Hear Me Out: You Should Buy An Electric Scooter
by
Gabrielle DeSantis on May 27, 2020
That may seem like a crazy idea at first, but big-town scooter owners have a lot of positive things to say about driving a scooter, and
Consumer Reports has even tested out four popular scooters to let us know which ones are worth buying. Hear me out, because there might be something to owning an
electric scooter here.
Who should buy an electric scooter, and why?
So owning an electric scooter isn’t practical if you live in the country and have to make a long-distance commute to work, but I can be really beneficial to anyone who lives in large cities, for a number of reasons.
For one, scooters are a lot easy to find parking and storage for. Because of their size, scooters can be parked, carried, or stored anywhere. No need for finding a parking spot for a large SUV or full-size sedan.
A man rides a electric scooter on Cardiff Bay barrage on the hottest day of the year on May 20, 2020, in Cardiff, Wales | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Electric scooters are convenient for navigating heavy traffic and, depending on the city, can be driven on widened sidewalks or bike lanes. It can get you out of that soul-sucking bumper-to-bumper traffic of larger cities and get you on your way to where you need to go.
They don’t offer any storage, but chances are if you’re traveling for a daily commute and live in a major city you don’t need to pack heavy, and besides getting groceries you might not need to take anything you couldn’t fit in a backpack.
Safety and street laws
The scooters that were tested by Consumer Reports didn’t have seats and we’re considered legitimate motor vehicles. This means that the NHTSA hasn’t come out with a lot of laws regarding their operations yet on a national level, but it’s important to see if your individual state or major city has any laws regarding their use and parking on major roadways.
Scooters are a tad easier to steal than a car, so it’s important to lock them to a bicycle rack or park them someplace safe when you’re not using them. Some of them are even small enough and can fold up to be carried with you or stored in the smallest of apartments.
10 April 2020, North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne: an e-scooter of the Dutch scooter rental company DOTT is standing at the roadside Photo: Horst Galuschka/dpa/Horst Galuschka dpa (Photo by Horst Galuschka/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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In addition to legal regulations, it’s also safe to wear a helmet, long pants, and a jacket in case you fall or crash into something, just like if you were riding a motorcycle. Electric scooters don’t go very fast, but it can be relatively unpleasant to fall off of one and get road or sidewalk rash.
Being on a scooter requires your full attention, and it’s important to pay just as much attention to what’s going on around you as if you were driving a full-sized car.
Electric scooters can be a great problem solving for people that live in big cities, but don’t want the big-city hassle of car ownership. They are incredibly affordable and require a lot less maintenance costs, and can make your daily commute a little bit better.
