As Brooklyn leads the nation D.C. follows. The Moped Apocalypse.

Why can't we come up with just one original thought?

Well if you've ever waited tables at a Sunday brunch you'd know D.C. is a warehouse for the weakest minds but c'mon do we have to copy everything NY.NY/SF does?

Shared Mopeds.  Repeat that.  Shared Mopeds.  Not from a central source but parked all over the city like those scooters and bicycles.

Bill Burr jokes about 'frosty' bikes.  I haven't seen a frosty scooter yet but a frosty moped?  That I can see.  Maybe this should be in the population thread.

Maybe Wally can give us his roving reporter from NY/NY take on them.  So far they are in Brooklyn and Queens too so that might be off your beat Wally.

I'd be all for it if we taught more useful habits in K through 12 than the current ability to self-congratulate and nothing more. Like situational awareness but no that's someone elses problem as you break the laws of the road.

Final point.  Well none of the above are points just a minor comical rant.  It's one more thing to watch out for as a rideshare driver or in Wallys case for his bus drivers.  It won't bother me as I've lived here for two decades but I can see potential carnage.  Nor will I be stopping to help.  Each one of my passengers are very important to themselves and shan't be delayed by your twatty behavior on a twatcycle ( SniffPetrol reference.) 

Who wants to help me start my new racing league involving as many mopeds as we can steal?

We have a similar thing here in Ann Arbor, but they are electric scooters.  I think the company that was allowed to stay is called “Bird”.

Make sure to throw a kit.

Just Bought a MoPed

Make sure to throw a kit.

Just Bought a MoPed

The scooters apparently made for a ridiculous mess at the recent Comicon in San Diego.

Scootercross is a thing and it's spectacular. 

I haven’t had any experience with the mopeds but I don’t think they will be terrible.  There are a large number of people who have never driven anything and I don’t think many are going to try and learn on a motorbike in traffic. The bikes haven’t really been the apocalypse everyone predicted. Most of the users are no different than other cyclists so they remain somewhat predictable.  I would expect the scooter renters to be similar.  Thankful we’ve been spared from the abandoned kick scooter menace plaguing many cities. 

Cannonball.......

If anything they would be better than the Bird scooters because you would use them in traffic and they would be big enough to see, unlike bombing down sidewalks on Bird scooters.

93gsxturbo said:

If anything they would be better than the Bird scooters because you would use them in traffic and they would be big enough to see, unlike bombing down sidewalks on Bird scooters.

Plus, these scooters ought to give the rider no illusion they're on a harmless children's toy.

It may be a bit "cuter" than, say, a sharing service that rents Honda Groms or Kawasaki Ninja 300s, but at least this looks like a real motor vehicle that needs some measure of caution to ride it. A lot of people seem to have been treating the little electric scooters as toys rather than like a silent motorcycle with an extra side of invisibility.

paranoid_android said:

We have a similar thing here in Ann Arbor, but they are electric scooters.  I think the company that was allowed to stay is called “Bird”.

I hate those things- we were walking home down Packard Friday, when one came up on us from behind- but he was on the road and swerved onto the sidewalk.  Those should be banned from sidewalks.

A couple of nights ago some chick in a Compass that fully had 3 corners (couldn't see the drivers front corner ) taped up like a NASCAR bullied her way in front of me.  The passenger even noticed it.  Almost a mile later I incidentally caught back up ( you always do unfortunately ) whilst still in city traffic she almost wiped out some dude on a twatcycle but you could tell he's been riding for a while as he almost automatically swerved with her and had a bus stop to his right to go into.

I hope the people that get on these things do know something about riding and it's not like when tourists go to some island and get dronc.

Then there was the Lyft driver in the Suzuki eggshell sub-compact that shot up the inside of me as I kept an intersection open and he had nowhere to go but up the bicycle lane which he did.  He was not the only for hire driver I saw being a complete berkeleying shiny happy person last night chasing a city empty of passengers to pick up.  I saw both him and 'Shah 24' twice last night being morons - the 'Shah 24' guy I see frequently being a tool.

( Note to E36 M3-head drivers - why have an easily memorizable vanity plate?! )

Man I need to drive less. Or hook up a dash cam and start a youtube channel.  The funniest one last night would have been the church bus driver trying to force me out of my lane ( we were nose to nose ) but then getting yelled at by Capitol police forced to u-turn and pull over.  I hope they held him for an hour especially as he was undertaking and almost hit a parked cruiser being deliberately used to close a security sensitive lane right below the Capitol before he decided forcing me into a potential accident was better for his driving record.