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Notes -
Update on the Black Teens Versus Pregnant Nurse story.
This twitter thread seems like a reasonable summary. I know it's not entirely unbiased, but absent additional contradictory evidence, the story seems to basically check out like this:
Kids had checked out the ebikes for a ride, and docked them before the 45-minute "free" period ended, planning to undock them to resume riding. (This is apparently a pretty common practice?)
They're sitting on the bikes chilling, when Comrie, the pregnant nurse, approaches and asks to have one of the bikes.
The teens say no, unmoved by her appeals for consideration for her pregnancy.
She scans (checks out) a bike one of the kids is sitting on, and tries to take it.
The kerfluffle we saw on video ensues. The kids apparently filmed it with a legitimate fear that she would turn it into "gang of teens harasses pregnant white lady."
So basically, no one looks like an entirely innocent victim here. The kids were just hanging out in preparation to check out the bikes again, but since they were docked, you don't really get to "call dibs" on a bike you are not currently renting. Technically Comrie was entitled to take an available bike; the kids shouldn't have been squatting on them. They were also kind of jerks for not showing a little compassion for an obviously pregnant woman (their version is that if they'd given up the bike, one of them would have had to find some other way to get back to the Bronx).
That said, deciding "Screw you, I'm taking your bike anyway, get off" wasn't great behavior on her part, even if legally justified. I cut her more slack because apparently she just got off a 12-hour shift, and she was pregnant.
However, even if the teens were perhaps being inconsiderate and less than gentlemanly, the narrative that's basically portrayed them as ganging up on her and trying to steal her bike appears to be inaccurate.
It was her bike, they had returned it and she had rented it. They were trying to enforce a claim that the lockout was expressly designed to prevent someone not paying for a bike and using it all day preventing others from using it.
They had every right to pay for the bike, and use it as long as they wished, but since they didn't it was entirely up for anyone else to use.
I hope their actions end the free 45 minutes for everyone, this is why we can't have nice things.
Right, but it does have extra charges after 45 minutes to prevent someone with the subscription claiming a bike in perpetuity for free and denying them to paid customers. You don't get 720 hours of bike rental for $5, you get 45 minutes each time you need it over the course of the month, plus more if you pay more. Which these kids were deliberately attempting to subvert, exploiting the technicalities to claim bikes for long periods of time, denying them to paid customers.
That seems like it might be a necessary evil, and why we can't have nice things. Because of bad faith actors who attempt to exploit simple systems, it's necessary to create stricter regulations that have annoying side effects on good faith actors. Because it's entirely reasonable for some people to go somewhere, spend less than 2 hours there, and then need to leave, which your stricter regulations will harm. Might be necessary, but it would be nice if people could just be more ethical and it wasn't necessary. Like those stores and stands that don't have a cashier and just ask people nicely to put money in a box. It's efficient, it saves labor and thus enables cheaper prices for customers. But they can only survive in high trust areas. It'd be nice if there could be more of those.
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This seems a very bizarre conception of decorum. Ok, they hadn't technically rented it and she in theory was able to, but recognising that good manners require you to refrain from doing things you are 'entitled' to do is the most basic and foundational rule of social grace.
Except the "camp the bike" rule, if allowed as "good decorum" means lots of people will show up to bike rental stations where no bikes are available when the app told them it was. There have been many stories corroborating the nurse where a guy went to the station, and was menaced away by roving bands of professional victims and had to walk to the next station, and then the next.
They are basically lying, kidnapping, and assaulting all at once!
How do you figure?
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