by Bob Pinzler
Paris, France was one of the first major cities in the world to embrace e-scooters rentals as an alternative means of transportation during the last decade. While the Paris Metro and bus system had been serving the city for generations, to general acclaim, that new form of people movement would become a more “hip” addition in a city with jammed traffic and parked car lined streets.
Yet, on April 2, the people of Paris voted overwhelmingly, by 90 percent to 10, to ban e-scooters rentals from Parisian streets.
The reasons are familiar to us all. People who use these modes of transportation can exhibit some of the most antisocial behaviors, making what could have been a reasonable transit option into a pariah.
Chief among these behaviors is the belief that rules do not apply to the users of e-scooters. Because of flagrantly dangerous flaunting of traffic laws by Parisian e-scooter riders, driving in the city became filled with terror.
In addition, users believed that once they were finished with their rental, they left their vehicles wherever whim told them to leave it. The blocking of city sidewalks and streets with discarded e-scooters created not only visual pollution, but pedestrian hazards.
Similar situations were created as e-scooter companies tried to force their way into our beach cities. The ensuing recklessness and the resulting disregard for the property of others led to them being banned from our streets. However, Los Angeles continues its program, despite criticism in the same vein as that expressed by the voters in Paris.
When serving on the grand jury last year, I had daily experiences with scooters left haphazardly across sidewalks in downtown LA. In a three block walk from the parking lot to the jury building, every day at least one scooter was lying across the sidewalk. Others were seemingly pushed into precious parking spaces. One appeared to have been crushed, likely by a vehicle pulling into the space without having been seen by the driver.
But, then again, maybe it wasn’t inadvertent. One time when I was walking on Abbot Kinney Blvd. in Venice, I saw a man who had tripped over a scooter left on the sidewalk pick it up and throw it into the street, causing a traffic jam on that busy road. Perhaps that had been the fate of the crushed one near City Hall.
Advocates for e-scooters have some very strong environmental justifications for their existence. However, as long as humans operate them, their utility will be tarnished by the havoc they can cause.
That is why ninety percent of Parisians wanted them gone. ER
