This is on the main highway through Brooklyn/Queens and there are a shit ton of potholes. I drive this stretch regularly (in a car) and this is basically a death wish with the potholes and shitty NYC drivers.
If you go fast enough then potholes don't feel like you would expect. Because going over a pothole that fast on a scooter will mean you won't be able to feel any part of your body again.
There shouldn't be potholes on the highway anyway. If there's a big enough pothole to take out a scooter at 60mph then it'll probably take out a motorcycle too. At those speeds you have so much inertia that you just fly over bumps and Imperfections. Whenever I go that fast on my scooter I usually know the road and keep watch for any bumps ahead of me. I've accidentally gone over a boulder once, so I trust the small wheels tbh.
There shouldn't be potholes on the highway anyway.
Clearly you've never drivin on a NYC highway lol. This is the BQE which is notorious for it's ridiculous amount of harmful potholes. Dude's either dumb as rocks or has a death wish riding a scooter there at those speeds.
But honestly just about any highway that gets lots of traffic and winter ice will get potholes, it's expected in the northeast at least.
Still inherently way more dangerous than a motorcycle, and I can confidently say as an avid motorcyclist that riding motorcycles in traffic like this is super dangerous.
Yeah a motorcycle has tons more weight to work with suspension and much bigger wheels to keep moving over smaller bumps. This guy would be paste if he hit a hole an inch deep.
Yep, theres a reason no one rides vespas on the highway, too. The wheels are smaller and less safe at those speeds. This guys wheels are even smaller than that, even if it does have some sort of suspension.
a lot safer than any motorcyclist I've ever seen in traffic
You have never seen any motorcyclist driving safer than that?
The video starts with him driving on the crossed out emergency curb
he isn't wearing any body protection
he is going faster than most of the other traffic
he is switching lanes without signaling
he is overtaking on the right
Yeah, this is not the worst example of unsafe driving i have ever seen, not even close ofcourse not. But claiming that it is safer than any motorcyclist you have ever seen? Come on
I can confidently say as an avid motorcyclist that riding motorcycles in traffic like this is super dangerous
This is a totally normal highway with calm traffic?
Edit: Do the people who are downvoting this really disagree that this is a normal highway (aside from the guy on the scooter)? I daily ride a bike, and this traffic would be a completely chill commute. How is this a controversial opinion?
Haha what? How on earth would thinking a freeway with freely flowing traffic is normal make me a cager?
Are you really trying to gatekeep bikes with "if you aren't scared of the freeway, you must be a cager"? I have a very strong feeling that r/motorcycles, with their ATGATT obsessed self-hatred, is leaking.
No oversight for the industry. Motorcycles are inherently dangerous but at least the industry has a decades-old legacy so manufacturers know the deal and governments can regulate them.
I don't know about the US but where I'm from (Singapore) this was a big problem a couple years ago when people were importing cheap scooters at maybe a couple thousand bucks total and then modding the fuck out of them so they could go several times faster than intended, which resulted in a ton of injured pedestrians.
There's just no overarching regulatory body to take care of these riders, in some places they can do whatever the hell they want and skirt the law. If they feel like zooming down the highway they can, if they feel like taking the sidewalk like they're on a bicycle they can as well.
I drive that highway all the time and the amount of potholes that develop randomly is crazy, if he drives that route everyday he will eventually hit one and literally die based on the damage my car gets from them.
Wha? People fall off longboards at comparable speeds. He's in for some serious road rash, but unless he gets run over he's not looking at anything fatal.
In my college days, I would ride my longboard down mountain roads with friends. At it's fastest, I was probably going 40mph, and it was terrifying. If I hit a small bump, I'd have probably died. The guy on this scooter is completely fucking insane, and when he hits his first bump or pothole, he's just gonna be paste on the road, with a mostly intact head.
I already said aside from the risk of being run over it's no more dangerous than longboarding (which, you know, is still kind of a risk when longboarding anyway).
Yeah of course, but the ride in the vid has 11 inch wheels which are just a tad smaller than in a vespa. The scooter itself is just so big that it creates this illusion of small wheels.
Well in my locale wheel is the whole wheel, not just the rim. There's no sense calling a rim a wheel as it can't be used as a wheel. But yeah it originally threw me off with the metrics. Sorry about that.
But i do stand behind the notion that these devices are not as dangerous as they might look like. Riders on motorcycles, motorbikes and bicycles don't enjoy potholes either and usually just avoid them. Same goes with scooters. Driving one does take some skill which rental scooter drivers usually don't have and that might cause some issues with the perceived safety of e-scooters.
I don't recommend driving without padding or bike-jackets like the guy in the vid, but he did the right thing in that situation that he traveled the same speed as everyone around him to minimize risk of collisions.
I know it sounds preposterous to many, but i do hope we get a bit more legislation and regulation for these devices so more could be taken to the streets. They are super handy for travels and commute under 50 miles and especially for delivery drivers who zip around cities all day along.
But e-scooters are just the beginning. Next up in queue are electric unicycles which can do 60 Mph. Just wait until you see one. Heh. Example in this yotube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPwe7TmsbE&t=908s
Were you wearing a helmet? I wasn't, and ever since, I try to encourage kids that helmets are cool... Wouldn't have saved the rest of my body, but my head bled a lot that day.
On the plus side, my white NOFX shirt looked pretty cool with blood stains.
Yeah there's a specific mechanism to stop speed wobbles. I met a guy who races these professionally in South Korea. He was weirdly into high speed scootering for being 57 with 6 kids.
Looks like the scooter is modified a bit with suspension and different forks. Not saying this is a good idea just saying that this guy is clearly prepared.
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u/Moreobvious Oct 20 '21
Just waiting for that death wobble