E-Scooter Presence in Urban Areas: Are Consistent Rules, Paying Attention and Smooth Infrastructure Enough for Safety?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper investigates several issues related to E-scooter. The paper is timely and organized in a good way. My only concern is regarding the experiments which are conducted under specific environment. Whether the research results are applicable to other countries and scenarios?
Author Response
REV1
This paper investigates several issues related to E-scooter. The paper is timely and organized in a good way. My only concern is regarding the experiments which are conducted under specific environment. Whether the research results are applicable to other countries and scenarios?
ANSWER
We thank the reviewer for pointing this crucial point out. As for transferability, some notes are added at the end of the comment section (lines 1935-1941). In particular, as far as vehicle performance aspects are concerned, there is no relevant pavement type or design criteria that can harm significantly the findings of the paper. As far as the interaction topic is concerned, drivers from countries in which light mobility and sustainable and healthy lifestyles are given higher priority might exhibit more careful attitudes towards both e-scooter and bike users. On the other hand, both e-scooter and bike are quite spread in those countries and maybe there are higher odds that the two vehicles are perceived similar but this hypothesis is worth being investigated.
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of the study is extremely topical. Experimentation is also interesting, but the structure of the paper is too confusing. I do not agree with the authors' choice to bring together in a single paper two different aspects relating to e-scooters (interaction and vehicle performance).
The paper is too long, I fear that the reader does not have the patience to get to read it completely.
The paper should be shortened, many parts are repeated, these should be removed (e.g. from line 150 to line 190).
The literature review is too long. I do not consider the subdivision into subsections useful. Furthermore, the topics covered in the literature review are too general, not very related to the real topic of the study. I recommend that you structure this section better.
The part of the text describing Table 5 is also superfluous. If percentages were added to the table, all the text could be eliminated (from line 645 to line 664).
There are some errors in the text:
- line 535: it should be (fig2) and not (fig1);
- line 534: we read that the carriageway has 1 lane in each direction of travel, but the figure shows that before the crossing there are 2 lanes heading west. Authors should explain better.
- line 563 reads 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 but in table 5 there is no correspondence. Authors should enter correspondence.
It is not clear how the values in Table 3 were calculated.
Table 7 should be placed before Table 6. This would make the reading of Table 6 and the related discussions more understandable.
The conclusions are also too long. it is useless to reiterate what has already been extensively written in the discussions.
Finally, I recommend that the two aspects (IS and VP) be exposed separately in different papers. Therefore I suggest leaving in this paper only the part relating to Interaction Study.
Author Response
PLEASE SEE THE ATTACHMENT
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The topic discussed in this manuscript is very timely especially in different European contexts.
It is necessary to better emphasize the novelty of the research in the introductory part.
It is considered appropriate to.
1) better describe the evolutionary process of e-scooters taking into account the regulatory evolution
2) to define the process of ownership , rental and sharing that has allowed different users to be able to enjoy e-scooters in recent years
3) analyze the impacts that the recent pandemic and energy crisis may have had or still have on the choice to use e-scooters
4) take into account the type of users who may use scooters and the restrictions related to this , Particular importance will also need to be defined in terms of equity and equity at the moment are present in different contexts due to gender or economic and social aspects
Therefore, we recommend reading the following research papers
1)Campisi, T., Akgün, N., & Tesoriere, G. (2020, July). An ordered logit model for predicting the willingness of renting micro mobility in urban shared streets: a case study in Palermo, Italy. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 796-808). Springer, Cham.
2)Nikiforiadis, A., Paschalidis, E., Stamatiadis, N., Raptopoulou, A., Kostareli, A., & Basbas, S. (2021). Analysis of attitudes and engagement of shared e-scooter users. Transportation research part D: transport and environment, 94, 102790.
3) Campisi, T., Skoufas, A., Kaltsidis, A., & Basbas, S. (2021). Gender equality and E-scooters: Mind the gap! A statistical analysis of the Sicily Region, Italy. Social Sciences, 10(10), 403.
In addition, it is necessary to
1) make the figures more readable and standardize the tables
2) include the latest Italian regulatory updates regarding the use of e-scooters
Author Response
please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I still think the paper is too long. The two different aspects had to be presented in separate papers. There are too many citations. But the conclusions (of both aspects) are good.
Author Response
reviewer: I still think the paper is too long. The two different aspects had to be presented in separate papers. There are too many citations. But the conclusions (of both aspects) are good.
answer: We thank the reviewer for the satisfactory comments about the conclusions drawn for both aspects. We doublechecked the paper to find unnecessary references and sentences where it was possible to summarize further. The new version is a bit shorter. A few references have been cut.
Reviewer 3 Report
the manuscript still has several grammatical errors and typos.
It is recommended to insert references at the end of the sentence.
It is recommended to check lines 41-50 and 87-100
It is useful to insert the images in high resolution using the same template for the wording as for the text
It is considered appropriate to conform the tables to the journal template
More explanation should be included to accompany Figure 7
It is considered appropriate to revise the title and make it more attractive.
Author Response
REVIEWER
- the manuscript still has several grammatical errors and typos.
- It is recommended to insert references at the end of the sentence. It is recommended to check lines 41-50 and 87-100
- It is useful to insert the images in high resolution using the same template for the wording as for the text. It is considered appropriate to conform the tables to the journal template
- More explanation should be included to accompany Figure 7
- It is considered appropriate to revise the title and make it more attractive.
REPLY FROM THE AUTHORS
we thank the reviewer for the meaningful comments. in the new version we addressed all the points. in particular
- all the typos and revisions from the previous version have been accepted. active revisions shown are the new ones
- we placed references at the correct place. the final list - after a few vuts have been done - has been updated and checked
- we used the same style of the template for both figures and tables. thanks for showing us the differences in the font size!
- lines 952-982 have been modified following your suggestion
- revising the title has been quite a major revision to us due to a certain lack of creativity! we hope that the effort is appreciated :D
thanks again for your valuable time and comments
