When a news story falls through the cracks,
Lewis Black catches it
for a segment we call Back in Black.
-♪ ♪ -(cheering and applause)
Let's face it, commuting sucks.
Subways smell like rat sex.
Buses have other people on them.
And forget driving--
city streets are more clogged than my colon.
I mean, it's no problem for me,
because I get around by parkour.
But for those of you who are less agile,
there's a new option.
From ridesharing to bike-sharing,
there are plenty of ways to get around
without driving your own car,
and, now in dozens of cities across the country,
electric scooters are giving people a fun way
to get to their destinations.
REPORTER: It's the invasion of the Birds.
We're talking about the electric scooters called Bird.
The motorized scooters are catching on across the country.
REPORTER 2: Riders find them with an app on their phone
and can ride for as little as a dollar.
The scooters can hit speeds of up to 15 miles an hour.
I love it so far. It's really convenient.
Wow. 15 miles an hour?
You can get to your destination five minutes earlier,
and all you have to do is give up your dignity.
There's a lot of things to hate
about these scooter-sharing programs.
For starters, there's no dock.
People just leave them lying around anywhere
for the next person to find them.
That's not sharing--
that's littering!
You can't do that with anything else!
Hey, how about I launch a dog poop-sharing app?
I'm not leaving my dog shit on the sidewalk--
I'm sharing it with the community.
(cheering and applause)
It's bad enough that scooters are taking up space everywhere,
but their riders are also taking up space in the hospital.
REPORTER 3: Lisa Beardslee says she suffered torn ligaments
and a hairline fracture in her arm
when she was forced to jump off what she says
was a malfunctioning Bird scooter about two months ago.
And now doctors say they're seeing an uptick in injuries.
But it's not just riders getting hurt.
It was like I was walking down the pier
and I got hit by a motor vehicle.
"Dancin' Dave" Petersen is a street performer.
He says he lost months of work and had to simplify his act
after a man on a scooter hit him from behind and left.
Yeah.
Look what you bastards did to Dancin' Dave!
He couldn't work for two months!
Which means he lost 15 bucks and a stale Cronut.
You know what pisses me off about Silicon Valley?
They don't worry if something's good or bad for us.
They just want to sell their damn app.
Fortunately, there are a few brave souls out there
who are standing up to these two-wheeled menaces.
-REPORTER 4: These Birds don't fly. -(bleep)
And they're not designed for this.
Whether they're launched from buildings,
sent off of mountaintops,
thrown into the ocean,
or pushed down storm drains,
an Instagram account called Bird Graveyard
is documenting all the ways
electric scooters are meeting their demise.
Okay,
this is officially
my new favorite thing on Instagram.
I mean, I used to just like Instagram
for the contouring tips--
don't pretend you haven't noticed
my pronounced cheekbones--
but protesters trashing scooters is the best.
It's classic civil disobedience,
like the time Gandhi keyed
his shift manager's Hyundai.
Anyway, it doesn't look like there's a solution anytime soon,
so I stepped in to fix it with my own high-tech product.
It's an audio device that you attach to electric scooters
that warns pedestrians to look out.
Here's how it works.
-(siren whoops) -Asshole coming through!
Out of the way!
Total dipshit on board. Move it.
This douchebag has places to be.
It's now available on my website!
(bleep) Amazon!
Trevor?
Lewis Black, everyone!