CDC Says There's an Epidemic of E-Scooter Injuries That Could Easily Be Prevented (cnbc.com) 306
Electric scooters are becoming just as common in many cities as Lyft and Uber cars. While they may be a step in the right direction to improve transportation options, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a surge in emergency room visits due to e-scooter accidents. From a report: The CDC has found that head injuries topped the list of accident-related incidents involving e-scooters at 45%. The study determined that many e-scooter injuries could have been prevented if riders wore helmets and were more careful around cars, according to summary of the study released on Wednesday. "A high proportion of e-scooter related injuries involved potentially preventable risk factors, such as lack of helmet use, or motor vehicle interaction," a preliminary summary of the study said.
Of course, drivers have no responsibility. (Score:2)
Government to scooter riders: Be careful around cars.
Government to drivers: we'll set you speed limit extra high and encourage you to drive dangerously though City streets.
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NYC most of the bike riders seem to break every traffic rule there is and then when they get splattered they start crying about how they are some special snowflake class that is better than everyone
Selection Bias at play (Score:5, Insightful)
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A huge proportion of the bicycle user are actually respecting the road rules on street. There was a recent comment which showed that it was 94%+.
Um, no. As I pointed out in my response to that comment [slashdot.org], that was single study in a single city, and was such a statistical anomaly that even the researcher admitted he was surprised by it.
Reality in large urban areas tends to be less than 50% (Manhattan clocked in at a whopping 20%), which lines up well with the observations of those of us who regularly drive in those areas.
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NYC most of the bike riders seem to break every traffic rule there is ...
There are traffic rules in NYC? Who knew?
The only saving grace is that vehicles are generally moving so slowly (if at all) that the casualty count is minimized. I do agree that bicycle riders in Manhattan seem to be fueled with some powerful mind-altering agent that causes them to believe themselves to be invulnerable and therefore unaffected by the laws of both man and physics.
I wonder where I can come by some of the stuff they are
Re:Of course, drivers have no responsibility. (Score:4, Informative)
The rules for bikes are indeed firmly made. Every one of the following is a law in almost every U.S. jurisdiction:
They must stop at stop signs.
They must stop at red lights.
They must ride with the flow of traffic.
They must not ride on sidewalks.
They must not ride in crosswalks.
They must yield to pedestrians.
Where bicycle lanes are provided, they must ride in those lanes.
They must obey the speed limit.
First line of the wiki (Score:2)
It first became law in Idaho in 1982, but was not adopted elsewhere until Delaware adopted a limited stop-as-yield law in 2017.[2] In 2018, Colorado passed a law standardizing the language municipalities or counties would use for a local Idaho Stop or Stop as Yield law, with certain statewide limits.[3] Arkansas adopted the Idaho Stop law in April 2019.
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So when he said "almost every U.S. jurisdiction" he was indeed correct?
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In most places I've lived a bike is a vehicle and, in the absence of a specific rule stating otherwise, must obey the same rules as cars etc.
And no, you can't drive on the sidewalk you fucking cunt.
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And no, you can't drive on the sidewalk you fucking cunt.
Not necessarily true. In some jurisdictions, you *can* legally ride a bicycle on sidewalks.
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Government to scooter riders: Be careful around cars.
Government to drivers: we'll set you speed limit extra high and encourage you to drive dangerously though City streets.
What? In my city the speed limit is 25 unless otherwise posted. Most streets are not otherwise posted. I don't consider 25 MPH to be "extra high".
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State's wouldn't allow it, think of the lost revenues.
Scourge . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how these are a step in the right direction. Most people using them could simply walk and get some exercise. Meanwhile, the riders don't ride on the street, or when they do the don't follow traffic laws, and those on the sidewalks are dangerous to pedestrians.
Re:Scourge . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yep. Scooter rider here and scooters really expand the radius of the places you can get to in a reasonable amount of time, places you wouldn't normally walk to.
Re:Scourge . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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Depends on the store doesn't it? Best bakery in town might be next door, but the best deli is across town. As for public transportation you can easily see how a scooter can be faster. No stops for others, no waiting for the bus or train or whatever. You can go right to the businesses door and all the way home.
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Assuming the 'others' stop for you.
Otherwise you go right to the hospital then get to pay to fix the bumper of the car you cut in front of.
Yes they are fast (Score:2)
How? They are legally restricted to 20 km/h and walking along at a slow pace is 6 km/h...
I dare you to walk in Houston in the summer for more than a mile at 6 km/h without needing a shower at the other end.
Since scooters mean zero exertion (and a light breeze) they are way more practical than a fast walk for anywhere it gets really warm and don't want to have to shower after.
Even if that were not true, a 4x difference in traveling time is a pretty huge deal to most people! Even 2x would make it worthwhile
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Hah, imagine the fat fucks that shit on bike riders here in the comments walking at 6km/h for 45 minutes.
You don't have to be fat or unfit to notice that many cyclists ignore red lights, illegally cycle on the footpath, go the wrong way down one way streets and in other ways create a menace for pedestrians and other road users.
Indeed in London there was talk of banning lorries because cyclists kept getting killed - by stupidly riding between a turning lorry and the junction it was turning into.
Electric scooters are at best no better.
You don't need to look for parking spaces.
No, in San Diego you just abandon them anywhere. It's a mess. A once gorgeous
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With the exception of some of the largest cities. Most American Cities are not well designed for walking, but for cars. Bikes and Scooters are a good option to navigate these cities where you don't need a car. Walking in these cities, with poorly maintained sidewalks (that often just end into a busy intersection) Distances about 2 or 3 miles away from the residential to the commercial districts.
Much of Americas boom time was coincided with the growth of the automobile. So many of these cities that had po
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more e-scooters, fewer cars. It's true that the e in e-scooter perhaps steals the cardio aspects but one is still active-- you are using your balance. ANd one is probably going to make more trips and be more active in the day than one might if the only choices were foot or car.
Has it been demonstrated that increasing the number of e-scooters reduces the number of cars on the road?
Probably related to bicycle accidents (Score:2)
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I don't understand this....
If you are going to have a motorized bicycle, why not just go get a real motorcycle, and have the added benefits of more speed (keeping you more on par with the cars you are sharing the road with)?
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I don't understand this....
If you are going to have a motorized bicycle, why not just go get a real motorcycle, and have the added benefits of more speed (keeping you more on par with the cars you are sharing the road with)?
I've been riding a pedal cycle in London for 46 years. I'm getting on a bit and now need a little push up the hills (about 100W) but still want some exercise on my commute.
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Perhaps you should make an effort to understand this then. It's not complicated.
e-bikes are still bicycles, you pedal them and get exercise. They are also unlicensed.
Yes, I understand your question was rhetorical.
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Ok thanks...I've never really heard of or seen one before.
I was under the assumption it was just electric and you didn't pedal it.
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Only if you're lazy and/or have bad knees.
They can be ridden with minimal to no effort but all of the ones I've seen are fully equipped to operate as a standard mechanical bicycle.
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Lighter, cheaper to park, works without gas, cheaper to buy, insurance?, licenses, Etc
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Finally a actual question for /.
How do we fix LQs e-bike?
I say 'screaming small block chevy', but I will admit that's my solution for all vehicle related fix questions. Except the ones requiring a bug motor, rat or LS.
In Yobistan? Perhaps that old 3.5 V8 rover engine.
Re:Probably related to bicycle accidents (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I was a bit surprised the other day whilst cycling at 35 km/h when a scooter flew past me. Are those things really capable of handling less ideal situations that a bicycle can? I'm thinking for example of emergency braking, pot holes and debris. Strikes me that scooters are even more vulnerable road users than bicycles, and they probably have less control.
Yes, safer than bikes. 25 Kmh *maximum* speed (Score:2)
All of the major scooter companies in the US use scooters with a maximum speed of 15 MPH (25 Kmh). Obviously, you don't have to go max throttle all the time, and you shouldn't. Downtown, where the scooters are in my city, you're likely to have to stop every block or two. Most of the time, you're approaching an intersection, so the natural thing to do is to tootle along at about twice walking speed.
Having ridden both, the scooter definitely feels safer than a bike. The foot on the scooter is a few inches o
Re: Yes, safer than bikes. 25 Kmh *maximum* speed (Score:2)
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You work your vehicles throttle, I'll work mine.
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Getting both feet on the ground is good if you're going at a speed you can run at. Otherwise it's like a self-inflicted Rugby tackle.
It is running speed. TWICE running speed would be (Score:2)
> Getting both feet on the ground is good if you're going at a speed you can run at.
The rental scooters *maximum* possible speed is fast run. Downtown, where they are popular, most people seem to ride at about half the speed. The natural speed in an urban environment seems to be about 2X walking speed, aka jogging speed.
> Getting both feet on the ground is good if you're going at a speed you can run at. Otherwise it's like a self-inflicted Rugby tackle.
Actually about DOUBLE running speed will send y
Unclear wording. Rugby players up to 22 MPH, 36 Km (Score:2)
I used some unclear wording. Rugby players have been clocked at 22 MPH / 36 Kmh. A normal person can be jogging at about 8 MPH and stop suddenly.
Decelerating from 8 MPH (fast jog / slow run) to 0 MPH suddenly (which is doable) requires the same traction as decelerating from 16 MPH to 8 MPH. The two or three more steps to go from 8 MPH to 0 MPH.
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The biomechanics aren't really that simple. Whether or not you fall is related to whether or not you can get your feet far enough in front of yourself, fast enough, to balance, with a hefty side helping of how much torque you get from planting a foot long enough to hold your body up.
If you don't have much friction you can jump off a moving something and slide, so long as you judged the right angle to plant your feet at. You can even do a scampering sliding run without too much trouble. (no Mom, I've never
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Here in London they're definitely going much much faster than that. Maybe they're not on the road where you've seen them?
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Otherwise it's like a self-inflicted Rugby tackle.
The precise technical term is "ass over teakettle".
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Getting both feet on the ground is good if you're going at a speed you can run at. Otherwise it's like a self-inflicted Rugby tackle.
I've jumped off vehicles at 30mph so I know what that's like, ie. no chance whatsoever of staying upright. None. Zero. Zip.
Like I said though, you brake first then jump off. By the time you jump you're probably under 10mph - easily controllable to a dead stop with your feet. It's not even a fast sprint.
FWIW I've only had to brake hard once on my scooter and it worked out fine, I didn't even let go of the handlebars. I'd definitely say it was safer than emergency stopping a bicycle.
The people who hack their
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My scooter is pulsejet powered you insensitive clod.
meh (Score:5, Insightful)
now let me get on my bike to ride home, i'm working from home this afternoon.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Faster than bikes.
More healthy/environmentally friendly than cars.
Real fun to ride.
Take up a lot less space, easy to carry on the train/bus.
Massively expand the radius of places you can get to in a reasonable time without taking the car (cars are pain in the ass in a city).
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Faster than bikes. More healthy/environmentally friendly than cars. Real fun to ride. Take up a lot less space, easy to carry on the train/bus. Massively expand the radius of places you can get to in a reasonable time without taking the car (cars are pain in the ass in a city).
True, but most failure modes are to go forward face first into the pavement, unlike bikes where you usually fall to one side or the other.
Downtown, cars are an expensive PITA (Score:2)
Where I live (Dallas), driving from the office to lunch would be a significant pain in the butt, and more expensive. Parking is across the street and 3 levels down, so getting from my office building to the car, then getting the car to the road is about 10 minutes. Then find a parking spot near the pizza place, pay for that parking, get a slice of pizza, spend more time parking in the garage again. To run get a slice of pizza you'd probably spend a total of 25 minutes getting out of the parking, finding a
Not a fan of E-Scooters but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a big fan of these scooters/bikes cluttering up pavements everywhere. But by itself this information is pretty meaningless. You know what else increases the risk of a visit to the emergency room? Travelling in a car. Yet motor vehicle accidents are part of a baseline that is apparently acceptable, while the new addition of scooters accidents is some big tragedy.
All these statistics really show is that we should probably encourage scooter riders to wear helmets, and upgrade infrastructure to reduce scooter/vehicle conflicts. Otherwise for all we know, the scooter riders getting hit by cars might otherwise have been hit as pedestrians.
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I wear a helmet when I ride my scooter.
Do you remember the protests when seat belts were made compulsory, how uncomfortable they were, etc.?
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That is a pretty lousy characterization as well as a bad example. The reason seat belt laws were enacted was so that insurance companies had an additional way of weaseling out of paying.
Actually, I think seat belts and airbags cost the insurance people money. A dead person is cheap. But there is nowadays a lot of people with horrific and very expensive leg injuries.- all people that would have been very cheap to the insurance (because dead) 40 years ago.
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Good point.
Small wheels (Score:2)
Who should have thought that racing around on small wheels could cause problems? :D
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*would
An epidemic of e-scooter injuries? (Score:5, Informative)
I doubt it [wikipedia.org].
An epidemic [...] is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.
Last time I checked, injuries are not an infectious disease.
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Wikipedia is not an authority for how a word should be used. Wikimedia Foundation clearly states so themselves. If you would have ever edited a Wikipedia article you would have come across this rule.
This linking to Wikipedia every time to try to make a point must stop.
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Grammar problem not a word selection problem. Epidemic as an adjective would be perfectly acceptable. e.g.
"CDC Says E-Scooter Injuries That Could Easily Be Prevented have reached epidemic levels"
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Actually last time I checked (just now) the word has more than one meaning as a noun and all the dictionaries agree that an epidemic can either describe an "infectious disease" or a "problem".
https://dictionary.cambridge.o... [cambridge.org]
https://www.oxfordlearnersdict... [oxfordlear...naries.com]
https://www.oxfordlearnersdict... [oxfordlear...naries.com]
Disregard my other post which also shows epidemic would be usable in adjective form.
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And out-of-bounds is yet another problem entirely. Just ask Intel or AMD.
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And Wikipedia is not a dictionary.
epidemic
[ ep-i-dem-ik ]
noun
a temporary prevalence of a disease.
a rapid spread or increase in the occurrence of something: an epidemic of riots.
It's also worth pointing out that dictionaries do not dictate word usage, they only attempt to document them.
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Last time I checked, injuries are not an infectious disease.
Poetic language vs instructional language. Informal language in news articles is the norm these days; certainly, most people understand what was meant.
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That vaccine is knowledge.
You're supposed to wreck something with small wheels when young, that pain is the vaccine against riding things with tiny wheels over rough surfaces.
Not a CDC issue (Score:4, Interesting)
Just like Republicans refuse to allow the CDC to investigate gun related deaths, people being stupid on scooters is not a disease.
The CDC has much bigger issues to worry about, issues which the majority of people in this country will ignore because they deal with facts and science.
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The CDC is a public health organization. The narrow interpretation of the name doesn't encompass the whole of their charter.
Also, "disease" is maybe not as narrowly defined as you imagine.
Helmet use should generate heavy fines... (Score:2)
CDC can study scooters but not guns (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:CDC can study scooters but not guns (Score:5, Informative)
The CDC should not be studying scooters or guns or car accidents, etc.. CDC stands for "Center for Disease Control" and accidents are not diseases.
They also look at health trends in general, more specifically mortality trends. Things like drug overdoses/deaths, accidents, etc. "Disease" does not just include the big scary ones like ebola, HIV, etc. It even considers more mundane deaths such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. To determine prevalence and mortality rates of diseases such as those, the CDC has to look at overall death rates and causes. It's expanded into looking at things like accidental death, suicide rates, and so on. They basically track, monitor, and analyze just about every significant contributor of death in the US population. Except guns.
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The CDC should not be studying scooters or guns or car accidents, etc.. CDC stands for "Center for Disease Control" and accidents are not diseases.
They also look at health trends in general, more specifically mortality trends. Things like drug overdoses/deaths, accidents, etc.
The other part of this is, if the CDC doesn't study these other trends, who should?
More specifically, are you saying no one should study these trends, or this specific agency shouldn't study them? Because if you just mean this agency, then you're implying we need another agency to study the rest. Are you ready to fund that?
"Epidemic" is just hyperbole (Score:2)
It's not an epidemic unless it's got epidemiology. Scooter rides aren't contagious. Just another thing which would better be handled by some other agency, like the CPSC.
With Safety Measures, Scooters Solve Problems (Score:3)
Scooter riders should be required to wear helmets. People should not ride drunk. People should not ride like assholes. The rental scooters I have seen really need bigger wheels to handle poorly maintained roads. There should be designated parking areas for rental scooters.
Though, scooters can solve a lot of problems. At 1-2 horsepower, they are energy efficient. Because they are light, they accelerate fast. You don't have to pay a driver to operate a scooters. They solve the last mile problem. They don't take up much. They use less materials and cause less pollution than cars.
The rental scooter rider is not every electric vehicle owners. I have ridden over 4,000 miles on my old electric scooter. I used to travel from Campbell to Mountain View in less than an hour--while the same trip took almost two hours on light rail. Scooters, gas scooters, and motorcycles offer a lot of freedom for people who are on a fixed or lower income.
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It's not just the helmet. You can still break your neck or limbs.
With 8-inch wheels, pneumatic tires, and suspension, cutting into a 5-inch-wide, 1-inch-deep pothole will pitch you forward at 15-20mph and good luck with that. 12-inch wheels are less vulnerable to that.
The Segway and Xiaomi scooters also can't stop very fast. When I stop on my Ninebot ES4 (yes I own one), I have to lean back as if sitting on a non-existent seat. A stronger brake would be great...but it would also flip the damned thing
We have this backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
We're like fish, so used to swimming that we don't realize we're surrounded by water.
Please note:
There's one common element in all of these: Four wheeled motor vehicles, and more specifically, cars and light trucks.
In comparison, while it's possible that a collision between two pedestrians will result in a serious injury and death, the low speed and low mass makes it extremely unlikely. Even with the higher speeds that cyclists and e-scooters can reach, the low mass tends to limit injuries. Motorcycles can reach much higher speeds, and the single-vehicle collision fatality rate reflects this, but even so, collision involving a four wheeled motor vehicle still accounts for the majority of fatalities.
Cars, SUVs, and light trucks are capable of high speeds, have large amounts of mass, more limited visibility, and the driving training is minimal (one test, usually taken are a teen or young adult, with no retesting needed for the remaining decades of your life). Automobiles frequently break traffic rules (distracted driving, speeding, rolling through stops, etc) with minor penalties in the unlikely event they are caught. This makes automobiles disproportionately deadly to other road users, including other automobiles.
We've become so accustomed to driving being the norm that we consider other forms of transportation to be more dangerous, even though the other forms of transportation are less likely to kill others.
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Include the severity of gun deaths in your argument. However CDC is barred by gun manufacturers from studying the subject.
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You want something pointless, we know guns poke holes in people and we know how many fatal holes were poked. We know most gun deaths are suicides.
Let's have the CDC study the race of gun murderers, and we'll find out that two demographics groups are doing most the murders, those that have breakdown in family structure and so have lawless savages with guns roaming the streets.. Clearly almost all the firearm problem in the USA is those two groups, their lack of morals and their illegal guns.
Ooo, is that to
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New Business Model (Score:2)
Great job, CDC ... (Score:2)
... and I'm glad you can study and call for corrections for injuries on E-scooters.
Too bad the gun manufacturers won't let you apply the same forensic analysis of gun violence.
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you mean the CDC does nothing but collect statistics, don't solve any problem.
"easily" (Score:2)
The logistics of providing secure, sanitized helmets to people renting scooters on the street doesn't sound very easy to me.
Nice euphamism (Score:2)
A high proportion of e-scooter related injuries involved potentially preventable risk factors, such as lack of helmet use, or motor vehicle interaction.
First, "motor vehicle interaction" is such a beautiful newspeak way of saying "got run over". That's interacting all right.
Second, these scooters are motor vehicles.
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https://people.com/human-inter... [people.com]
Re: You can't fix stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Darwin award candidates.
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And yet calling something that obviously isn't going to happen a solution to a problem is almost demonstrably stupid. Stupidity may not be preventable, but it is certainly addressable.
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Many people have been slaves
No shit. Last time the world saw slavery on a large scale it was done by white europeans.
They don't become cultural mass murderers
Yes they do. Nobody oppressed the Germans and they killed 6 million Jews. Nobody oppressed Spain when they decided to go to the Americas and wipe out entire ethnic groups for profit. So get the fuck out with your "statistics".
centuries later
Civil rights movement was in the 1960s, what centuries are you tlaking about? And the abuse of people of color goes on untill this day. And filnally what does your comment have to do with the topic
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No shit. Last time the world saw slavery on a large scale it was done by white europeans.
No, not really. Abolitionism took root later in other parts of the world.
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Yes they do. Nobody oppressed the Germans and they killed 6 million Jews.
Yes, someone oppressed Germany. The Versailles Treaty that ended WWI specifically left Germany impoverished and hurting [wikipedia.org]. France made sure Germany (and therefore the German people) was punished. Hitler used that oppression in his rise to power. It was part of why post-WWII that the USA implemented the Marshal Plan and the rebuilding of Japan: we learned the lesson of WWI and how dictators can rise to power.
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No shit. Last time the world saw slavery on a large scale it was done by white europeans.
Pretty sure Qatar is not in Europe. But hey, I'm American, what do I know about geography?
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>No shit. Last time the world saw slavery on a large scale it was done by white europeans.
Using slaves sold by black African slave traders...
I guess the possibility of being a shitty human being is not restricted to one skin color. That doesn't change the fact that the GP's post about racial crime statistics was pretty stupid.
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Oh look, it's one of the seven days of the week again, the days where cayenne8 self-owns and then in trying to save face promptly makes himself look like an even bigger dipshit.
Disease (Score:2)
Are E-scooters contagious?
E-scooter accidents are. They are highly communicable.
Can they be prevented by antibiotics?
No but being seen riding one can be an effective form of birth control making the problem self limiting to a degree.
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Are E-scooters contagious? Can they be prevented by antibiotics? Or is yet another federal agency expanding into things it was never meant to do, in order to justify more turf for itself and a larger budget?
If you overdose someone on an E-Scooter with enough antibiotics, you probably could prevent them riding a scooter again.
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Around here there's lots of rental scooters. You just install an app, point at a QR code on the scooter, go.
(I have no idea how long they'll last. All the kids around here build ramps and jump them...)
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My kids all had foot push scooters in the cul-de-sac. They're definitely not as good on cracks and bumps. They're more like roller blades than bikes. So the CDC data doesn't surprise me, but it'd be better data if it had controls.
Did your push scooters have real tires on them?
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more bicyclists head injured than scooter drivers.