Saturday, July 14, 2012
Electric Scooter
This presidential election will be decided by a few hundred thousand white suburban women in Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio & Florida. If Mitt starts reminding them of their first husbands, he's a goner. Just a thought.
Anyway, this young guy whizzed by me earlier on a small electric motor scooter. It was pretty nice, quiet, sit down model, about 15 mph, even had a tail light. Functional. Looked sturdy enough. But it was totally illegal. There's no way it could be brought up to legal standard. The scooter & moped laws here are very strict: You need a legal moped, you need registration, you need insurance, you need a helmet, you have to pass a written test & road test if you don't have a driver license. No electric skateboards or razor scooters. Even those slow electric toy cars you see children driving on the sidewalk as their parents walk behind are technically illegal. A legal scooter without pedals requires a motorcycle license.
The guy didn't reason through why there aren't hundreds of electric scooters like his on the streets here. Maybe he's stupid enough to think it was his original idea. Or the dealer sold him lies. One of three things will happen to him soon. He'll be in an accident. The scooter will break & either no one can repair it or repairs will cost as much as he paid for it. Most likely the police will just stop him & confiscate it. They could cite him for a half-dozen violations, if not more, some quite serious, but probably won't. They'll insinuate they will nail him if he tries to retrieve it from police custody. The police have a large garage somewhere filled with various illegal motorized vehicles, from electric skateboards to funky homemade gasoline engine mopeds like a guy in my building had for about a week. Unlike unclaimed bicycles they can't auction them off to the general public.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Anyway, this young guy whizzed by me earlier on a small electric motor scooter. It was pretty nice, quiet, sit down model, about 15 mph, even had a tail light. Functional. Looked sturdy enough. But it was totally illegal. There's no way it could be brought up to legal standard. The scooter & moped laws here are very strict: You need a legal moped, you need registration, you need insurance, you need a helmet, you have to pass a written test & road test if you don't have a driver license. No electric skateboards or razor scooters. Even those slow electric toy cars you see children driving on the sidewalk as their parents walk behind are technically illegal. A legal scooter without pedals requires a motorcycle license.
The guy didn't reason through why there aren't hundreds of electric scooters like his on the streets here. Maybe he's stupid enough to think it was his original idea. Or the dealer sold him lies. One of three things will happen to him soon. He'll be in an accident. The scooter will break & either no one can repair it or repairs will cost as much as he paid for it. Most likely the police will just stop him & confiscate it. They could cite him for a half-dozen violations, if not more, some quite serious, but probably won't. They'll insinuate they will nail him if he tries to retrieve it from police custody. The police have a large garage somewhere filled with various illegal motorized vehicles, from electric skateboards to funky homemade gasoline engine mopeds like a guy in my building had for about a week. Unlike unclaimed bicycles they can't auction them off to the general public.
Labels: count the yoyos, Elizabeth NJ, THE election
