In “The Salmon of Doubt” Douglas Adams wrote "I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
I suspect I am just about to illustrate the great man's statement, as I am pushing my 9th decade and so I should be suspicious anything invented since 1975. (This not exactly true as we accepted the home computer, the Internet, eMail and desktop publishing, but do not get us started on mobile phones.)
Tier, an electric scooter company (https://www.tier.app/), is now offering its scooters in the centre of Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. The three city governments hope this will encourage more people to leave their cars at home. It’s a fairly simple idea. You download the app and when you are one of the many European cities where Tier is active you find the location of the next scooter; once on board you start your trip using the app and away you go. Costs: 1€ to book and 15 cents a minute for your journey. Payment is via credit card or PayPal.
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| Tier electric scooters underway in Oslo ©Tier |
I am not taken with electric scooters. Don't get me wrong I can see the attraction. One can nip across town like a downhill mountain biker flowing downhill, swinging round obstacles with no effort and arriving perhaps windblown but sweat free even in the 35°Celcius or more heat we've had in Mannheim this summer. It is a cool concept in every sense of the word.
However cost, safety, carbon dioxide production and other street users are factors that need to be taken into account. To start with cost: buses and trams in Mannheim are frequent during the day and a trip from the main railway station to the heart of the shopping streets costs 1.40€. Next Bike also offers hire bicycles that cost 1€ per half hour. You could, of course, walk that costs nothing at all. These have a rack to carry shopping or a baggage unlike the electric scooters where one needs a rucksack to carry luggage. Where do you leave the scooter at the end of trip, so that passersby do not fall over it? The Next Bikes can only be left at one of the many stands in the metropolitan area.
The safety aspects give me the willies. Taking Mannheim station as an example if one wants to go into the city centre, one needs to know where the cycle paths are and it is not that obvious. Traffic in the Mannheim city centre is busy and I would not be happy mixing with cars, motor bikes, buses and delivery lorries on what I suspect I would find is an unstable vehicle, especially when the recommended way to indicate you are going to change lane is to stick your left or right leg out. To a certain extent cycling in heavy traffic is also difficult, but I would feel safer on a bike than balancing on a metre long narrow board especially as I need to wave my legs about. How are the scooters crossing tram lines? There are a lot of tramlines in Mannheim.
The safety aspects give me the willies. Taking Mannheim station as an example if one wants to go into the city centre, one needs to know where the cycle paths are and it is not that obvious. Traffic in the Mannheim city centre is busy and I would not be happy mixing with cars, motor bikes, buses and delivery lorries on what I suspect I would find is an unstable vehicle, especially when the recommended way to indicate you are going to change lane is to stick your left or right leg out. To a certain extent cycling in heavy traffic is also difficult, but I would feel safer on a bike than balancing on a metre long narrow board especially as I need to wave my legs about. How are the scooters crossing tram lines? There are a lot of tramlines in Mannheim.
There
is the suggestion that the scooters use less energy and generate less
CO2 than petrol or diesel engined cars both in their manufacture and
daily use.This is true for manufacture, but electric scooters are not as
environmentally friendly as they seem. The scooters are picked up
daily, taken a central workshop, charged, maintained and returned to
those places where it is thought they will see the most custom. I
suspect the van or pickup moving the scooters is a petrol- or
diesel-powered vehicle.
As a pedestrian I am not over happy about the prospect of a silent fast 70 or so Kg packet (rider plus vehicle) sneaking up on me on the footpath. Now I know that riding on footpaths is verboten - forbidden, but so is using a mobile phone while driving. As a occasional (very occasional) motorist I am also not too happy about the thought of a speed king or queen zooming up the footpath in front of our house as I am backing the car out across the footpath onto the road.
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