No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
The best place for electric scooters on most city streets is in the regular traffic lanes. This is also the best place for bicycles in most cities. Unless your particular city and route have actually safe bike lanes, you're better off just acting like any other vehicle, using the regular traffic lanes, and following all traffic laws and signs.
(Yes, you're slower than cars; but so is a horse rider, and they've been allowed on city streets since long before cars existed.)
Many sorts of "bike lane" make the streets less safe for cyclists and scooter users. Lanes that are also used as streetside parking are not safe, as attempting to use them requires swerving in and out between parked cars. Narrow lanes that are adjacent to streetside parking are not safe, because of the "door zone" problem. "Lanes" that are really part of the gutter are not safe, because they accumulate debris (tire chunks, mufflers, road sand) -- all of which are much more dangerous for cyclists and scooter users than for drivers.
There do exist high-quality bike lanes in some cities. They are clearly marked and separated from the regular traffic lanes (sometimes with barriers); they don't share space with streetside parking; they often have their own traffic signals.
If there are safe bike lanes, then yes, they're an appropriate choice for electric scooters. The reason for this is that the speed, maneuverability, and vulnerability of electric scooters are much closer to those of bicycles than to either cars or pedestrians.
But if there aren't safe bike lanes on the specific route you need to take, just use the "slowest" (in most of the world, rightmost) regular traffic lane. Most of the time, be in the center of this lane, not hugging the right edge; this makes you more visible, keeps you out of the "door zone", etc. You may move right to allow faster traffic (i.e. cars, trucks, motorcycles) to pass, if it is safe to do so.
(Note: In some places, such as California, cyclists are required to stay to the right insofar as it is safe. This does not mean biking in the gutter or "door zone", because those are never safe.)
Like bicycles, electric scooters should never be ridden on city sidewalks adjacent to buildings. This is because of the risk of colliding with pedestrians coming out of building doors. Blind pedestrians, very elderly pedestrians, pedestrians pushing delivery carts, nearsighted pedestrians who have lost their glasses, and other pedestrians with limited eyesight are all legitimate users of sidewalks. Do not expect that pedestrians can see or dodge. When using pedestrian features such as sidewalks or crosswalks, both cyclists and scooter users should dismount and walk their vehicle.
"Allowed" isn't really the most important metric for me when I'm trying to work out where to ride. I'm mostly interested in being less likely to be hit by a car. It sucks for me and the pedestrian if I hit a pedestrian. It sucks if I come off my bike from hitting a piece of rubbish in the kerb and channel alongside the road. But I die if I get hit by a car who isn't paying attention when I'm in a car lane, even if I'm doing everything right.
In my city, it's illegal to ride a scooter on the road (aside from dedicated bike lanes). If there is no dedicated bike lane, then the sidewalk is where you are legally required to use the scooter.