- Electric scooters are a polarizing new mode of transportation that is taking over American cities.
- I rode electric scooters for the first time during a trip to Los Angeles, and my experience was harrowing, thrilling, and freeing. Ultimately, scooters became my new favorite mode of transportation.
- I tried all the brands I saw, including Lime, Uber, Lyft, and Bird. Of the scooters I tried, Lyft's was by far my favorite.
- However, my experience also taught me that the public safety infrastructure for riders and those who share the road with them needs to be built before scooters can fulfill their revolutionary potential.
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Electric cars, electric bikes, and now electric scooters?
Scooters are a staple of childhood. Many a '90s kid fondly remembers scooting about on their Razor scooters before coming home to a snack of flavor-blasted X-treme cheddar Goldfish and maybe some sliced apples. So it's not astonishing that when electric scooters entered the scene, they generated confusion and ridicule as well as enthusiasm.
No one asked for electric scooters. We were content with our buses and our trains and our cars, and some of us with our bikes. But then, the electric scooter quietly slipped onto our streets.
They proliferated in our urban spaces with the promise of a mode of transportation that was more personal, eco-friendly, and fun. But with new mobility, they also brought new danger. Urban spaces aren't built for electric scooters, but they're filled with them anyway, leading to numerous accidents, injuries, and deaths.
As a regular subway rider, I'm pretty nervous about how I move about in public spaces. I refuse to ride bikes in cities because I'm afraid of getting hit by a car. Driving scares me. I have a driver's license, but I've never owned a car.
But on a recent trip to Los Angeles, I refused to rent a car and found myself without much in the way of public transit. As a result, I used scooters to make distances meet. Here's what it was like to scoot around LA for a week:
