Yes, that is exactly when i would appreciate them.
I started using elastic laces to convert my shoes to “slip ons” for use on summer road trips. I drive barefoot most of the time and tying and untying my shoes every time I got out and back in the car is sort of a pain. (flip flops are an even better solution, but they’re not good for quick impromptu short hikes over uneven terrain)
You know if you’re driving a car, you can take more than one pair of shoes.
Ones to step for a bottle of water. Ones for more vigorous walking.
In fact, I find carrying a few pairs of shoes is the only way to travel.
(I know if flying you have limited space to pack shoes)
I just tied my Hoka laces for possibly the last time ever. My new elastic laces will arrive later today.
My Hoka Transport came with elastic laces, as well as the regular ones. I use the elastic laces and absolutely love them, and I love the shoes as well.
I was on the Hoka train very early. They are the best. I have their walking shoes (Clifton). They are made by a company that’s headquartered in my town.
I have those on my shoes too. I just like the functionality and speed of slip-ons, but the security of laces. I need to tighten them every few days.
Also, little kids love to untie teachers shoes, and I’m talking about 15-30-month-olds, thereabouts, who mean no malice-- it’s just fascinating to them to pull and watch the bow come apart.
Velcro “exhausts.” It works on kids’ shoes because the outgrow them before they wear out the Velcro, but on adult shoes with Velcro closures, it’s usually the first thing to go.
The boychik is a bit of a klutz (honestly, he was briefly hypoxic at birth, and I wonder if he doesn’t have mild dyspraxia), so he was in Velcro shoes for as long as we could find them, then slip-ons, and the elastic laces for his PE shoes. He technically knows how to tie shoes, but isn’t good at it, so when there is an easy, and easy-to-access alternative, why not?
Me, I can tie a shoe one-handed, seriously, and I first learned to do it two-handed before my third birthday. I still prefer the elastic laces, which you can buy at Walmart or Shoe Carnival in packs of 3 or 4 for what comes to less than $2 per lace, in most cases, to replace the standard “tie” types shoes usually come with.
I just looked them up on walmart.com, and there are even more styles than there were the last time I bought them.
I think they aren’t more popular for a couple of reasons:
One is that they are marginally more expensive than the regular kind, so shoes, at least adult shoes, aren’t going to come with them, and some adults may not think to change them.
They aren’t being marketed very aggressively. I’m not seeing them prominently placed in stores so that people with new shoes might think “Hey, I’ll try them,” as an impulse buy. The are stocked mostly with the regular shoe laces, and the only reason anyone goes there is that they broken a lace. Polyester laces that currently come with shoes don’t break as often as the old cotton laces.
The only other reason someone might go there is to buy fancy laces for a child, and while it might be for a lot of reasons, a big one is to reward or motivate a child learning to tie shoes. So they won’t buy the “easy” ones.
Why do shoelaces wear out at all?
If you leave them untied they drag along the ground or are stepped on. With time the aglet cracks and the ends may become more unseemly or fray.
My elastic laces are the same after trudging through three Canadian winters with their slush and snow. I would say they seem more durable than regular shoelaces, but I don’t know if they would work so well for boots. (I prefer shoes in the snow unless it is very icy or cold since I tend to stick to sidewalks, not quite literally).
Children should still learn to tie shoes and read analog clocks. Me, I prefer not having to think about shoelaces at all.
I’ll be the curmudgeon and say that I hate all forms of “slip on” shoes. It seems to me that if a shoe can be deliberately slipped on, then it can accidentally slip off. The point of laces is to secure the shoe to your foot. Elastic laces seem to defeat the purpose of laces. I confess that I haven’t tried a wide variety of slip on shoes, but the ones that I have tried seem very insecure and frankly unsafe to me. The idea of marketing them to elderly people seems crazy to me. I definitely don’t want my shoe to fall off if I make a sudden leap to grab something. Give me laces or give me death!
Ok, tell me why I’m wrong.
My elderly parents (92 and 85) mostly wear Sketchers-style slip-ons. At this point in their lives, they are never going to be making another sudden leap to grab something. And they’ve not ever had one of the shoes slip off of their feet; the shoes fit snugly enough for their needs.
The slip-ons (as well as elastic laces) make it easier for someone who has difficulty bending to put on their shoes.
My problem with teaching shoe lace tying is it seems like a false milestone. You can go perfectly well thru life and never need to.
Kinda like analog clocks. Nostalgic, but unnecessary in the big picture.
As I have a 3rd grade grandson who hates hates hates memorizing the multiplication tables, I’m beginning to think, is this even necessary for a productive life? Uhh…nope. IMO
Shoelaces are the new cursive writing. 
If you want to drive past the age of eighty in Canada, you need to pass an exam that involves drawing a clock specifying a certain time. No doubt that is easier if you understand how clocks work.
In addition to bows, there are at least half a dozen practical knots everyone should know. You need them for everything from surgery to sewing to security.
In fairness, lots of stuff learned is “unnecessary for a productive life”. Only a fraction of people use complex numbers, foreign language subjunctives, the Krebs cycle or need to remember obscure historical details.
I don’t think I’ve seen a drawn clock face since elementary school. I know I’ve never seen one on a driving test.
I never could do it. (Slightly dislexic).
Plus I’m lefty. So learning to tie laces was not a thing I could really learn at as 4 or 5. Knots and bows came later in life. A dedicated learning process I took up for practical reasons. No one could teach me, I had to teach myself. Still tie shoes with the bunny rabbit ears method. The kids and grandkids learned by watching me. I didn’t teach it. I just did it and they copied.
I excelled at what I did without telling time on an analog clock, tying shoes properly or even actually knowing multiplication tables by rote.
Fwiw, I’m both dyslexic and left handed, and never had any trouble tying shoes or reading an analog clock. At fancy parties, i tie a lot of bowties because it’s the same knot as shoelaces, and i know how.
But i agree that we all learn lots of stuff we don’t actually need.
Yeah. Maybe I was just a stubborn head.
Could be. I was a mess.
My father’s method of shoe-tie instruction required understanding prepositions. As soon as I could do that, I could learn to tie shoe.
I can still hear his voice saying “under, around, over, and through.” I would whisper it to myself as I tied my shoes for about a year after I learned to do it.
By ten, I could tie a shoe one-handed, and by 12, I could do one in each hand at the same time-- albeit, that actually took more time than tying one at a time two-handed. But it was still a cool trick to show off.
I don’t bend too well, so about five years ago my son bought me a pair of step-in shoes. I have never looked back. I avoid going out in snow so I don’t have to struggle with boots.
I think the reason you’re wrong about elastic-laced shoes being no more secure than slip-on shoes is that elastic cords can stretch a hella lot more than shoe fabric, even spandexy shoe fabric.
A regular lace-up style shoe or sneaker with elastic laces can be cut significantly higher on the foot, and can grip the foot much more securely, than the average slip-on shoe that depends on the low cut of the upper and/or the intrinsic stretchiness of the shoe fabric to be able to get the shoe on and off the foot.
Saves a lot of trouble in later life, though. When your grandson needs to know, say, how many dozen donuts he has to order for a group of seven people to be able to have three donuts apiece, it’s very convenient to know right off the top of his head that 7 x 3 = 21 and 12 x 2 = 24, rather than needing to pull up a calculator app on his phone. (It also protects him from unscrupulous salespeople assuring him that he needs to get three or four dozen donuts instead, when they see that he can’t do the calculation in his head and isn’t bothering to check their statements with a calculator.)
Yes, you CAN get through life laboriously doing all your elementary arithmetic reckoning via explicit operations on a calculating device. But if productivity’s your goal, having some of these skills and facts in your head instead of just in your phone is definitely going to boost your baseline productivity level. Memorizing multiplication tables is one of those long-term cognitive investments that keep paying out small dividends over and over for the rest of your life.