Our preemptive defense of dockless

Despite our enthusiasm for our spiffy new L-shaped friends, the scooters aren’t without their detractors. Since they don’t require you to dock them at a station, like a traditional bikeshare (or lock them to a post, like JUMP) people can leave them where they want.

While all the scooter companies ask riders to park them responsibly (near a bike rack, leaned on a wall, and definitely not in the middle of a sidewalk), scooters are occasionally left in less-than-desirable places, where you’re forced to step over them or — when parked up a tree — duck your head.

This has prompted some NIMBYs to ask for the scooters to be taken away.

Take that last (non-ironic) tweet, from Katy Tang. She disregards the GIANT CAR obstructing the crosswalk, and only focuses on the scooter abandoned on the street.

It’s emblematic of “car blindness” in our society: we have grown so accustomed to the hulking metal death machines on our streets, so used to their presence, so comfortable with drivers’ right of way (both on the road, and in the policies that shape our cities) that we no longer see them. We can’t see how much space has been sacrificed for automobiles:

If only people saw cars the way NIMBYs see scooters!