[tomhschmidt]

> Last month, the inevitable happened: Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville man, was killed in a collision with an S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His grieving parents have launched a petition to ban the devices in Nashville. “[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed, and we are calling on Mayor David Briley and the Metro Council to ban them from the streets immediately,” the petition reads, arguing that Mr. Gaulke should be “the last victim of an epidemic that the e-scooter companies and local government both refuse to acknowledge.”

Imagine being gaslighted by the auto industry so hard that you think scooters are the problem here, not the car that actually hit and killed someone.

All of the problems that are discussed in this article are artifacts of a culture and cities designed around cars, period.

[gamblor956]

Imagine being gaslighted by the scooter industry so hard you think that cars are the problem here, not the scooter rider that made an illegal turn in front of an SUV which tried but failed to break in time to avoid hitting him.

https://www.wsmv.com/news/bird-responds-after-scooter-rider-... https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/5/20/390590/Brady-Gaulke-D...

All of the problems with scooters are artifacts of a startup culture that disregards safety, and business plans designed around scale, period. [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197713/the-inventor-rev...]

[sithadmin]

>not the scooter rider that made an illegal turn in front of an SUV which tried but failed to break in time to avoid hitting him

I rented a Lime S scooter in Louisville, Kentucky this weekend. It became apparent after about a block that the brake was completely non-functional. I parked the scooter, ended the ride, and reported that it had a defective brake...but yet it remained available for rent in the Lime app anyway. Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The more I think about it, the more I regret not tossing the scooter into the nearest dumpster after the ride was over and the parking photo was submitted.

[mikestew]

Cars obviously are the problem here. Had the SUV driver been riding a motorcycle, there is a high probability the scooter rider would be alive. But instead of saying to car drivers, "you are operating the least-forgiving vehicle, therefore you will bear the most burden of responsibility", we say, "ran over a bike because your were texting? Here's a $120 ticket, pay more attention next time."

[gamblor956]

SUVs generally are more dangerous to the other parties in a collision.

But in this case the scooter rider suffered fatal head injuries because he wasn't wearing a helmet. He would have still suffered fatal head injuries no matter what vehicle hit him since it wasn't the size of the vehicle that mattered here; what mattered was that he fell off his scooter and hit his head.

[esoterica]

SUVs are more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists (and scooter riders) than sedans. If you are using a tool that endangers everyone around you then you bear partial responsibility for increasing the latent risk of transportation even if you’re not the proximate cause of a given accident.

[gamblor956]

True, but in this case the scooter rider would have died whatever vehicle hit him--truck, SUV, sedan, or motorcycle.

[RhodesianHunter]

Where do you draw the line between individual responsibility and what businesses should shoulder as far as above and beyond safety measures?

I don't necessarily have an answer, but saying scooter companies are responsible for someone's death in the same comment as you mention an illegal uturn seems contradictory to me.

[gamblor956]

That second part was a separate paragraph because it was a separate response to a different part of the comment I was responding to. It wasn't directly related to my comments on the responsibility of the scooter rider.

[edgi]

Imagine being gaslighted by the gun industry so hard you think that neither cars, nor scooters kill people. People kill people.

[happytoexplain]

You've pointed out that the omnipresence and logistics of cars are fundamental to entire cultures and cities, and yet when something new is introduced that clashes with that, you're claiming that the people calling for the revocation of the new thing are gaslighted by "proponents" of the established thing - the thing that is cemented into the design of the world already. Given the options to roll back the scooters or redesign a part of civilization, though the latter may be an ideal, surely the parents of the dead calling for the former are not being unreasonable, and even more surely are not "gaslighted"?

[onemoresoop]

Scooters and cars are not compatible on the same roads. Whoever wants to risk their life could drive these scooters. However, when a company makes scooters widely available and with no barriers (e.g. no scooter licence) the perceived risk lowers as in "everybody does it, must be ok" or "if it's legal it's safe" type of judgement.

Banning scooters is not a smart idea but the entry level should be stepped up a few notches. Maybe operating one should require some safety lessons. Or maybe a licence that can be lost as incentive to not do stupid things.

The alternative is to not do anything and learn from accidents and deaths of others. This is the long and painful road.

[wil421]

The scooters are the problems because they do not obey the traffic laws.

Atlanta just created scooter ordinances and the local news is showing announcements from APD with the new regulations. No riding on sidewalks or leaving scooters on sidewalks. You must act like a car and move with the flow of traffic like a car. Fines will be given out.

I used to walk over abandoned scooters on my commute every day when I worked downtown.

[btbuildem]

And it wasn't the car, either. IT WAS THE DRIVER CONTROLLING THE CAR. We've been brainwashed so hard, people can't even use language to describe what actually happened, lest responsibility fall on the individual.

[mistermann]

> people can't even use language to describe what actually happened

This is a good point, although I'm not sure sure I agree with the cause or motive. But if one starts paying very close attention to the general nature and specific wording used in forum conversations, I think it starts to become clear that very often participants believe they are discussing "just the facts", when in reality they are often discussing things in the form of a story, or a particular perspective which usually only takes into consideration a subset of all the relevant facts.

In this case, new technology has been broadly deployed into society without corresponding training, and a young man has ended up dead. It seems unlikely the entirety of the fault rests in one place, but rather could plausibly be attributed to any number of things that had they been done differently, the gut-wrenching emotional pain this family has to live with for the rest of their life could have been avoided.

I believe if each of us made a serious effort to be more mindful of our thoughts and words, we could perhaps move closer to a society where these realities can be discussed in a more objective manner, and we could enjoy both the advancements of technology, while increasing the likelihood that everyone gets home to their loved ones at the end of the day.

[gamblor956]

It wasn't the driver of the car, either.

It was the guy on the scooter that made an illegal turn in front of the SUV, disregarding traffic laws put into place precisely to prevent the type of accident that occurred.

[esoterica]

And you are so incapable of parsing basic human communication that you don’t understand the use of simple metonymy.