Right? The scooters are only in the sidewalks because the cars actively make the roads dangerous for them. But here we are in a place that supposedly hates cars defending them against a very useful replacement for a huge amount of people.
My city has a pretty good protected bike lane network, and a result is you rarely see scooters or bikes on the sidewalks (at least in the parts of town with good protected bike lanes). Instead, you get lots of scooters and bikes zipping safely by without endangering pedestrians. At least on my route to work, I'm about 90% sure there are more commuters in the bike lanes than cars on the road, despite the cars getting 90+% of the road space.
They need the same infrastructure that bicycles and have gotten popular really fast. Since the infrastructure cannot accomodate them (no bike lane), the scotters become a nuisance for everyone.
With proper infrastructure though (cycling lanes and parking spots) they are fine. (Some might argue about users not following the rules, I'd say, sometimes you can't respect the rules because the street is shit).
Also private companies monopolising public space, not cool. (that one I still stand by, and I hope they pay "rent" that goes towards maintaining the roads.)
That and the assholes who just dump them in the middle of what little infrastructure we do have. Around here they are constantly blocking sidewalk, bike lanes, and mixed use paths.
All city needs to do is to put giant "put ebikes here" sign over on-street vehicle storage spot(in car-dependent places it's called parking spot). One such spot can store 10-20 ebikes or 20-30 escooters.
it's so fascinating how people absolutely lose their minds over e-scooters, and these are people who shit on drivers for doing the exact same thing to cyclists!
Yeah I hate these scooters even with good infrastructure (Germany) people still can't stop themselves from basically trying to run you over and when they are not in use they are usually left in a place (sidewalks, pedestrian paths etc) that blocks pedestrian traffic. Not to mention the people taking shitload of this stuff into the public transport and making it even more crowded.
Never had a driving license, can't be bothered with it when public transport gets the job done.
But like people don't ride them badly here, so clearly that's a solvable problem. I'd wager germany generally doesn't actually really have that good bicycle infrastructure.
As for them being left all over the place, that's a regulation problem specific to rental scooters, and doesn't apply at all to privately owned ones but people like you just ignore that completely.
Also like, you've seen where people park their cars, right? a car in the middle of the bike path is vastly more annoying than an e-scooter.
Calling problems "solvable problems" or "regulation problems" does not make them go away they are still problems associated with e-scooters. I always hear good stuff about Germany's bicycle infrastructure but I guess it is suddenly bad when it is covenient for you to make your point.
Of course a car parked on a bike path is more annoying than e-scooters I've never said e-scooters were worse than cars, but still I find them extremely annoying as a person that is travelling mostly on foot.