Human folly is not required for the scooters to cause problems. In a City Council testimony from early July, Eleanor Feller, an 82-year-old resident, described getting knocked over by a parked scooter that fell onto her on a street corner. The accident left her concussed and bleeding, she said. “I’m not against adults responsibly enjoying scooters,” she said at the City Council meeting . “But where does their fun stop? I think it stops at my being able to walk reasonably.”

For the greater tech industry, the fun stopped a couple of years ago, when a steady drip of scandals eventually became an industrywide backlash. Scooter start-ups like Bird and Lime have not been immune to the anti-tech sentiment.

Near the beach boardwalk, I spoke with shop workers, lifeguards and beachgoers. Some people used words like “anarchy,” “chaos” and “saturation on steroids.”

The people actually riding the scooters had a different take: The scooters are fun and convenient.

After cruising down the boardwalk on a Bird with the ocean wind in my hair, I agreed. They move with a satisfying zip. It’s almost like the thrill of a motorcycle, with none of the coolness.

Then I had to carefully dodge parents with strollers, pedestrians, roller skaters, pets on leashes and clusters of parked scooters. Nearby, some more aggressive riders tore through the strip, causing ripples of tension as people shifted and pushed to get out of the way.

The promise of scooters — a fun, convenient, cheap and, most important to its ardent defenders, non-car mode of transportation — is very enticing. But as my article illustrates, many problems need to be solved before they can deliver that. (Only a third of scooter trips are replacing car rides, one recent study showed.)