Check out these groovy new helmet graphics from Shark’s “SK” line. Helmet graphics are (generally) embarrassingly dated and lame (Can you believe Troy Lee is still popular in this day and age?), so it’s nice to see someone applying a trendier look. These two casques are reminiscent of skateboard graphics, which is definitely an improvement over the usual “look” of helmets. Obviously, the market for such helmets has grown with the scooter explosion, where riders tend to be a good bit trendier than the sportbike/harley crowd, but it’d be nice to see this design trend escape from the super-expensive ‘designer’ half-helmet world onto some affordable full-face helmets. There’s so much competition in the market, any of the several well-known-but-indistinguishable mid-range helmet makers could easily set themselves apart by stealing a couple designers from the skateboard/snowboard industry and ditching the ridiculous practice of charging an extra $150 for a helmet with graphics.
Category: Legal & Safe
The best advice I’ve heard all year
Rover Eric over on MV:
Ride like every single person on the road is retarded and/or trying to kill you.
Is It Time For An American Scooter Confederation?
The Australian website, mcnews.com.au, reports on an association of scooter importers that will represent manufacturers and dealers in an effort to “assist riders to avoid potential pitfalls”. This seems aimed directly at upstart importers of lower quality scooters brought in by the container load for fly-by-night organizations. The Australian Scooter Federation boasts membership from many top flight manufacturers including the marques of the Piaggio group, Honda, Yamaha and Kymco. The article states that the ASF members will conform to a ‘code of conduct’ to ensure high quality and dealer support. Is it time for such an organization in the U.S.A? I think so. I recall a little sticker on the gas tank of many an Allstate scooter that suggested there once was. Discuss.
Child seat
I know what Milena’s getting for Christmas. I wish I could bring myself to think that barreling through city traffic with a four-year-old strapped to my scooter might somehow be OK, but I’m just clearly not European enough. (Via Mike Maddox.)
“What the f**k did I do?”
Actor Mickey Rourke was arrested for drunk driving at 4:11 this morning in Miami Beach. He was “erratically” weaving around the road on a green 2007 Vespa.
Fall Riding Hazards from Girlbike
Crystal on fall riding hazards. Great stuff. I’ll add two more that are especially bad this week:
- Kids throwing eggs/rocks/offal at you because they’re hopped up on Clark bars
- For all you Westsiders, the freaking sun is directly in your face during both commutes.
Happy Halloween!
News chunks 10/23/07
- A Korean student in England decided riding his scooter back to Korea would be less uncomfortable than a 13-hour flight.
- The Times of London is digging the new Vespa S. Current rumor is 50cc and 150cc versions to the U.S. in the spring.
- The Age of Melbourne, on the other hand, may be the first media outlet to see through the façade of Piaggio’s “green” marketing, after receiving a life-sized non-recyclable promotional piece featuring the MP3. Australia is hot for scooters this month. A University of Tasmania team has assembled the first Australian-made hybrid scooter, powered by Ethanol and batteries, and Sydney is apparently searching for its identity as a scooter city.
- The Sun rides Aprilia’s new Mana 850cc automatic motorcycle.
- Leonardo DiCaprio’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend sideswiped a photographer’s scooter in Israel. Oh, sorry, that’s not even interesting to E! Online readers.
- If you’ve always thought “Sure, Segways are great, but man, I hate standing up, and I wish they were uglier, lower-tech, and more expensive,” Toyota has a concept vehicle for you.
- In London suburb Croydon, citizens are teaming up to document “antisocial” scootering and report it to police in the wake of the death of a local police officer.
- D.C. police are on the other side of the fence, after a scooter cop was hit-and-run by a white van. (Fact: recklessly-driven white vans now outnumber all other vehicles on Chicago streets, 6-to-1.)
- For some reason there were at least… let’s see… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… five stories in the press last week about Piaggio’s new plant in Vietnam, without any new info beyond the announcement they made in February. Thanh Nien News had the decency to follow up their PR-wire story with a fairly interesting story on the vintage scooter scene in Vietnam.
- A New Jersey yoga instructor and mother of six becomes the first woman in America to eat thousands of dollars of depreciation and trade in her SUV, replacing it with a $11,000 Vectrix electric scooter. The expense is totally justified by her reduced carbon footprint and the dozens of dollars she’ll save on gas between now and the first day it snows and she has to make six separate trips to drop her kids off at soccer practice, girl scouts, and karate. Yes, that’s pretty cynical. As Smarthouse points out, the Vectrix has many merits, and it’s a positive step for ecology, but as I’ve said many times, it seems that consumers aren’t considering all the factors when looking at the economic benefits of scooters, like this Wisconsin couple who seem to be ignoring the fact that riding a pair of 60mpg scooters isn’t really any better than driving one 30mpg car.
- In that same story an Oshkosh, WI urgent-care clinic director estimates that scooter-related urgent-care visits will rise to 5,000 nationally this year, up from 1,300 in 2000. If the national urgent-care industry is actually keeping stats like that, we’d love to see them, but it seems a little unlikely that anyone would have been accurately tracking nationwide motorscooter injuries in 2000, or that any study of that sort would differentiate urgent-care visits from emergency-room visits.
- A new SYM dealer has opened shop on the Incriminators’ turf. “You see them all over Hollywood,” store manager Tonya Stewart says, “[Scooters are] in movies and music videos, and stars are riding them as well.” Well, sure, Tonya, but those aren’t really SYMs now are they? God, I’m bitchy tonight. This is like 2strokeTMZ.
Mounting a parking permit sticker on a scooter
Justinsomnia sent this story about a great way to mount a permit sticker on your scooter. Another nifty bit of motorcycle know-how that rarely gets passed on to scooterists. Thanks, Justin, and thanks for pointing out that 2sb’s email isn’t listed anywhere on the site, I’ll fix that ASAP. When I said “Submissions Welcome” under the logo over to the left, I was talking about more artwork to shuffle behind the logo, but we’re always happy to get other links and story ideas, too, and especially insider scooter industry gossip. Without you, dear readers, we’re nothing. Even with you, we’re not much.
Thanks, woman on cell phone in Lincoln Navigator.
Lowrider scooters are cool and all, but a month after picking up his restored and kitted Vespa Rally 200 from POC Scooters, Kyle Rose would probably have preferred not being smashed between two SUVs. Sorry Kyle. Here’s a video of Phil riding the bike, which would be uproariously funny had Phil and Kyle wanted the bike to look that way.
Lessons from Italy
Sure, Italy and the U.S. are two very different markets, but you’d think this data would mean something to American motorcycle marketers. 15 of the top 20 selling motorcycles in Italy (Jan-June 2007) are scooters. The top five are ALL scooters. The top-seller is a 150cc. The top three are all Honda SH-series scooters. (Why aren’t those here, come ON, Honda!) The best part? There’s not a single bike on there over 750cc. If Italy can sustain that kind of sales/growth with such restrictive displacement and emissions guidelines, U.S. sellers need to abandon the “But 1600cc cruisers are what people WANT!” mentality. Motorcycles are a niche market here, it’s time to focus on the other 99% of Americans who are so repulsed by overpowered and unpleasant-to-ride cruisers and sportbikes (and the people that ride them). Teach them that a responsible, polite motorcycle or scooter can change their lifes.
News bits, June 3, 2007
Some news from the last few weeks, See if you can spot the Bob Balaban reference!
- Despite a high-profile drunk-scootering case involving a local radio personality, Sydney, Australia’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore has vowed to turn the city into “the Rome of the Pacific.” Scooter and motorcycle-specific spaces have doubled to 700 in the last two years, with hundreds more slated to be added soon. (Aside from designated parking, similarities to Chicago abound, including meter confusion and strongly-established support for bicycles.) Perhaps part of Moore’s plan to Rome-ize Sydney will involve particulate cocaine in the atmosphere?
- Budapest, Hungary’s government has teamed up with local scooter dealers to promote scootering in the Józsefváros district. The area hopes to reduce overcrowding and pollution with discounts and free accessories for scooter buyers.
- The Observer reviews the Piaggio MP3: “That’s a big iPod! Where are your headphones mate?”
- In another UK review, Metro.co.uk calls the MP3 “the transsexual of scooters”. (Note: The MP3 prefers to be called the “executive transvestite” of scooters.)
- Davison, Michigan Rite-Aid manager Don Dunklee has covered more than 1,100 miles commuting on an EVT4000 electric scooter that he converted to solar power. Two wing-like solar panels fold out to charge the scooter when parked, and fold in when riding.
- Resort-area cable TV network Plum recommends a Vespa to get around Aspen, where gas prices are expected to reach $6 over the summer and scooter parking is free citywide.
- Scooters are neat-o, and growing in popularity, and save money on gas, and Audrey Hepburn and latte and so on. Boilerplate stories from South Bend, IN, Columbus OH, Austin TX, Salt Lake City, UT, Seattle, WA, and Des Moines, IA
- Vespa Milwaukee cites gas prices as the impetus for a recent 25-percent increase in sales, though their Chicago-area pickup and delivery service probably hasn’t hurt sales from Chicago riders fed up with the local dealers.
- Sales in Miami are also up, to a fault: Scooter backlash is underway, and the scooter market has gone downscale (”I had a woman in here last week; she wanted to finance a $600 used bike”), Lane-splitting, slow, helmet-less scooterists are frustrating Hummer and Escalade drivers on Biscayne Boulevard.
- Any High Rollers Rally-goer will tell you that a scooter is a great way to get around Las Vegas, but renting mobility scooters from hotels is pretty lazy.
Swearing, drink-driving and smoking in public
A stereotyped-but-funny quote from a Times real estate story last week:
Ask the average Briton what he considers the most socially unacceptable forms of behaviour and he will probably answer: swearing, drink-driving and smoking in public. Ask the average Italian man driving home from the bar on his Vespa why neither he nor the eight-year-old on the handlebars are wearing a helmet, and he’ll tell you to mind your own business before stubbing out his Kent Light on your shorts.
The Underpants Thread
Modern Vespa got interesting today, though this is exactly the kind of information I need before next weekend.
Matsuyama’s cloud plates
From The Scooter Scoop: Japanese city Matsuyama is offering cloud-shaped license plates for scooters. Aside from a few states (Rhode Island is a favorite) the U.S. has some lame license plates, maybe these will inspire someone.
Portland Advisory Committee
I know, I know, you’re all waiting for a DOT meeting summary, and it’s coming, I promise (along with some other big news that will explain why posts are so few and far between lately). In the meantime, here’s good news from the West Coast: Portland City Council unanimously approved aMotorcycle and Scooter Citizen Advisory Committee (thanks, Matty). Maybe the McCabes can give us some more details?