Back in ca 2001-2005 I used to work my summer nights for a tiny electric scooter rental place that had about 10-20 working scooters at a given time, renting them out to tourists at a lake, and they were fun, especially after learning how to tune the controller for a nice speed boost (for staff use only, of course). There were no serious accidents in all the time I worked there, even though the main customers were flip-flop wearing tourists and kids, driving these for the first time in crowded pedestrian areas.<p>For all intents and purposes, they worked and felt like the modern scooters, except that they had quick swap, fast charge AGM batteries. If we wanted to run an errand the next town over that would exceed a 30-40min ride (30min was a typical rental period), we'd just pack some extra batteries!<p>Those scooters were custom inventions, but larger scale commercialization never got anywhere and the business eventually died because of the battery tech being too cumbersome for consumer use, and the same legal questions that still plague us today, though it seems like electric bike usage the past 15 years has allowed at least some legislatures to give alternative powered transport a chance. As they should, as replacing large lumps of metal moving through our cities at unsafe speeds with much smaller lumps of metal moving a lot slower can only be a good thing for residents, pedestrians, and the environment.