Glad to hear she's on the mend but sorry to hear she's been so unwell! Best wishes to both of you.

The amount of people being like "I too am a hair trigger away from running down a crowd of people including babies and no I don't think I might be temperamentally unsuited to wielding heavy machinery how dare you"

Suggest to someone that you can't complete your commute without slowly & carefully riding your bicycle on a wide quiet pavement next to a busy road with no bike lane - which poses less danger to others than drivers who don't intend harm - & see how sympathetic they are to your need to get to work.

Wild how when there is any suggestion that someone might be prevented from driving or that car access might be restricted, the slightest loss of mobility is a showstopper but when people who don't or can't drive talk about lack of or restrictions on alternatives limiting their mobility, tough shit.

This is such a slap in the face to people who don't or can't drive - whether by choice, disability, cost, etc. - and are largely ignored when we talk about how lack, unreliability and/or cost of alternatives limits our access to employment (excluding jobs that necessarily involve driving.)

It's also basically the state conceding that it underserves people who don't or can't drive in ways that have a significant impact on their lives and has no intention of remedying that.

No, it's fine - that sounds super frustrating!

Oh absolutely. Obviously in practical terms - people being unable or unwilling to pay, just adding an extra layer of inconvenience. But also in terms of messaging - undermining the value of breaking chains of transmission, people thinking vaccines are for "the weak" and not wanting to be "the weak."

Somewhere I worked (2010s) had a form that we sent to people outside the organisation that instructed them to reply by Telex. Apparently nobody at the company had noticed (people replied by email regardless) but when I pointed it out they, for reasons that remain unclear to me, refused to change it.

I don't remember a smell - just the noise of that thing printing about a billion pages while everyone else was fast asleep - as I wished to be. God knows how they kept enough ink in it.

I think a big part of the question should be "What are the practical alternatives for people who are, reasonably, unwilling to take the risk of riding in the road? (A far greater risk than they pose to pedestrians.) If we get that scooter user off the sidewalk and into a car, what have we achieved?"

We should absolutely aim to separate bikes and scooters from pedestrians - it's safer, more pleasant for everyone, allows quicker journey times, and encourages active transport use. Crashes between micromobility users and pedestrians can be deadly but far, far less commonly than with motor vehicles.

Ideally I want scooters safely in separated bike or micromobility lanes but, in most places, those aren't sufficient for most journeys. Cars on the road pose far more danger to pedestrians than scooters on the sidewalk/pavement.

Your ex-neighbour didn't move out towards the coast, did they? 😉