u/scooter_noober_92

Recently a member of ours shared a video of himself riding on the sidewalk. From the video, we can establish some facts:

1. OP's average speed was around 8-10 mph

2. The sidewalk was mostly already clear and a couple times while it was completely clear, he spun the wheels momentarily to test the acceleration/wheel spin, reaching speeds of around 15-20 mph for approximately 2 seconds before slowing down again.

3. In the beginning, he cut off a pedestrian.

4. Once he felt pedestrian traffic was picking up, he made the decision to relocate to the bike lane.

Personally, I see no problem with any of this. Riding at a near walking speed on the sidewalk when it's safe to do so and mostly clear does not seem to present any danger to any pedestrians. Of course had he been going any faster, I would think differently.

As for cutting off the pedestrian, that's just something that happens in life and getting angry over it seems pointless. Cars cut off other cars constantly in the street, cars cut off cyclists, cyclists cut off cars and pedestrians, and pedestrians even occasionally cut each other off and bump into one another. These things just happen when multiple people are going different directions and crossing paths and someone having to stop for a millisecond because they were cut off doesn't seem like something worth getting angry about, especially when the person probably didn't care either and just went on with their day.

What it comes down to is this simple question: Was OP putting anyones safety at risk, and I don't believe he was.

On the other hand, I can see there being a valid case for why the bike lane should have been used so I'm kind of torn on this and opinions can always change.

What do the people think? Also some bans were given by Zesty and I, and we will temporarily remove those and give those people a chance to say their piece, as long as everyone respects each other's opinions and doesn't resort to hostility so this can remain a peaceful discussion.

So basically the question is this: should scooters ALWAYS be on the street/bike lane, or are there instances where riding the sidewalk is acceptable. Not necessarily from a legal point since laws are man-made and not immune to infallibility, but more from a moral standpoint.

I came across this post on the other sub and to be frank, it doesn't make any sense to me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricScooters/s/sBhc1gLH7H

Everyone is bashing Hiley because of a few, mostly minor issues. Meanwhile I'd estimate Teverun and Inmotion have somewhere between a 25-50% chance that you won't make it past 1000 miles before your scooter experiences a catastrophic failure. Those failures are so rare with Hiley, we never even hear about them. Even on this post, there's the main poster expressing his complaints (still with no credibility as he said he would post videos/pictures and hasn't yet + someone in the comments said he crashed his scooter although I don't know how true that is.) And then there's the other guy who had issues with his Evo GTR.

So 2 whole actual complaints, while the vast majority of customers have been satisfied with their purchases. Meanwhile, just about every day there is an issue of some kind mentioned with a Teverun scooter and people ignore them completely and happily slobber all over their hairy sack like they are the best ever. I just don't get it. Is anyone able to explain this paradox to me?

Also u/SuckEmOff apparently says they're astroturfed a lot around there which I have not personally seen once. Those are actually just satisfied customers sharing their experiences lol. Teverun on the other hand, actually was and I can share multiple links as proof. So please kind sir, I'm calling you out to put your money where your mouth is. Please show us even 1 post where they were astroturfed.

All this to say there is a ton of misinformation, hypocrisy, and straight lies in the electric scooter industry and it's sad how many people will believe something without actual proof.

But the proof is out there if you guys want to find it. Go to the search bar in that sub and type in any brand and look how many complaints and mentions of issues they have. That's all it takes.

I spent some time in Alaska working on a few boats and seafood processing plants and that period of my life was honestly the most fun I've ever had. I met a bunch of cool people from all over the world, spent time in Dutch Harbor, Juneau, Kodiak, Anchorage and Sitka and left with quite a few stories I'll cherish forever.

While I don't live there anymore, I do often miss it since Alaska is different from every other state I've been to. I had a phone full of the best and most scenic photos I had ever taken in my life, but one day while I was on a tender boat, I was sitting on the stern listening to music while we were underway with my phone on my lap. I was smoking a cigarette and after I finished, I got up forgetting that my phone wasn't in my pocket, it fell to the deck, bounced once and was forever lost in the ocean.

Well good luck with your guys' scavenger hunt. I've never actually heard of Palmer but if I ever visit Alaska again, I will see if I can swing through there and join in on the fun.

In my last post I noticed a couple people broke rule #1, which is punishable by death. I mean uhh… punishable by a lifetime ban. Now obviously I'm not just gonna ban people immediately because they may not have read the rules and are unaware. 

So please, everyone read them and understand what kind of sub this is and if you'd like to be here. It basically aims to be the opposite of r/ElectricScooters.

Of course, Zesty and I are always willing to make any rule adjustments for the betterment of the sub. If someone wants to try to change a rule, they are allowed to present their case as a post proposal, argue their point, and see if the majority of people agree or not after a discussion.

But until the rules are changed, they are what they are and we all need to respect them. I specifically set that rule as #1 because I'd see those comments all the time in the other sub and it was important to me that they not show up here as well. 

Car drivers drive however they want, and they're responsible for only themselves and their own actions. Same with cyclists, motorcyclists, and pretty much everyone else regardless of the law. Yet for some reason many people think that a single scooter rider is responsible for every other rider and that simply isn't true. 

We can talk about it here and it'd be nice to get other people's opinions on this, but as I said, until a certain rule is challenged and amended, let us all stay in accordance with them. Thank you

I took a trip to an island where I had no service so I couldn't get on here for a couple days. But today I took my scooter out for the first time in a few days and some sketchy ass shit happened.

I was on my way to go to a new job I just got hired at and had to ride through this area that's probably the most unsafe area in all of Seattle I'm guessing (12th and Jackson if you're familiar). I literally got jumped once in this same area about 5 years back.

So today I'm passing through on my scooter and a few blocks from there, I was riding slowly on a bike path instead of the street like usual so I could conserve energy because I had a long way to go + the same distance back and didn't bring my charger because I thought the job location was going to be 5 miles away but was actually 18 miles away.

So I'm on my way and hadn't faced any problems up till this point until the bike path got dark and the vibe turned sketchy. There were a bunch of trees covering basically a whole block of the bike path/street and some slangers selling drugs on the corner. Passing them wasn't even the sketchy part though.

Because a few seconds later, I saw up ahead some dude was nodded out, bent over in the very center of the bike lane. It's unlikely to be nodding out in the middle of the bike lane like that but not impossible, so I was planning on just going around him.

But then immediately after I noticed him, I noticed two more dudes right next to him behind a car with the trunk popped open. And then a second after that, a backpack flew into the bike lane!

How is this sketchy you might be wondering? Well I think what happened was the three guys knew each other and were planning to jack my scooter. Not mine specifically, but I just happened to be coming up the path and they could see that my scooter was easily at least a grand. So they had one guy pretend to be high in the middle to slow me down and then one of the other 2 guys threw the backpack into the lane to try to get me to stop so I would be like "hey, one of you guys drop this?" At which point they'd try to take my scooter and put it in the trunk (I doubt it would have even fit lol)

So anyways I popped it into higher gear, merged into the street and avoided that whole mess. And that is why it's important to have a scooter capable of higher speeds. I rarely ever even go past 40 these days but had I been on a lime or something of similar power with weak acceleration, I wouldn't have been able to quickly merge how I did without getting hit or at least honked at by the driver I pulled in front of. But then again, maybe I wouldn't have been a target if I was riding something cheaper...