[KMT]

I have seen quite a few fatal accidents involving self drive cars and bikes in Coorg.

They are a real nuisance to other road users. Given the number of such crashes, I am surprised that rental companies are still able to run profitably.

[lrsays]

I agree with you, I've seen many abandoned bikes on ORR in Bangalore, sometimes rental companies are to be blamed but not always, many of these bikes have dead battery (or removed) which makes it difficult to locate abandoned bikes.
I almost hit one of those yellow scooters on Ibllur flyover parked near the turn on flyover. I think without proper law/verification process it is difficult for rental companies (or cops) to block license of such users.
Most of these companies ask you to upload a selfie and D.L. and based on some Image processing algorithm (match photo with selfie uploaded) they allow you to rent, anyone can paste photo on fake D.L. and get a bike in few minutes without worrying about being fined later!

[Rajeevraj]

Another larger issue I see is the large percentage of underage people who seem to be easily getting access to use these services. So lack of accountability which is promoting the rash driving gets multiplied further with an underage person (and I am talking as young as 12-13) being the rider.

Culturally I don't think we are ready for such easily accessible self ride/drive rentals.

[ajayclicks]

I agree. i see a lot of senseless and rash riding near JP Nagar, especially when the person is on a rented bike. Today, a chap removed a Volo scooter from the parking lot just before Ecospace flyover and was promptly caught by a constable standing near the newly opened shell petrol pump.

[wheelguy]

Voted Yes.

With a simple observation on how the public property is treated in India, one can surely say the answer is a big YES.

My own experience, had given my bike to many of my friends of whom I found only one friend treating it as his own bike, he always treats the bike with utmost care.

[Sebring]

When stopped by cops to verify documents these riders prefer to surrender their scooters, so the cops in Bangalore are wary to check as it hits their 'chai paani'. These guys suddenly cut cars and go about their wanton ways, and have become a 'pain on roads'. They certainly don't treat these scooters as if their own!

[FrodoOfTheShire]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Absolutely!
Have seen these scooters being driven by children, parked on the fast lane on top of flyovers, etc.

These bike rentals are yet to start in my city, so I am not aware how these function. Don't they ask for some money deposit or check valid original DL before handing over the vehicles? And how are users just able to abandon the bikes anywhere? Whom do the users handover the keys to after the ride?

[black_rider]

You will not have a day, where one of these scooters is not found abandoned on the Ecity expressway, of all the places! One of the service providers had to put up boards along the expressway that abandoning their scooters on the Eway is a punishable offence. But that hasn't stopped the menace. Obviously, if the culprits could read signboards, they would be wise enough to not do such a thing in the first place.

Heck, I've seen a guy riding wrong way on the expressway on one of these. Guess I've seen everything now.

[tinshark]

Voted yes.

When the poll first showed up few days ago I felt that I will obviously be biased to agree with this sentiment. The reason is that we will only notice when something goes wrong (like someone driving badly) and since these scooters are easily identifiable (bright yellow or with their branding) we will notice more instances of bad driving on these scooters v/s regular riders. So I hesitated from voting.

However, I tried one of these services this week and now I feel there are a couple of factors which will attract more bad drivers to these services.

1. As mentioned by others before, the riders don't own the bikes so they don't care. This attracts a group of people who don't respect others' property and will use them recklessly.

2. The rental companies don't actually care about good driving and safety. It's all just on paper.

Their actions clearly shows this:
* Most of the rental scooters don't have both mirrors. You can bet that if you find a scooter with mirrors it's probably only a couple of days old. This is not at all a concern for these companies.

* I found the helmet missing 3 out of 5 times I booked a scooter. While I cancelled my booking and tried to make alternate arrangements (search for another bike or look for Uber) many others didn't care about this and just started their trip without helmet.

These issues will automatically filter out riders who care about safety and good driving.

So, now I have to agree with this sentiment that bad drivers will converge more towards these services.

[GrandTourer]

Originally Posted by vijayshouree

We are looking at a business model where the very item (the scooter/car), which is the sole purpose of business is not being taken care of.

The Company: Main aim is to get the ROI or burn the investor's cash and exit. Most of them think that it is the 'idea' that runs the business. But no, it is the process. More process involves more people, more cost to the company. So, avoid this in search of short term goals.

The Customer: We have in our DNA (sorry if someone gets offended). Anything that is not mine, no need to feel responsible for it. Ideally, it should be the other way round. Customer should feel responsible for what they have borrowed. It doesn't take much effort, all it takes is the right mindset.

The Item: Poor thing which is bearing all this pain in silence (or sometimes voicing out via rattles or breakdowns).

This is on point. However, I don't think there is any way of changing the mindset of users who think "Not my property not my concern".
There are very few people who actually take care of rentals (including 4 wheelers) which is evident from the condition of these vehicles.

Originally Posted by Thermodynamics

Whenever I spot a rental car, my instinct says "keep safe distance" because you never know what type of hooligan/novice/"L" board can be experimenting behind the wheel. I am not trying to generalize but there is a rising trend that learners resort to rental options.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Having driven Blore - Mysore multiple times, I have noticed rental Scorpios to be the worst driven vehicles, followed by rental Swifts. Whenever I spot these two cars, with self drive rental logos on the side, I just steer clear of them..



Having said that, I have still voted NO!
The reason being: Correlation does not mean Causation
That's right, going by pure numbers itself, all self drive rentals (2 & 4 wheelers) will amount to less than 1% of vehicular traffic on the road. That in itself is an insignificant sample size (not representative of the population of all vehicles).

But, because we believe in the above stated reason (not my vehicle, not my concern), we are forced into believing that these vehicles have resulted into increase in rash driving.

In statistics, such relationships are called spurious relationships, the resultant change is due to a third variable, so what appears to be a direct cause, isn't one.

The third variable could be an increase in the ease of acquiring a vehicle. Today, every Tom, Dick and Harry (no offense to anyone) can purchase a vehicle, get a DL too, without having basic requirements fulfilled. Case in point: increase in underage riding/driving.

TL;DR - Not enough data to attribute increase in rash driving to self drive rentals.

PS: Sorry for the boring statistics lesson

Mods, the vote is currently binary, and I believe the opinion cannot be so black and white in this case. Could you add another option in the vote for "Depends - I'll explain why in a post below"