The overwhelming majority of scooter accidents are caused by four key issues, according to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF). Here’s how to conquer this short list and increase your safety on the road.

If you haven’t already taken the MSF’s scooter safety class, please go sign up right now. You’ll learn a ton of techniques for staying safe on the road. Go ahead – I’ll wait.

In most scooter accidents, you’ll find one or more of the following likely played a part:

• Collision at an intersection
• Rider inexperience
• Excessive speed
• Alcohol

Here’s how to deal with each of these trouble spots so you can be on your way to the safest ride possible.

Be Vigilant at Intersections

The vast majority of scooter/car collisions happen at an intersection. Being vigilant at intersections and increasing your visibility to cars minimizes your chances of becoming a part of this statistic.

A good rule of thumb: pretend you are invisible, and assume every car is going to turn in front of you. Riding in this way saves me, literally, on a daily basis.

Read Scooter Safety at Intersections for an in-depth look at cross-roads collision avoidance.

Make Yourself More Visible

There are many ways to increase your visibility to other vehicles and decrease your likelihood of a collision.

Chose lane position wisely

You want to choose the lane where you’re most visible, and then ride in best position within that lane. The ideal location will vary based on riding conditions.

Use bright colors and reflection

A brightly-colored helmet or jacket helps you stand out during the day. Yellow, red, and white are obviously more visible than navy and black. At night, that same helmet and jacket can be embellished with reflectlive tape, decals, stripes, and piping.

I’m a big fan of 3M SOLAS all-weather reflective tape, and I’ve plastered it on everthing I own. I also really love Glo-glovs, which are stretchy, fingerless gloves that fit over your riding gloves (or bare hands). They have flourescent strips all over them and they’re highly reflective. You’ve probably seen cops wearing them while directing traffic.

Boost your illumination

Be sure your headlight, brake lights and turn signals are working correctly – ideally, before you ride each day. If your headlight or brake lights are not very bright, you can replace them with halogen and/or LED equivalents. The stock headlight on earlier Stellas is notoriously dim, and it’s become standard to replace them with brighter halogen lamps. Better illumination increases your ability to see and be seen on the road.

Ride within Your Ability

Stay in control

Novice riders can reduce their risk and be more safe by riding within their ability. This means traveling at a speed that gives you total control of your scooter, and avoiding routes that require highly-technical riding skills, like twisty turns, loose gravel, or bridges, until you’re ready.

Use extra caution at night and in the rain

If you’re new to riding at night, take short trips with minimal traffic until you’re comfortable and confident. Same for riding in the rain. Your scooter handles differently in rain – braking, cornering and even accelerating. Rain can also inhibit your ability to see clearly.

Practice your riding skills

I’ve found it helpful to practice technical riding skills in a big parking lot on a weekend with minimal cars. When I get a new scooter, or even new tires, I like to go down to the empty university parking lot and play a bit. You can practice turning and braking, get used to riding on wet pavement, and figure out how far you can lean the scooter while maintaining your balance.

Knowing the limits of your scooter increases your confidence and ability on the road. Learning how to survive a skid in a controlled environment is gentler on the heart than a crash course during rush hour traffic. As always, I speak from highly personal experience.

Keep Your Speed in Check

The faster you are traveling, the less time you have to react. Other people on the road also have less time to react to you. Speed also affects your cornering. The faster you are going, the longer it takes to stop. Braking at high speed also increases your chances of a wipeout.

Keep to the speed limit, and less when necessary. Remember that speed limits are designed for cars and you may need to be traveling a little slower, especially in construction areas or twisty turns.

Don’t Drink and Ride (duh.)

This goes without saying, but apparently it has to be said since a scary percentage of two-wheeled accidents involve an inebriated rider.

Even one drink can impair your reaction time, and there’s little room for error on two wheels. When you’re riding a scooter, a little “fender bender” isn’t the likely outcome of any collision.

Drinking and riding is suicide, plain and simple. So don’t be a moron. Call a cab, okay?

The good news is that you can have an enormous impact on your safety by following these guidelines. Many dangerous situations can be avoided. So be vigilant at intersections, ride with in your ability, keep your speed under control, and please don’t drink and ride.

Keep the rubber side down!

4 Ways to Avoid a Scooter Crash is a post from: Scooter Lust

If you join a scooter club, and I recommend you do, you’ll eventually find yourself riding with some other scooterists. If you’re new to scooting or to group riding, tell the group leader and some of the other scooterists. We love to have newbies along for the ride, and notifying other folks allows them to keep an eye out for you and make sure you’re safe and enjoying yourself. And always show up for a ride with a full tank — you never know when you’ll be able to stop for fuel!

Group riding can be a blast – here are some guidelines to keep the experience safe and fun.

Ride Within Your Ability

This is the single most important rule. Discuss the planned route ahead of time. Find out if the ride is conducive to your size of scooter and your experience level. For example, if you’ve been riding for a few weeks, you may not feel ready to hit the freeway. Or perhaps you feel ready, but your 50cc scooter is not up to the task. Finding out ahead of time can prevent mishaps.

Never hesitate to leave a group ride if you feel it’s beyond your ability – everyone will understand and your safety is your number one priority. Just tell someone you’re leaving so they can vouch for you if there’s a head count.

I made the mistake of following a group ride into uncharted territory once and paid the price. Our group of twenty approached an unpaved gravel road with enormous potholes and puddles. My gut told me this was beyond my expertise, but I went along with the group.

Not too far in, the scooter in front of me stopped short and I attempted to brake while coming out of a giant, water-filled pothole. The Frankenstella and I went down — into the muddy watering hole. Two other scooters went down as well. I scratched my cowls and banged up my knee and spent the rest of the 35 degree ride soaking wet. It was unpleasant and the last time I attempted to stay with the group when I thought better of it.

I learned my lesson! I’ve since left several rides partway in, including the first ride I went on with my brand new Vespa GTS, which I was not 100% comfortable on yet.

Always ride within your ability — for your safety and everyone else’s.

Stay Toward the Front

The safest spot is up front, so stay as close to the ride leader as possible. If you keep to the front of the pack, you’ll also avoid getting separated from the group at traffic lights. While getting separated is not the end of the world, it’s one less thing to worry about when you’re getting used to group riding.

Let the Ride Leader Lead

Never ride next to the ride leader, and allow her room at stops in case she needs to change course.

Use Staggered Formation

Maintain a staggered formation, with the ride leader in the left position. Leave two seconds of space between riders. This allows each rider time to react and room to swerve to avoid hazards. It also keeps the group tight enough to discourage cars from cutting in, while still allowing everyone in the group breathing room.

Use Single Formation When Necessary

Some riding conditions will require temporary single formation riding, which the ride leader will signal by holding an index finger high in the air. A good staggered formation group will easily close up to single file. Narrow roads, limited visibility, entering and exiting the highway may call for single file riding. The group leader will signal when it’s safe to return to staggered formation by holding up two fingers.

Use Hand Signals

When changing lanes within the group, signal your intent with your hands. Riders have a lot to focus on in a group and may not see your scooter’s turn signal. If you want to change from the outside of the lane to the inside, point to the open spot that you intend to occupy and be sure the riders around you are aware of your intentions.

Send Messages Back

Group riding is a bit like a game of “Telephone” — the ride leader will signal the intended action, and each scooterist passes the message back all the way through the group using hand signals. That way the riders at the back of the group know a turn is coming up even though they can’t see the turn signals at the front of the group. Riders may also signal an unexpected stop, or point out road hazards with their feet.

Listen to the Ride Marshalls

Larger rides may have ride marshals — group members who are responsible for stopping traffic at intersections to keep everyone together safely. If your ride has marshals, follow their directions and then thank them profusely after the ride because they make the experience much more enjoyable.

Watch the Turns

Turns can prove tricky in a big group. Riders in the left part of the lane have a tendency to cut the corner when turning, and riders on the right may swing wide. Stay in your lane, leave extra room around you, and keep an eye on others nearby.

Maintain a Safe Distance and Respect Others’ Distance

Leave yourself enough room to stop and don’t ride alongside anyone else. If a group member is carrying a passenger, don’t jump in front of them to close the gap — they may need the extra space to stop with the additional weight.

Follow Group Protocol

Some scooter clubs or riding groups have their own protocol with additional guidelines they follow — find out in advance. As an example, check out the guide for one of my scooter clubs: Westenders Riding Protocol.

If you follow these recommendations and any others that your ride leader provides, you’ll be on your way to a fun day seeing the sights with fellow scooterists. Enjoy!

Group Riding Guidelines is a post from: Scooter Lust

The vast majority of scooter/car collisions happen at an intersection. Being vigilant at intersections and increasing your visibility to cars minimizes your chances of becoming a part of this statistic.

These days, you’re up against very distracted drivers. Text messaging, GPS displays, and mobile phone conversations all mean less attention placed on you. So it’s largely up to us as scooterists to save our own hide. It’s unfair, but we need to take total responsibility for our own safety.

A good rule of thumb: pretend you are invisible. At intersections, assume every car is going to turn in front of you. Riding in this way saves me, literally, on a daily basis.

Intersection Dangers

Here are a few of the most common issues you can encounter at intersections when riding.

Left-turning cars

Most intersection collisions involving cycles are caused by a car in an oncoming lane turning left in front of you. If you assume that the cars don’t see you and will turn in front of you, you will be ready to react when they do.

There’s a strange phenomenon that happens with car drivers: even if the driver sees you and makes eye contact, they may still turn in front of you. Cars turn in front of scooters for a few different reasons:

• You are smaller so you appear to be going slower and they think they have time to turn.
• Drivers are looking for threats to their own safety, i.e. other cars, so you don’t “register,” even though they see you.
• They’re updating Twitter and simply don’t see you.

Even if you’ve got the green light, slow down as you enter an intersection so you can stop quickly if needed. There is a fine line between slowing down so much that you encourage people to turn in front of you and keeping your speed in check so you can stop in an emergency. Be cautious, but don’t be hesitant.

• Ride in the part of the lane that makes you the most visible
• Wear reflective gear and a bright helmet
• Sound your horn if you think someone doesn’t see you
• Wait a few seconds after your signal turns green in case someone runs the light

Tag-along turners

The really dangerous left-turners are not the car you see, but the driver that turns right behind them, hoping to squeeze in behind the first car. They totally cannot see you and most of the time are just crossing their fingers as they speed through the intersection hoping to make it in time. You’ll see these troublemakers cutting you off at both green and red signals.

Four-way stops

The city where I live has many four-way stops, and the right-of-way defaults to whomever got to the intersection first. I would estimate that nearly half the time, when it’s my turn to go, the cars at the intersection skip me. I can’t explain it, but it happens reliably. Because I’m expecting it, I can avoid this danger. I often use my horn in these circumstances. And sometimes a select finger.

Keep Your Speed in Check

The faster you are traveling, the less time you have to react. Other people on the road also have less time to react to you. Speed also affects your cornering. The faster you are going, the longer it takes to stop. Braking at high speed also increases your chances of a wipeout.

Keep to the speed limit, and less when necessary. Remember that speed limits are designed for cars and you may need to be traveling a little slower, especially in construction areas or twisty turns.

Make Yourself More Visible

There are many ways to increase your visibility to other vehicles and decrease your likelihood of a collision. Correct lane position and brightly colored riding gear both make you more visible to traffic. For night time riding add reflective decals to your scooter and topcase, and upgrade to LED tail lights and halogen headlights if you don’t already have them.

The good news is that you can have an enormous impact on your safety by following these guidelines. Many dangerous situations you meet on the road can be prevented or avoided. So be vigilant at intersections and keep the rubber side down!

Safety at Intersections is a post from: Scooter Lust

I am vigilant about monitoring my road surfaces in the city, and I have mental checklists for known dangers.  For example, I am particularly wary on garbage day, as the sanitation vehicles are famous for leaving puddles of unidentifiable goo in the street.  Gas stations are also an excellent place to pick up oil on your shoes or tires, which you may not notice until you stop at a light and find your feet zinging out from under you.

But random oil slicks bandied across two lanes of traffic are not normally on my red alert list.  So on my way to work Tuesday morning, the dark oily rainbow registered in my brain at the same time that I realized the Frankenstella and I were going down.

The wipeout was strange and shocked me completely; it was on a flat, straight, well-paved road that I ride daily.  I usually keep an eye out for the streetcar tracks on this stretch because those can be quite slippery when wet.  So I was caught by surprise to suddenly find myself rubber side up, swimming in what looked like the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez.

There was a large oil spill across both lanes of traffic, and the light rain was enough to make it super slick without rinsing it away.  I was coming away from a light, so I was not traveling very fast, and was shifting into second gear when I hit the puddle and instantly hit the pavement.  The cars behind me stopped, and when I registered that all body parts were still attached, I was back on my feet and pushing the scooter into a parking lot within seconds.

I put the Frankenstella up on her stand in and walked slowly around her, holding my breath.  I am happy to report that the extensive crash bars covering Celeste did their job; she survived the slide with nary a scratch.  This same protective mechanism is what banged up my legs considerably – those passenger foot pegs can cause a nasty shin bruise.  But I was spared any lasting damage – just a thump on the right shin and a scratch on the left  – the exact same spot I hurt last time I wiped out on wet leaves.  Maybe I should get some hot modded shin guards or something.

I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think the Stella is one of the safer scooters.  The very first time I rode it, I was alarmed at just how tippy and unsteady it felt compared to my previous bikes.  I got used to the feeling, but I’ve never fully relaxed on that scooter.  I’ve got 4,000 miles on the Vespa GTS now, and have never come close to putting that scooter down.  I never went down on the Elite 80, nor the Elite 250.  But this was round 3 going down on the Stella in only 800 miles.

I do feel the tires may be partially at fault.  Of course, they will not compensate for the high center of gravity or the lack of balance due to the asymmetric weight distribution of the scooter, but I think it may be time for some new Contis.  The Stella currently has a set of Continental Zippy 3′s, which are reportedly good all-weather tires.  That said, they are 5 years old, and although the tread on them is not worn, I can’t imagine the rubber is in terribly good shape after the scooter sat in storage for 3 years.  I noticed while riding two other Stellas — Vu’s  2008 Stella and Jett’s Atomic Fireball — that their scooters offered a much “stickier” ride.

I never feel cautious or ride gingerly on the GTS.  I trust that bike.  I have never trusted Celeste (especially after our tumultuous past).  But… she’s just so darn pretty.  She’s like the cheating girlfriend with supermodel good looks that you simply can’t break up with.

In any case, I’ve decided to garage the Stella until I get two new tires, and will probably not ride her in the rain much anymore.  I have outfitted the Vespa with a windscreen and an all-weather trunk specifically for the rainy season.  Additionally, the Vespa has larger tires with better traction, a lower center of gravity, and superb engine braking — all very good things in the rain.

I’m curious what kind of tires people have on their scoots — let me know if you’ve had good luck with a particular type for wet weather.  I’m curious what type of rubber you’re riding on.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for suspicious rainbows on the pavement!



Like Oil and Water is a post from: Scooter Lust

I got pulled over by the cops last night, NYPD Blue-style.

I’ve only been pulled over once – when I was sixteen. It’s funny, how it happened last night, because I thought I was getting out of the way so they could pursue the real criminal who had triggered those flashing lights and sirens. Oh – that would be me?

The irony of the event is entertaining. In traffic, I’ve been practicing my balance to occupy myself at signals. Inspired by bike messengers doing track stands while awaiting the green light, I see how long I can go without putting my feet down. If I roll ever so slowly, I can keep it up for quite awhile.

I was riding home from work, approaching one of the many 4-way stop intersections in my neighborhood. After the car in front of me went, I continued my glacial roll to the stop sign, stopped, saw no other cars in the intersection, and headed up the hill. I was marveling over the flawless engineering of the Vespa GTS – so perfectly designed that I could balance while barely moving! – when I saw the cop car racing up the hill behind me. Lights and sirens – the whole nine. It’s much louder when you’re not encapsulated in a car. So I pulled over to let them pass – and much to my surprise, they followed me.

I must have had a giant question mark on my face when the officer sauntered up alongside my scooter, because he asked, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I shook my head. No idea. I briefly entertained the possibility that I knocked my license plate off while parking against the curb earlier.

“You neglected to stop at that stop sign,” he said.

“I stopped!” I protested.

“If you’d stopped, you would have put your feet down, right?”

I was about to enlighten him on the majesty of engineering that is the Vespa, when a trusty piece of advice loomed in my head: “know when to shut up.” I suspected this was one of those times – as ready as I was to argue the semantics of the word “stop” with the Seattle Police Department.

stop: v.
to come to a stand, as in a course or journey, to cease moving, proceeding; to pause; desist.

Now I dug through every inch of the Seattle and Washington State Municipal Code that I could find. (And it’s amazing to me how difficult it actually is to find our laws clearly published online.) There is not a single word about putting a foot down while riding a motorcycle. The only exception is the penalty for putting a foot down during the motorcycle skills test. See? They want you to be able to control your bike without putting a foot down.

If I bring my cycle to a standstill (throttle closed, brakes engaged) for two seconds before accelerating again, is that not a “complete stop”?

But lips firmly sealed (it was a struggle), I handed over my driver’s license. He requested my insurance card as well, clarifying, “It’s not required, but if you have one, I’d like to see it.”

“Of course, officer. I wouldn’t dream of riding without insurance.” Is my laminated Geico Full Coverage Insurance policy winning me brownie points? Or should I show a little more leg?

I smiled apologetically as he returned to his vehicle, ID in hand. Meanwhile, I chuckled to myself over the timing; right when I had been extolling my awesomeness for not needing to put my feet down, I was nabbed for not putting my feet down.

The Friendly Officer returned with my license and insurance card, and started drilling me on my social security number, last mailing address, birth date and other assorted details which I must have answered correctly. “We were a little confused by the photo on your license. It doesn’t look like you.”

What, a girl can’t dye her hair?

“I’m not going to write you a ticket. It would have been $200,” he told me. I gulped audibly. “Yes, exactly. We see a lot of these scooters on the road now, and it’s dangerous out there – cars don’t see you, and it’s slippery in the rain. We want everyone to be safe,” he said earnestly.

I believed him – I think he really meant it. They want everyone to be safe. And he’s right – a more thorough stop at an intersection, when warranted, can save your life. I thanked him cordially and continued on my way home.

At the next intersection – which is a known danger zone – a car drove right through stop sign without braking. He would have hit me, but I was ready for it and stopped quickly.

I glanced in my rearview mirror for a witness, but my Friendly Officer was nowhere to be found. He would have been proud – I put my feet down that time.

Breaking the Law! is a post from: Scooter Lust

Maybe it’s the Vespa paraphernalia plastered all over my cubicle at work, or the helmet on my desk, or my close encounters with coworkers in the parking garage. It could even be the fact that I frequently arrive in the morning soaking wet. But everyone at my day job knows I’m way into scooters.

If I come in on Monday with a sunburned nose, they ask if I rode a lot over the weekend. After stopping for gas on the way in, they tell me they were considering a scooter. People I’ve never met stop by to ask for my advice on the feasibility of commuting on two wheels. “I heard you’re the Scooter Girl,” they say in a hushed tone. “Can you hook me up with the 411?”

I heartily endorse the acquisition of a scooter, and I intersperse every sentence with, “Take the safety course.” If it’s your first scooter, get an automatic. Take the safety course. Parking can be much easier on a scooter. Take the safety course. I’d recommend a 150cc if you live in the ‘burbs. Take the safety course. Oh, and – take the safety course.

One of my coworkers picked up a pair of 50cc Hondas last year on a whim for his wife and him. He now commutes most days on his scooter. He’s a low-key, safe and level-headed guy so I’m sure he’s just fine. He even wears a safety vest and follows all the traffic laws. He stops by every couple of days and we chat about commuting. I recommend rain gear like my favorite purchase ever, the Scooter Skirt.

Today during our chat, he said he saw a girl wipe out on the University bridge. She’d been weaving a bit in traffic, looking unsteady and a little out-of-control. It had just started raining for the first time in weeks, so the roads were slippery. “Slick as snot” was, I believe, the term he used. He lost sight of her, and then the traffic stopped up ahead and people were getting out of their cars. The girl and her brand-spankin’-new scooter had taken a tumble on the bridge grating. She appeared okay; she eventually sat up coherently. Her shiny bike with temporary plates had done a few cartwheels.

Friday I was talking to one of my coworkers who recently picked up a Piaggio Fly 150 for commuting. He takes the ferry. Cycles on the ferry don’t have to wait in line – we go right to the front. So scooters are a blessing for rush hour commuting to the islands. Plus the fare is scads cheaper than a car. I’d been checking in with him every time I saw him, “How’s the Fly treating you? Did you take the safety course yet?” I was appalled to hear he had been riding with his 6-year-old niece on the back after having the bike for a week. To legally ride a cycle over 50cc’s in Washington, you have to have a motorcycle endorsement on your driver’s license. If you pass the written test at the DOL, you can get a permit which allows you to ride, but sans passengers and not at night. He possessed neither permit nor endorsement.

Then Friday he was telling me how he got into a “little fender bender” last week. Is there such a thing on a scooter? The damn car in front of him stopped short (in the city?! The nerve!) and he rear-ended the guy.

In a related story, I watched a guy on a Mojito with temporary plates whizz past me, riding in the wrong part of the lane. He promptly nailed a pot hole and wiped out across two lanes, nearly getting flattened by a bus. He was okay and got to his feet, looking quite embarrassed.

Unendorsed riders out on the streets cause several big problems. It’s not just that they’re endangering their own lives – or even those of their illegal passengers. There’s more to it.

Scooters are a fantastic alternative commute vehicle, and we could make a lot of progress in American cities if their popularity continued to increase. They use less gas, make less noise, reduce congestion in the streets and while parked. Many of them produce less pollution than cars. When ridden safely, they also allow more room for bicycles – another fantastic alternative commute vehicle.

But when most of the stories you hear about scooters involve crashes, accidents and injuries, or illegally parked bikes pissing off legally parked cars, the enthusiasm with which city dwellers embrace this two-wheeled form of transport dwindles, understandably. Scooters become an irritant – cutting off other drivers, parking incorrectly, not following traffic laws and creating unsafe conditions for everyone. People will start to say, “sure, you save gas, but they’re so dangerous!”

I joke about it while riding down Broadway, but I can spot which riders did not even crack open the manual by the way they park. Parallel to the curb, or face-in to the curb, I point at one after another: “Didn’t read the book, didn’t read the book, didn’t read the book.” How to park is one of the first things covered.

These riders are also endangering my life. I don’t want to share a lane with someone who couldn’t be bothered to even consult the first chapter of the cycle safety manual.

What I don’t really get is how dealers can let people ride off the lot without an endorsement. Don’t you have to have a license to drive a car off a lot? Maybe not. I understand everyone is supposed to take responsibility for their own safety and legal status, but a lot of folks I talk to don’t even know about the safety course. Seems dealers could provide a little bit of education. My club often hands out motorcycle safety manuals at events we go to. Couldn’t dealerships do the same?

I was consulting the WA state safety course recently, and noticed that the scooter session – and even most of the motorcycle sessions – were booked solid until late November. So that means many of the new scooters I see on the road each week are operated by riders with no training. One law enforcement official said about 50% of riders he pulls over do not have their endorsement.

The WA Rider Safety Task Force Report features some interesting statistics:

• One third of fatalities were motorcyclists who did not have a valid motorcycle endorsement
• 86% of the fatalities had not taken the state’s training course

In the conclusion, the task force says, “DOL should seek a partnership with motorcycle dealers to discourage the practice of allowing unendorsed purchasers to ride a newly purchased bike from their lots.”

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

MSF Safety course, cycle endorsement and New riders is a post from: Scooter Lust

In my travels, I’ve encountered road surfaces both comforting and ghastly. Nothing compares to a straight, flat stretch of newly paved asphalt. It’s like a breath of fresh air, a sigh of relief. Seattle has hands-down the worst roads of any city I’ve ridden. If you doubt me, just take Airport Way S. to Georgetown on a Stella with a chopped seat. Let me know if all your teeth are still attached when you arrive.
I’ve been ruminating on my least favorite road surfaces, partially because I find it gratifying to keep lists and partially because I thought it would make a good safety article. Here are my top five, in no particular order:

1. Potholes
2. Loose Gravel
3. Wet Leaves
4. Construction Plates
5. Bridge Grates

Luckily, I encountered all five of these hazards on my brief commute this morning and photographed them just for you!
1. Potholes
These hiccups in the pavement range from irritating to life-threatening. Potholes are a given in any city, but there’s something feral about Seattle potholes. They’re a nasty breed, filled with murky water, and they sneak up on you. The rifts in the waterfront pavement have their own zip codes. You ride down into them and then ride back out, with enough time in between to mail a post card.

What makes potholes so dangerous is that you hit them one wheel at a time, making for a highly unstable ride. In my (very personal) experience, hitting the brakes mid-pothole is a oneway ticket to Pavementsville. Of course, braking is often an inexperienced rider’s default response. The best plan of action is usually to swerve and avoid, if you have time and the conditions around you are conducive. If you spot the hole too late and it’s unavoidable, go straight at it with intention and gently accelerate out of it, holding your handlebars firm and straight. The front tire will want to turn, throwing you off balance when you climb out of it.
Another disconcerting feature of potholes is their questionable content; you never know what’s inside them. Filled with rainwater? Oily Garbage Day leakage? Construction crud? Critters? We may never know. Do your darndest to bypass them.
2. Loose Gravel
Some tires are better than others on loose gravel, but it’s a surface engineered specifically for scooter wipeouts. Unless you’re riding a Ruckus or you have a death wish and formidable crashwear, it’s best avoided.
My informal survey found that many non-collision wipeouts involve loose gravel. Gravel is plentiful in the urban environment, and even more so in the spring when rain washes it out of hiding and scatters it across the road, along the curb and around industrial areas where the crushed variety is used in lieu of asphalt. It collects in corners and turns, where it’s most dangerous, and sneaks up on you because it’s the same color as the street. It compromises your traction, and when you lean around corners you’ve already got less rubber in contact with the road. Combining speed, turning and loose gravel is a really bad idea.
There is one nasty patch of gravel smack in the middle of my commute, and it was so hair-raising that I’ve changed my route altogether. It’s the middle of a u-turn route; you can’t turn left so you have to take three quick rights instead. At the bottom of a terribly steep, short hill, gravel is peppered across the right turn path onto a street with oncoming traffic and parked cars.

With four big wheels and two tons of steel, the peril doesn’t even register. But it’s nearly impossible to avoid braking while going into this turn, and cars tail impatiently down the hill. If I’m forced to go that way, I come to nearly a full stop before turning, and then accelerate carefully through the turn. If I make the turn too wide, I’ll collide with oncoming cars.
This whole mess is right next to the freeway, so people are in a hurry. It’s one of the few stretches of road where my scooter elicits horn blowing and unsavory hand gestures. I ignore the cage drivers; I’d rather have them flipping me off than pulverizing me into the pavement after I go down, which is sure to happen unless I tread lightly.
This particular route ends with the Nightmare on Mercer at the top of the hill – the fateful red light that killed the Frankenstella every time and challenges even a healthy manual transmission.
Now I avoid the whole mess – the Turn from Hell, the Nightmare on Mercer, all of it. I take the scenic route home, nearly doubling the distance, but it’s a beautiful ride through the Lakeview Greenbelt and the peace of mind is worth every second of those five extra minutes.

3. Wet Leaves
The Angel of Death walks the autumn streets ominously, leaving a wake of wet leaves in its path. They gather along the sides of the road in slimy piles, a seemingly innocuous part of the October landscape. Fallen leaves are everywhere in Seattle – and we don’t have regular street cleaning. I never had a problem with wet leaves in Boston or New Haven (though I was more concerned with ice). Boston has nightly street sweeping so I rarely even noticed them. But in Seattle they sit until they decompose or are swept away by the rising floods. They are dark, slippery, and very, very mean.
The tumble I took on Celeste the Frankenstella last fall involved wet leaves and a torrential downpour. There was so much rain, in fact, that I5 was flooded and closed that morning. But I missed the memo Re: the End of the World, and was riding to work unaware, creeping down Republican with an SUV shoved up my tailpipe. He was flashing his brights at me in the dark rain because I was taking too long getting to the next stop sign. I used three-quarters of a second to check my mirrors, fearing he was overtaking me, and found myself hub-deep in a slick patch of rotting foliage.
I felt the bike slide in slow motion, and knew there was no way to stop it. I prepared myself for the inevitable, putting the bike down away from the engine and throttle to minimize the damage. The SUV blew its bestial horn at me and drove halfway up on the sidewalk to pass me and my felled scooter. We were clearly ruining his otherwise flawless morning.
Both the Frankenstella and I were unharmed, though the leg shield did leave a beefy bruise on my left calf and I can still feel the bump from eight months ago. There is one plus side to wiping out on wet leaves – they’re soft. They cushioned my body and Celeste’s. But it was still a rough start to my Monday morning.
Moral of the story – you can’t defy physics and stop on wet leaves. Another danger it’s best to simply avoid. This means riding toward the center of the road as much as is safe. If you do hit wet leaves, well, I pretty much guarantee you’ll only do it once.


4. Construction Plates
I don’t know what’s worse – the disrupted pavement caused by bulldozers or those steel plates they drop on top for “safety”. You’ve probably seen them – they’re often flanked by enormous orange signs that say “Motorcycles use EXTREME caution”. In case the plates weren’t sketchy enough alone, they are often surrounded by mounds of clumpy asphalt before and after them.
Their saving grace is that they’re usually well-marked (or should be) and cars slow down near construction and pay closer attention, so you’re less likely to be run over as you de-throttle to take stock. You can often ride around them all together as they rarely take up the entire lane.
Definitely do your best to avoid these in the rain as they offer zero traction and can be quite slippery, especially when covered in forklift grease.
I get chills just thinking about it.
If you can’t go around a plate, ride directly onto it with your wheels straight, and don’t touch the brakes. If you have to slow down, brake before the plate. Keeping your wheels straight and your scooter upright not only helps your balance, it gives your tires maximum road contact for better traction and puts perpetual motion on your side.
5. Bridge Grating
Last but not least is our good friend the Draw Bridge. You may never have to ride over a bridge. But I live in a land of lakes, and it’s nearly impossible to go anywhere in this city without crossing the Fremont, Ballard or University Bridge. On a good day I cross all three, multiple times.
Bridges are relatively safe; the grids have teeth for traction and even in the rain they’re not terribly hazardous. But you can be your own worst enemy. When I first started riding on them I dang near suffered a nervous breakdown. The grooves take your wheels hostage and it feels like you’re totally out of control. If you panic and over-correct your path, you’ll make your bike unstable. Fight the urge to force your scooter to go exactly where you want it to, and just concentrate on staying upright, moving forward, and riding it out.
I’ve found preparation makes all the difference. I have a bridge ritual I run through when I know I’m about to cross. Before the bridge, I get in the right lane so there’s only traffic on one side of me. This allows me some wiggle room, should I need to wiggle. Never change lanes on the grating unless you’re seeking a nice dip in the lake with your scooter.
As I near the bridge entrance, I survey the traffic ahead. If the cars are slowing down on the bridge, I back off the throttle and leave lots of space, hoping by the time I get to the grating the traffic will have cleared. Slow speeds feel unsteady, and stopping on the grate can be daunting. Ideally, I want to accelerate and ride straight across in one fell swoop at 35 mph., which appears to offer the best traction on my particular tires.
When I enter the grating, I avoid the seam and ride straight on. The Fremont bridge has a fat seam that feels slippery if you get caught in that groove. I don’t know if it’s any more dangerous than the rest of the bridge, but it feels scary as hell and it’s hard to get out once you’re committed. So I aim for dead center of the lane.

Once I’m on the grating, I relax, sit up straight, and look way past the bridge, focusing on the horizon. If you take the Motorcycle Safety Class – and you’d better – they teach you about “tracking”, a neat human mechanism that aligns your balance and reflexes with your vision.
Tracking can work for or against you. If there’s something you don’t want to hit and you stare at it, you’ll steer yourself right into it. Your bike goes directly where your eyes focus. So on the bridge, I look upward and far ahead, which aligns my body with upright and forward movement – both good on two wheels.
If you have to stop on the bridge, use your front and rear brakes together very gently, and brake as gradually as possible. I put my feet out a little earlier than usual if I need to stop on the grating, especially in the rain, which can make it feel more slippery. The interesting part of stopping on the grating for the first time is that once you put your feet down, you feel how good the traction is, and it gives you more confidence the next time you cross it at speed. Although it feels like riding over oily glass, it’s actually got more grip than regular pavement. You just have to surrender your control issues at the gate. Challenging, I know.
If you’re riding two-up, it might be worth telling your passenger ahead of time not to make any sudden movements when you cross the bridge. If both of you sit straight and still, you’ll breeze right over it – and they’ll get to enjoy the beautiful view.
The dismount is the final step, and I give it a touch of gas to exit the bridge smoothly. Then I take a deep breath. See? It’s cake!
Whew. All this talk of crappy street surfaces is not making me look forward to my commute.
Ride safe! It’s a jungle out there.

Potholes, Gravel & Bridges, Oh MY! is a post from: Scooter Lust

How Video Games Saved My Life

If you ride in the city, you know how crazy traffic can be. I’m not as worried about the roads, curves, my tires or my own error as I am about other drivers. Angry drivers, oblivious drivers, drivers composing epic text messages while steering with their knees.

I know it sounds dismal, but once you’ve embraced the reality that every car on the road could possibly hit you, you can begin to plan appropriately. The good news: 99.9% of them won’t. But while planning for the worst, you get lots of practice in obstacle avoidance, you develop better reaction time, and gain the ability to plan an escape route in a heartbeat.

There is a particularly challenging street I take daily.E. Roy St. is wicked steep – officially, an 18% grade and on SDOT’s 20 Steepest Streets in Seattle list. It’s a handy route to test your brakes, your horsepower, or (gulp) your mastery of the clutch on your Stella or P-series.

In addition to being narrow and twisty with pitchy hills, E. Roy has curb parking along the North side, and dozens of single carports lining the street. Most cars back out of these cement stalls, and they clearly just cross their fingers and gun it – the visibility is limited at best. Half a dozen side streets also branch off E. Roy, many of them at an angle.

Add to this cornucopia of obstacles fleet-footed pedestrians who rarely use crosswalks. Did I mention the traffic on this obstacle course is also heavy? Heavy with people just leaving their apartments, which means they are driving and… putting on their seatbelts, adjusting the radio, dialing their cell phone to deliver a status report, or applying their lipstick in the rearview mirror.

E. Roy is by far the diciest part of my 1.5 mile commute (the u-turn on Eastlake notwithstanding since I’ve rerouted to avoid it – but more on that another time). I average about two near-misses a day. They don’t feel like near-misses to me because I’m expecting them, but I can see how a scooterist who’s not paying attention could easily get taken out. I see the spaces where I could have been hit. One consolation prize is that if you’re hit on E. Roy, it will probably be a very low-speed crash. Not exactly life insurance, right? So it’s best to focus and plan ahead.

Now I know E. Roy St. is a gauntlet, so I go slowly and carefully every time. It’s no different on the way down the hill, except that it’s easier to outpace your brakes on the steep incline. Cars pull out of parking spaces and back out of garages constantly, hidden between parked cars, so I look for tail lights and plumes of exhaust to warn me.

Recently I was riding up E. Roy in the rain. It was strangely windy and garbage cans were rolling all over the street. Pedestrians and drivers alike were peering cautiously at the sky either to survey the gloom and doom or watch for windswept debris. Or perhaps even earthbound frogs. People were distracted.

The car in front of me approached a side street halfway up the hill and put on her turn signal. I backed off the throttle to put more room between us, anticipating she’d slow down to make the turn.

I eyeballed the side street, and saw a station wagon waiting to turn left out onto Roy. The driver was looking; I watched her head flip back and forth as she surveyed up the hill and then down. She saw the car turning in front of me as a perfect opportunity to make a dash for her left onto Roy, across my path.

Because she was checking for another large four-wheeled vehicle behind the turning car, she didn’t know I was there. The grade of the hill and the garbage can on the corner made it nearly impossible for her to see me, regardless of how much room I left between myself and the vehicle in front of me, regardless of what lane position I was in.

I could have honked, but there was no guarantee she’d hear it, or if she did, that it would register “stop”. So I checked my rear view and since there was no one behind me, I stopped in my lane just shy of the corner where the car in front of me was turning. As I suspected, she pulled out right in front of me – a few feet at best, and I saw the look of horror on her face as she realized I was there. My feet planted firmly on the pavement, I allowed her to finish her anxiety-ridden turn and then I continued up the hill.

This is an example of the near-misses I’m talking about. Realizing I am virtually invisible and assuming everyone could hit me makes me a safer rider.

Watching the aforementioned traffic exchange, a part of my brain flickered and stretched itself. A lobe I hadn’t accessed in awhile. And I realized – riding in the city is totally Live Action Tetris.

When the bottom of the dot com industry was falling out in 2002, I had a temp job at a company that had laid off 90% of its workforce. I worked the reception desk, answering a whopping ten phone calls a day and buzzing visitors in through the foreboding frosted glass doors. I had little to do for eight hours a day, but my computer at the reception desk had games on it.

When I tired of solitaire, I discovered Tetris.
I had that job for the whole summer, and let me tell you – I got really good at Tetris. The faster the pieces fell, the more in the zone I sank, until I reached a Zen state of my eyes communicating directly with my hands, bypassing my brain. Patterns emerged. There are only so many possible combinations of shapes, and so many possible orders in which they can fall.

Somebody has done the math, I’m sure, and it may be thousands of combinations, but when you play Tetris six hours a day, those patterns start appearing like old friends. I’d recognize the left L followed by the cube followed by the right L, and know exactly what to do with them. It was hand-eye coordination, spatial relations and meditation all rolled in one.

At night I dreamed about Tetris, a cascade of falling colored blocks, my fingers twitching in my sleep. I read an article in Science about studies done on Tetris players. Those who dream about Tetris, whether by choice or compulsion, improve their scores the next day. Your brain is practicing while you sleep, running through the possible combinations of shapes, memorizing patterns, discarding the ones that don’t work. How cool is that?

Upon realizing the relationship between traffic and Tetris, the whole cityscape changed for me. I could see a vehicle three cars up in the left lane stop, and know there were only so many possible combinations of chain reactions. The car directly behind it would stop, and the SUV behind that one would get impatient and swerve around into the right lane, with or without checking for a girl on a Vespa.

I would slow down and leave room for that swerve, and it would happen, and I’d see the shocked eyes of the driver in the rearview as my headlights blinded them and they realized I was there.

On a two-lane road, I see a traffic sign indicating that the inside lane is about to become left-turn only, and I know that half the people on the road won’t see that sign and will do an abrupt lane change at the last second. Just like preparing the two right L’s for the inevitable cube, I change lanes and widen the gap to accommodate the pattern.

As traffic speeds up and thickens, rush hour in downtown, I progress to higher levels where the patterns emerge swiftly and with no room for error. I submerge into a Zen state, bypassing my thoughts, seeing diagrams superimposed on the pavement before me and following the arrows to complete the pattern.

After a challenging stretch of road and flawlessly-executed obstacle avoidance, I’m smiling. I complete the screen and move up to the next level. (Granted, the stakes are higher in Live Action Tetris.) I had no idea killing time in front of a computer at a temp job in Somerville would save my life on the road in Seattle. But you never know where you’re going to get your education.

I’m sure Nintendo would love to get their hands on this trademark: Video games saved my life.

Scooter Safety, City Style is a post from: Scooter Lust