One of the great experiences of my life was riding a rented scooter up and down a mountain in Sa Pa. In Vietnam scooters were everywhere. Given how affordable and convenient they are, I don't fully understand why they don't appeal in the US
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In the NC town where I grew up, someone I know wanted to buy a Vespa after a trip to Italy, but he was shamed out of it because so many people saw scooters as "liquorcycles" (how you get around if you've lost your license to a DUI)
We have a ton of rented scooters in PVD and there are 2 issues I observe:
(1) lack of safe places to ride them because drivers do NOT respect them.
(2) people leave them in the middle of sidewalks, in curb cuts, and other places that impede accessibility & so then they get taken
one of my biggest takeaways from getting outside of the US is that most Americans are completely ignorant of how people in other countries live, so they just buy into the "America is the best!" line that gets fed to them by the culture. They miss out on so much!
I think it's worse than that. I know plenty of people who've been overseas and think 'that was quaint and interesting, too bad we can't do anything like that/I can't wait to get back to my car life'
American exceptionalism works in weird contradictory ways. On the one hand, there's a 'positive' sense that whatever we have must necessarily be the best; and there's also a 'negative' exceptionalism where anything good from elsewhere 'just can't work over here,' whether it's health care or trains
Jamelle Bouie has written about this some too a few years ago on the other site. One thing he suggests is making financing more accessible to people. They are relatively affordable — especially compared to 30k cars — but a lot of people don’t have the cash on hand
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(1) lack of safe places to ride them because drivers do NOT respect them.
(2) people leave them in the middle of sidewalks, in curb cuts, and other places that impede accessibility & so then they get taken