Anyway, keep an ear out
Speaker 1: for those episodes. They'll be coming out over the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. One of them will feature Car Stuff's
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin, who's going to come on and talk about
Speaker 1: Formula one race cars in the near future. So if
Speaker 1: you've got any curiosity about that, it will be satisfied
Speaker 1: in the short future, like within a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: And that's it for me for today, So enjoy. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna be writing on a scooter, be safe and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again. Releasing text Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.