Over the past year, companies have been rolling out electric scooters (踏板车) by the thousands in cities across the country from Milwaukee to Washington, D. C. to Lubbock, Texas. People download the app, find a nearby scooter and then just unlock and ride. But as these shared scooters have spread, so have concerns about safety.

Portland, Oregon in the middle of a four-month e-scooter pilot program. You see these scooters everywhere — parked on sidewalks (they don't require docking stations, which most shared bikes do), taking fast corners and going through traffic. But something you don't see much of helmets.

On a recent weekend, a 32-year-old woman who didn't want to give her name because she's breaking the city's helmet rule is riding for the first time with some of her friends. None of them are wearing helmets, which both the city and the scooter company require with good reason. “One of our friends almost just got run over. The brake lights on theirs don't work,” she says.

Part of the draw of these scooters is their flexibility — most riders we talked to jumped on a scooter on the spur of the moment. And, given the fact that most people would not want to share helmets with strangers they don't come with helmets attached. So people end up riding without any safety gear.

Yet this is against the rules, but many people just don’t want to carry around helmets. Data from bicycles suggest that people participating in share programs have lower rates of accidents than those using their own vehicle. And many transportation advocates point to the fact that helmet requirements deter bike usage.

Still helmets provide protection. Riding a scooter is very different from riding a bike.

And people on e-scooters are starting to show up in emergency rooms with injuries.” We've seen things from broken bones to punctured (刺穿) lungs.” says Catherine Juillard, a doctor at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

A hybrid electric vehicle (混合动力车) or HEV is a vehicle driven by the combination of petrol engine and electric motor. Terrence has been driving a HEV for five years. He really doesn’t understand why more people aren’t accepting them. “I probably spend about $ 7 a day on petrol,” the taxi driver told news. com. au. In his previous conventional vehicle Terrence said he was spending up to $ 30 a day on petrol, meaning he saves almost $ 6000 every year.

The Toyota spokesman said this was quite a high saving and official tests estimate (估计) an average driver would only save about 33 percent off their current bill. This means a driver paying $ 30 a day on petrol would see their bill drop to about $ 20 using the hybrid. “A taxi driver that drives in built-up areas and spends little time on highways will notice a higher fuel saving,” he said. “Low speeds allow the electric motors to be used more and the petrol engine used less.”

While some people are skeptical about how reliable hybrids are, Terrence said he had never run out of power. His Camry cost about $ 34,000 and so after five years, it’s nearly paid for itself. “For cab drivers, it’s a real advantage because of the cost-effectiveness,” he said. Terrence has no complaints about the car. “I love it, the calm and quietness of it, the simplicity of it—you just jump in and go. The maintenance（保养）is really low. But the only difficulty is finding someone to service the car as there are not many experienced mechanics（机修工）.”

Terrence said it’s “extraordinary” that more drivers aren’t buying more hybrid electric vehicles and that governments are not encouraging this more. “I think people have a view that you have to plug it in, which is not true. A lack of information about the cars may be stopping people from taking the plunge. It’s not promoted at all for the public to understand—it’s simplifying the actual owning of a car—you don’t have to do so many things to own it and run it, it’s just so much simpler. Why wouldn’t the government promote such a thing?”

Cars are the most important part of life in the United States. Without a car most people feel that they are poor. And even if a person is poor he doesn’t feel really poor when he has a car.

Henry Ford was the man who first started making cars in large numbers. He probably doesn’t know how much the car was going to affect American culture. The car made the United States a nation on wheels. And it helped to make the United States what it is today.

There are many reasons that the car became so popular in the United States. First of all, the country was a large one and Americans like to move around in it. The car provides the most comfortable and cheapest form of transportation. With a car people can go to any place without spending a lot of money.

The second reason that cars are popular is the fact that the United States never really developed an efficient and inexpensive form of public transportation. Long distance trains have never been as common in the United States as they are in the other parts of the world. Nowadays there is good system of air service provided by planes. But it is too expensive to be used frequently.

The third reason is the most important one. The American spirit of independence is what really made cars popular. Americans don’t like to wait for a bus, or a train or even a plane. They don’t like to have to follow an exact schedule. A car gives them the freedom to plan their own time. And this is the freedom that Americans want most to have.

The gas shortage has caused a big problem for Americans. But the answer will not be a bigger system of public transportation. The real solution will have to be a new kind of car, one that does not use so much gas.