It took six minutes to download the Skip app to my phone, enter my credit-card information and ignore the wording of a multi-screen contract before clicking \u201cI agree.\u201d The app then required a photo of my driver license, front and even back. (I can\u2019t give it points for those safeguards, however, because my Skip was one of four staged inside a disabled parking spot, a clear violation of Municipal Code 83.0310. Oopsies!<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Labels on the scooter warned to obey all traffic laws, to not ride on sidewalks or with passengers, and to be 18 or older. The scooter also read, \u201cHelmet is required,\u201d a statement that isn\u2019t true but that probably makes Skip feel they at least tried. (California used to require a helmet for electric scooters, but a bill to overturn that law \u2014 sponsored by Bird \u2014 passed in September 2018 and became law in January.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I scanned in my vehicle\u2019s unique 2D barcode and was told by the app to \u201cstart the ride.\u201d A kick backward with one foot was required for the accelerator to operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whirring forward for the first time \u2014 a third of a horse galloping with just a small depression of the right thumb \u2014 is a thrill of the purest kind. (If my middle-school self could see me now, he would be stoked about this and some of the other things I get to do for a living. And also that I didn\u2019t go bald.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a few blocks, however, the thrill of the thrust faded, leaving me to notice several potentially dangerous deficiencies with this transportation mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My particular scooter took an entire car length and a half to slow to a stop from its top speed of 15 mph. Before I realized this, I was faced with no alternative to running the first stop sign I encountered, westbound on Pearl Street at Olivetas Avenue. Thankfully, that was only a three-way intersection, allowing me to hew to the curb on Pearl with no danger of colliding into anything or anyone. (Part of that contract I didn\u2019t read had me accept full responsibility for whatever happens during the ride \u2014 including my own death or injury or someone else\u2019s. Even if the scooter\u2019s brakes fail!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, without the benefit of an air-filled tire like a bicycle\u2019s, even the slightest road protuberance is felt, radiating an incessant series of hard concussions into the hands and feet. Luckily, I managed to avoid La Jolla\u2019s famous potholes. But even standard manhole covers turned the steering column into a small jackhammer. And a pebble in front of the La Jolla Historical Society made me pop a scooter wheelie \u2014 something that was as terrifying as it was slightly cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Making it entirely up some of La Jolla\u2019s slightly slanted streets is another problem \u2014 at least when you weigh 160 pounds like I do. At the top of Jenner Street, just before turning right on Prospect Street, I slowed to such a crawl, the scooter actually stalled. (Resituating the accelerator restarted it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n OK, fine, I weigh 172 pounds, but I\u2019m working on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, on Prospect in front of Bubba\u2019s Smokehouse BBQ, I was almost slammed into twice in rapid succession \u2014 first by an opening car door and then by a car pulling out of its parking space. While it would have made a good read, a hospital stay wasn\u2019t my first choice of exciting endings for this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, I finished my ride by walking my scooter directly into the lion\u2019s den: an actual La Jolla Traffic & Transportation (T&T) board meeting about scooters.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Board trustee Tom Brady immediately doubled over with laughter. Even T&T chair Dave Abrams cracked a smile. But the audience singed me with the heat of dozens of angry eyes that felt like thousands. One woman seated in front emitted a resounding noise. It was an actual \u201cboo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou see this?!\u201d she asked me, holding up a photo on her phone. \u201cThis is what one of those things did to me!\u201d The photo showed her horribly bruised hip. (After the meeting, we talked some more, but she declined to identify herself, explaining that she was in a lawsuit regarding her injuries.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I brought the scooter outside to park it as unobtrusively as I could on the Rec Center sidewalk, the Skip app informed me that my ride, three miles in total, would charge my credit card $7.25. It also asked me to photograph the scooter, proving that I parked it somewhere safe \u2014 even though there is no legal requirement to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the app asked to rate my ride with a smiley face or a frowny one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hmm, that was a tough one. Besides the thrill of the thrust, there were some other positives I haven\u2019t mentioned yet. My favorite was the nod. <\/em>The biggest thing you notice while riding scooters is other people riding scooters. So, there\u2019s this little thing you do as you approach another scooter-ist headed in the opposite direction. It\u2019s not a full-on \u201chi.\u201d It\u2019s just a little head-bobbing acknowledgment that here you are, two grown-ups riding a motorized vehicle without helmets because it\u2019s legal, even though it\u2019s insanely stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bicyclists won\u2019t do the nod<\/em> to you, by the way. They think they\u2019re all superior and stuff. (Oh, right. Just because you\u2019re using YOUR OWN energy and still going faster than us? Just because you\u2019re doing something good for yourselves and for the planet? And just because you\u2019re wearing helmets to protect your brains?) <\/em>OK, well, maybe you are totally superior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, I would never have met U.S. Army Cadet Captain Shiloh Perenon and his lovely new bride, Lily, if I didn\u2019t have the speed to catch up when I saw them two whole blocks ahead of me, walking from the beach to their wedding reception at the Cuvier Club. (\u201cThat looks like fun,\u201d Perenon said of the scooter. )<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the woman in the front row at the T&T meeting had a compelling point. Dockless scooting is just too dangerous \u2014 at least without more sensible regulation and enforcement than we currently have. She was just one of several hundred unfortunate examples \u2014 including two San Diego deaths \u2014 since dockless scooting was introduced. If I wasn\u2019t careful \u2014 and especially if I rode on the sidewalks, like so many riders illegally do \u2014 I could easily have run into someone like her who I didn\u2019t see until it was too late, someone stepping out in front of me less than a car length and a half away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, despite the claims of the scooter companies, what they offer does not seem to be a green alternative to driving. A car lets you drive long distances, at high speeds and up occasional hills \u2014 all while carrying stuff inside of it that you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What dockless scooting replaces is not driving but walking. But why would anyone want to replace that? Walking is exercise. And it\u2019s a decidedly greener activity than riding a battery-powered device that needs to be picked up by someone\u2019s gas-guzzling Ford F-150 every night, then recharged using SDG&E electricity, before being discarded after four months of use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I clicked the frowny face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By COREY LEVITAN On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 17, a nervous middle-aged man engaged in alternating fits of screaming ecstasy and profanity while scooting around The Village at 15 miles per hour. That man was me. Part of my job is covering the controversy caused by the hundreds of dockless electric scooters staged and discarded … <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/98c6908\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3264x2448+0+0\/resize\/840x630!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F59%2F50%2F530c499f407096e3a602edd5f4db%2Fscooter-3.jpg\")
![\"Corey](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/ac0cb13\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2657x1831+0+0\/resize\/840x579!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F78%2Ff5%2Fea62c949410c97d548c7d044c618%2Fscooter-2-use-at-end-only.jpg\")
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