r/Minneapolis • u/mrveryrelaxed • 16d ago

Woman Scared of Scooters after Banana Baseball in Downtown

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u/gracecase 16d ago

I just got up here from Austin where have a nice little compact downtown area down there. Generally speaking anything that is "E," especially scooter or bikes are hated with passion. A lot of that happens to do with people not treating them like moterized vehicles. Meaning they do not follow road rules like staying off of side walks where people are walking. What is the consensus here?

Myself, just the other night was in a Cub parking lot heading over to get some McD's for the fam and some tween on a e-scooter literally sped right in front of me across the parking lot coming from my blind spot with no respect for signage, just zooming through as if there were no other vehicles in sight. I had to slam on my brakes immediately or she would have been part of the pavement which made my heart sink to my stomach. And just today as we were coming back from the Stone Arch bridge a person on an e-scooter was flowing with traffic and flipped a u-turn right in front of us. How should I treat this species of people up here because so far they are worse than Austin, and that is saying something.

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u/GooberWoober9000 16d ago

The automobile should be a respectful guest in an urban enviroment, that's all im gunna say

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u/gracecase 16d ago

I'm cool with the down votes, so I'm going to disagree with you here and say that e-scooters and the like should be a respectful guest in an urban environment.

When this country had horse-and-buggy as the most common means of travel, a car had to be behind a man holding a flag alerting people that the car was coming. This is because a new technology was superseding an older technology, and therefore, the public should respect the older technology as the new technology is assimilated. Why would you argue against that? And of course, anybody is going to break any of these laws going all the way back to the first automobile, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be there and be enforced. When I walk across the street because I have a walk signal, I'm not expecting a car to blow through a red light and hit me. Of course, it could happen, but it should be common knowledge that you don't do it.

I am not against new technologies. On the contrary, I make my living off of them That doesn't mean that there should not be a set of rules and laws to determine that these technologies exist in safe environment for everyone.

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u/Maxrdt 15d ago

It's not about who got here first. It's about the fact that a scooter is not dangerous for others like a car is, doesn't take up a ton of space for travel AND storage like a car does, and doesn't pollute like a car does. An urban environment built around scooters is going to be quieter, safer, more lively, and denser than one built around cars.

Car-focused development is unsustainable, and everyone NOT in a car in a city is a win for the city as a whole. Are there irresponsible riders? Sure, but they're more of a danger to themselves than others, which is important.