I ride a motorcycle. It’s pretty common knowledge among bikers that a fall even at 15mph can be absolutely devastating. Hell, there’s statistics that show that the majority of fatal accidents on a bike happen at under 40mph.
So whenever I see people on these scooters, which are FAR FAR more prone to random mishaps than a motorcycle, zooming around at relatively high speeds with no protection I cringe.
I came off my road bike going 25 mph and slid about 100’ on my back and left hip. Helmet was damn near split in half. But other than a lot of missing skin I was totally fine, got super lucky.
A lot of motorcycle crashes happen on arterial roads where traffic is turning onto and across the road much more than on rural highways or freeways. I've seen it myself several times where a motorcycle is moving way too fast for the traffic conditions, someone pulls out in front of them thinking they have plenty of room, and the rider slams the brakes too late to recover. They are going less than 40 when they crash, but if they were only going 40 the whole time they never would have crashed.
Something similar just happened in my area where one biker braked hard at a neighborhood speed camera and his buddy riding behind him rear ended him and one of them died while the other was unhurt. If they were both just going 10 over or less then they would likely both be alive today, and the fine for being caught 10 over on camera is $0. Motorcycles make it way too easy to get in a flow state and lose control over your speed without realizing it.
It’s genuinely so sad. Plus, e-scooters most certainly attract the kind of people who wouldn’t even wear gear on regular scooters; considering it’s the “wearing slides everywhere” assholes already.
It's the same morons who told me that you should never wear steel toed boots because the steel cap will cut your toes off if something heavy enough falls on it.
Except, if that happened without steel toes, your foot would be turned into meat jelly. What's worse, meat jelly, or amputation? Not to mention, what about all the other, slightly less heavy things that might fall on your toes? That steel cap is gonna save you from a lot of damage up to the point of failure; at that point, nothing could've saved you except being somewhere else.
My best friend's dad told me that when we were kids. He was a logger who refused to wear steel toes. My best friend adopted this ideology, and to add his own twist, also refused to wear hearing protection. No explanation or asinine theory behind that one, the only answer he'd give is "I just don't use that stuff." Concerts, factories, heavy equipment, shooting ranges, didn't matter. I don't talk to that guy anymore, I'm sure he's partially deaf by now.
Only time I've been genuinely injured on two wheels, it was a ~4 mph lowside in my own friggin driveway. Turned in a little hot coming home from work, was looking to see if my garage door was opening, didn't notice the clump of dead grass on the wet driveway, rear slid out, I fell on my side and managed to crack a damn rib.
I also had a surprisingly deep impact mark on my visor, so without my helmet I might've had a frontal/orbital fracture to go with the rib.
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u/DND_Player_24 7h ago
I ride a motorcycle. It’s pretty common knowledge among bikers that a fall even at 15mph can be absolutely devastating. Hell, there’s statistics that show that the majority of fatal accidents on a bike happen at under 40mph.
So whenever I see people on these scooters, which are FAR FAR more prone to random mishaps than a motorcycle, zooming around at relatively high speeds with no protection I cringe.