Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/30/uk-to-allow-electric-scooters.html
…
7 Likes
You must rent them, not own them.
This seems like it could be easily challenged in the courts, yes?
7 Likes
Or by stealing them and reflashing the firmware. Or putting fake corporate livery on yours!
19 Likes
I’m sure this time… things will be different!
I hope they start by renting one, see how that goes, and then in a year start renting two.
10 Likes
I live in Cambridge, and it’s news to me that these things aren’t legal. You can’t walk near the train station without nearly getting flattened by one.
5 Likes
. . .or by creating a corporation or LLC or whatever and renting it from that entity.
A friend of mine told the story of a beach house in Panama that his friends built. The land could, by law, only be owned by Panamanians, not by foreigners. So the group (who were all U.S. citizens) created a Panamanian corporation to own it, and they owned all the shares. Boom.
16 Likes
So capitalism has passed the rent-seeking phase and moved on to the rent-requiring phase?
What could the possible justification be for allowing corporate e-scooters but not individual use ones?
7 Likes
Bollocks.
1 Like
So feudalism, but with capital markets and zero-hours contracts for the serfs?
Hello future!
4 Likes
One could rationalize it a few ways, including saying that private scooters could be un-trackable, and be free of speed governors. I don’t think that is sufficient, mind you, but there are at least plausible arguments that could be made.
1 Like
Don’t privately owned cars/motorcycles/trucks/etc set a fairly definitive precedent that private vehicles can still be sufficiently regulated?
9 Likes
One would think, but as the price point goes down I think it becomes harder to regulate. You can’t charge (well, shouldn’t) massive yearly registration fees for a scooter.
2 Likes
Not to mention how most scooter rental entities seem to be doing their best to set a fairly definitive precedent that rental scooter entities cannot be sufficiently regulated…
6 Likes
Yeah, I’d think that would be the key driver, so to speak :-/
1 Like
Toryism.
“What is Toryism but organised spivvery?”
Nye Bevan, July 1948.
He was right then and he still is.
10 Likes
Implicit in the news is that the scooters will be rented from companies contracted by local governments, Bird or whatever.
The really bad Britishy omnishamblesy part will be these operators externalizing expenses to the public. These schemes could easily end up being policed at great cost.
11 Likes
Oh good. I was worried for a moment that there might be potential for corruption.
10 Likes
Los Angeles is being sued by the ACLU for tracking rental scooters. That technology would fit in will with the UK’s love of surveillance cameras.
3 Likes
UK courts…? Good luck with that.
And yeah, fuck the Tories.
4 Likes
Great - another excuse for the wankers at Lime to add to the discarded rental bikes currently littering Milton Keynes.
3 Likes
