The scourge of the urban scooterist

Time now for a bit of a (hopefully restrained) moan. Yes, it's London scooter riders in the firing line today.

Riding in to work this morning, I came by the aftermath of two accidents. Both involved scooters, both had ambulances in attendance and both looked to be fairly significant shunts. Sadly, this isn't unusual - the vast majority of accidents that I see on London's roads involve either cyclists or (more usually) urban scoots of various sizes and shapes.

Despite the statistics suggesting that you are something like 30 times more likely to have an accident on two wheels (than in a car), it's actually quite rare that I see an accident that involves what I will refer to as a "proper bike". Why is that?

It's not that scooters, of themselves, are in any way more dangerous than bikes - after all, both are machines that are there to be ridden and they will only go as fast as you want them to (or are capable of going). However, I think a key reason is that these different types of machine are ridden in different ways. Certainly, from what I see every day, urban scooter riders tend to be much more likely (and willing) to take risks on the road in an attempt to make progress. Many's the time you see scoots charge down bus lanes, beast cyclists and weave in and out of traffic. Much more so than most bikers would (or do), in my opinion. I definitely think that riding an urban scooter encourages a certain state of mind.

Scooters these days are light, highly manoeuvrable and have very lively and zippy engines. Some of the "maxi-scooters" that have emerged on the market - such as the new Piaggios - are also extremely powerful, with engine displacements of over 800cc. Perhaps this encourages those riding them to go for gaps that a "proper" biker would think twice about?

The other key point for me is the lack of attention scooter riders give to their own personal safety. For example, apart from the mandatory (by law) crash helmet, most that I come across wear zero protective clothing - and then they go out and ride badly! Wearing a suit, office shoes and no gloves, it is hardly surprising that if (when) they come off, the accident will turn out to be a lot more serious than it might or should have been. Many even carry their bloody shopping in the footrest space! Madness.

In contrast, I wear armoured leather trousers and boots and bike jacket with built-in back protector. Solid gloves are also a necessity - your first instinct in an accident is to put your hands down as protection, so they will always take a significant impact. I wouldn't even consider riding in London without these things and I simply cannot understand why scooterists choose to run these risks. It's all about personal choice I know (as well as image), but given that a lot of fatal accidents happen at around 30-50mph where riders come off their machine and hit something solid (or get hit by something solid), to me it's utterly unfathomable. The road hurts.

Ultimately, scooters represent very good value as runarounds or on the daily commute into town, so they're not suddenly going to disappear from our streets (more's the pity!) - indeed, the opposite is true since sales are up year on year, bucking the trend of bigger bikes. I'd simply wish to see better standards of riding and more consideration of other road users. The fact is that by their actions, many scooterists put themselves at risk - and by their two-wheeled association, they give bikers a bad name....


IMPORTANT EDIT: For the sake of clarity, this should not be misconstrued as applying to the Mod or scooter movements - many of whom I count as friends and have enormous respect for. No, as the title (hopefully) suggests, this is about the weekday urban commuters, many of whom shouldn't be let out unaccompanied....  :-)