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.”
I don’t think traffic safety is the reason. I think it’s crimes being done.
I don’t think criminals using scooters is a legitimate reason to ban scooters. Criminals use cars even more, they are much more effective for crimes. That can’t be the real reason. What is the real reason? Just they want to pick on them? Maybe the car drivers hate them all like they do bicyclists in many cities, fume of them jamming them up, not having to follow the same traffic laws. That is it I bet. This is a bad faith persecution of laws against car owners road rage targets.
I don’t agree with the ban, but you’re a bit naive in your thinking on how easy crimes can be in a crowded city when you’re able to buy something for $600 with no registration, plates, brand identity, or colors, that can go 30mph silently while being no wider than your own shoulders at its thickest part, that can be easily stashed, brought indoors, thrown over a fence, etc. it’s currently the perfect urban crime vehicle unless you’re trying to steal something that won’t fit in a backpack.
Rob a place from a car and security cam and witness see a “red Honda Civic, plate number 123-3210” or “he went that way on a scooter”
I mean you can do the same thing with a bike, or on foot. How are scooters furthering an epidemic of crime? I just don’t see it being a legitimate complaint, although I don’t doubt they cherry pick a few crimes that have happened off of them, but with that same logic they could ban any form of transport. I mean think about being on foot. They have no registration (yet,) they can move in and out of streets and buildings, are virtually untraceable, can go from 0 to 20 mph in seconds.
With the likely same logic they used for this ban we could ban that foot traffic I bet. Or bikes. If there was a real concern about safety and crime they could regulate that part of it and not have a blanket ban all night that makes this form of transport impossible for many people. A safe-ish way for someone that had some drinks at the bar to get home without ruining their life, or the guy to get to work without having a vehicle, etc.
This Mayor Hates Freedom, and needs to be replaced. Maybe he’s afraid of the dark.
Ok. Be on foot. How far away from home or public transport you going? You faster running than a cop or someone else you pissed off? How far are you getting on foot?
Also, bikes are bigger, easier to identify, accelerate slower, and speaking as someone who road bikes, getting to 30mph is a hell of a lot of work on a flat ground. Let alone a hill.
So you are contending an epidemic of scooter crime justifies this ban to a degree? I am contending these laws are in bad faith with flawed logic and their stated reasons are ad hoc, as they can’t be honest about their real reasons because they would look like assholes, which they are.
Man, wait until this mayor finds out about how many people get killed by cars between 8pm and 4am
Third shift? Night jobs? What are those?
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?
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.
making people wear helmets and giving them protected bike lanes would be a way better solution
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.
