Dangerous? Wtf. So is driving, walking. What a joke, whom put the mayor of houston up to this? I would like to know the thought process behind this, I would’ve thought city leaders would be progressive, this is the opposite of that.
It’s dangerous for a given definition of dangerous. Driving is dangerous for a different definition of dangerous.
The city’s enforcement data from 2021-25 shows 129 scooters seized, 74 impounded, 53 vendor warnings, 13 vendor citations, 3,016 rider warnings, 51 rider citations, five guns seized and eight arrests. No deaths were reflected in the city’s data. Meanwhile, Houston last year recorded its deadliest year on record for vehicle drivers, passengers and pedestrians, with 345 people killed on Houston-area streets, a record high after two years of declines.
over 300 people died last year because of car accidents vs 0 from e-bikes and scooters in the past 4 years and you’re gonna put a curfew on the e-bikes???
Hey, having to avoid these pesky e-bikes on the public road without braking is very dangerous! /s
What were the scooters seized for though? For being scooters in use at night? For riding on sidewalks? If they are making it illegal to use them at night at all, it stands to reason they have been harassing them otherwise. Seizing, aka stealing 129 scooters is bullshit, the police should not be in the business of neither raising money through fines and fees nor seizing property.
Seriously, police should not get money they raise, the city shouldn’t get it either, that’s the only way this tax farming with the police ends. Fines should only be used to enforce the law, and it shouldn’t be a go to method for that either.
The supposedly progressive city of houston is paying for a bunch of thugs that tax farm the poor and seize their often only means of transportation, based on often bad faith enforcements and laws.
For Safety reasons? GTFO, Houston needs new leaders as much as the democrats need new leaders anywhere, no wonder we are losing everywhere, even in the places we are winning we are losing because the enemy owns OUR party.
Cars are a lost cause but maybe we can keep those e-bike deaths at 0 by banning them /s
“One death is too many!”
The second death:
“Fuckit. Whatever. It’s hopeless.”
Man, wait until this mayor finds out about how many people get killed by cars between 8pm and 4am
Ahh, one of those websites that continually redraws the content to try to display more ads
I really should move that up My priority list. I even have an extra raspberry pi I could use for that
I run it on my NAS in a docker
In the mean time you can use AdGuard’s public DNS. They try to bury it because they offer paid things as well but they do have just a normal, public, ad-blocking DNS you can use.
The noscript browser extension can be handy on sites like that.
(I set the default to be trusted though, otherwise too many sites break)
I wish. Apple lets me set automatic reader mode which usually helps, but sites like this seem intentionally broken for that.
This has to be the dumbest elected leadership seeking approval from the dumbest in society.
Reading the Houston city council discussion, it looks like they intend to curfew standup (platform) e-scooters. But the ordinance uses the term “micromobility device”, which is not really a legal definition of anything, and could include lots of things (even 50cc scooters). Hopefully the ordinance could be amended to clarify.
Since the vast majority of these will be app-rented e-scooters (ERYD/Lime), and those companies already operate under franchise agreements with the city, it seems like the easier path would be to put hours-of-operation limits on the rental companies.
Not that I think limiting e-scooters is a good idea, either.
That’s ok, I’m sure anyone using them for transportation can easily use Houston’s excellent subway, right?
making people wear helmets and giving them protected bike lanes would be a way better solution
Yeah, remember all those people killed in that e-bike ramming attack in, was it the Netherlands?
Couldn’t be in the Netherlands, any terrorist ebike is preventively thrown into the canal. Every other ebike too, just in case.
Omg, there are these rent a scooters in this city I was in recently. Every time I saw one I mused about how someones should start throwing them in the river, in the forlorn hope the universe would consider it a good idea. No takers as I’m aware, maybe the universe will come around.
I had a memory of hearing about that somewhere like in the netherlands but couldn’t quite remember, I must have read and forgotten it.
Whats wrong with the scooters? I’ve only had positive experiences with public scooters/ebikes.
Nothing wrong with the scooters per se, it’s the silicon valley companies that set them up, renting them out by like bank card payments through the phone, collecting everyone’s information, including on the street that never agreed to do business with those parasites, that are busy turning us into a society that rents everything and owns nothing.
Not sure how it works in California, I’ve seen implementations where you have to return them to a specific area which seems pointless, but in most cities in China, there’s designated parking along 90% of streets.
This integrates into public transit really well as it allows you to get on or off any bus or subway and hop on any random yellow or green bike. If bought a scooter and only used that, I would have to always return the same route, and there wouldn’t be another bike waiting at my destination.
They also cost literal pennies, like 2 dollars per month of unlimited rides. Or 1 dollar, then 30 cents per ride for 1 week.
It’s a bit different if you’re in a place with kinda bad to non-existent public transit where you’re just renting your only mode of transportation.
It could be done well as you describe it. The ones in the town I was at were not done well, but yes it could be a crucial piece of non car transportation, filling the void between busses and subways and trolleys and personally owned bikes and scooters, that you also have to worry about getting stolen (and the police where I’ve been at put zero effort in catching the thieves of working peoples’ bikes/ property. If not less than zero they will go out of their way to destroy your property themselves if they get a chance society has a passionate hate for the working poor thanks to fox et al.)
But if cheap, and not covered in spyware that gets sold to databrokers with no protections, ie cameras and microphones and gps and sensing other phones and computers and wifi networks nearby and all of that, it could be beneficial. It’s often not though, because we have all the wrong people in charge of every organization in this country with few exceptions, and silicon valley parasites are never one of those exceptions.
Does this include all types of mobility devices like the one below?
I wonder if there’s a racial or class component here. Can’t have the poors or the DEIs getting around. /s
The thing is, they want poor people to have cars. Sure, they can’t reasonably afford them, but they have to have them, so they take a loan and are stuck repaying it. This means they can’t quit their jobs or do anything that could hurt their income. The banks also get to make extra income off of the loan.
I don’t know what it’s like in Houston and I know it’s known for being car centric but where I live the Uber eats / door dash / whatever economy basically runs on those ebikes.
You can also guess the type of person riding them.
Sound the alarm - we need to broadcast a dumb motherfucker alert
Bikes are too much freedom, so they are woke.
The sad thing is, these big cities are heavy democrat. This is one of “our” guys.
My best bet, drivers rage about them like they do bicyclists, not following traffic laws, holding up traffic driving in it, demanding drivers don’t hit them, and the mayor is playing to that road rage, while also scapegoating them for crime, as if cars aren’t more guilty of any crime allegations.
Iowa just tried to pass a bill that would ban all bicycles - not just e-bikes - from any road that has a speed limit over 25 mph (public response was loud and immediate so they scrapped it).
We’re going to see more of these.
Just to help show how stupid of an idea it is (and how little the republicans in charge think about anything) it would have banned ragbrai.
RAGBRAI, The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, is an annual seven-day bicycle ride across the state from July 18-25, 2026. RAGBRAI is the oldest, largest, and longest recreational bicycle touring event in the world.
This rolling celebration of Iowa attracts participants from all 50 states and many foreign countries. It has covered thousands of miles through the years, and hundreds of thousands of riders have hopped in the saddle to pedal part of those miles.
“Biking? What is this woke liberal nonsense!”
Fortunately, the ragbrai issue really helped boost visibility/outage, but yeah. I can’t help but wonder if the people who penned this thing knew that going in, or are truly so incompetent they didn’t consider it as a consequence.
They hate bicyclists, they are playing to the road raging bike haters. You can see it on a lot of subs on reddit, including the dash cam ones, at best there are two warring camps but the bike haters are usually more numerous and aggressive.
They are the same ones surprised no one wants to go to the institute of freedom they forced one of the universities to implement
If there was an extensive bike network instead of John Forster bullshit vehicular cycling, it would make a lot of sense.
But Iowa doesn’t have bicycle infrastructure.
My city alone has over 150 miles of bike trail. Compared to other rural US states (it’s an admittedly low bar) our bike infrastructure is actually pretty good, and the statewide biking community is extremely involved and active. It’s one of the few things keeping me here.
They need to enforce where they can ride. The sidwalk going 30mph is not the correct answer.
I don’t know what it’s like in Houston but here in Toronto the entire food delivery industry would pretty much come to a stand still without e-bikes. do they kill people? no. are they dangerous? I’m sorry but with the way some of those dudes drive those things on sidewalks and the amount of times i’ve seen them hit people…yeah. We’ve also had a few literally blow up on commuter trains to the point where we out right banned them on trains.
There’s more to this that I don’t think people realize. no they don’t kill people but yes they do cause accidents because of the people driving them and feeling like they can ride them on sidewalks or…you know…the batteries will randomly explode.
Isn’t that more of a problem with delivery services though? We don’t have e-bikes here. Delivery drivers ride motorcycles. They still ride on sidewalks, filter between everything and run red lights. From what I understand this happens in places that use normal bikes too. Banning e-bikes will only help with the battery issue.
