With the price of gas here in Atlanta at about 4.10/gal, people are trying to figure out ways of getting around that they can afford. Atlanta is a big, very spread out city with a lot of people living in the suburbs and commuting to the city for work. When you couple the distance with the fact that most people have big cars, trucks and SUV’s, the cost is really hurting a lot of people. Since I’m in the bike business, I have seen a lot of interest in motorcycles for commuting. That’s not surprising since the rest of the world has been doing it for years. Scooters are becoming popular as well because they are cheap and use almost no gas. But, in a lot of situations, they are very dangerous. Yesterday as I was driving down a busy 2 lane hwy, traffic came to a crawl and the reason was someone was riding a small scooter at about 30mph on a 55mph hwy. People were frustrated and eventually started blowing their horns at him but he never pulled over. While the scooter was legal, it should have been limited to roads that it can at least do the speed limit.
So here’s the deal, encourage people to buy something that is safe for the conditions they ride in. Scooters are OK for urban downtown areas or in a neighborhood where traffic moves slowly. But the small ones are simply not safe on open roads or highways. I have a feeling we are going to see some ugly accidents if common sense doesn’t prevail. Saving money on gas doesn’t matter if you are dead or in the hospital!
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