The only real downside to scooters is that our cities are completely designed around cars. Nobody complains about cars being in the way, messy, ugly, unsafe, or causing accessibility problems, but it's even more true of cars than it is of scooters.
The quicker we can get our cities redesigned to meet the needs of all the people who need to get around, rather than just car drivers, the better. The problems with scooters are the same problems bikes or skateboards have, but just more visible because so many people use the scooters. The only way we are ever going to find the political will to adapt cities for non-car uses is if enough people use alternate transportation to make it worthwhile, and that's going to make things messy for a while.
Imagine how awesome scooters would be if a city had as many scooter parking spaces as it did car parking spaces, and as many scooter lanes as it did car lanes...
The quicker we can get our cities redesigned to meet the needs of all the people who need to get around, rather than just car drivers, the better. The problems with scooters are the same problems bikes or skateboards have, but just more visible because so many people use the scooters. The only way we are ever going to find the political will to adapt cities for non-car uses is if enough people use alternate transportation to make it worthwhile, and that's going to make things messy for a while.
Imagine how awesome scooters would be if a city had as many scooter parking spaces as it did car parking spaces, and as many scooter lanes as it did car lanes...