Category: Legal & Safe

ABATE meeting reminder

A reminder from Dan Kay of Olde Town and ABATE of Illinois:

Tomorrow is the 3rd Wednesday of the month. That means at 8PM at the Park Ridge VFW, 10 W. Higgins (corner of Canfield where there’s an exit off the Kennedy). Parking at the auto-pay meters was addressed because enough of you chose to show up 2 months ago, going pro-active requires a maintained presence. Coming up with dedicated parking and a more permanent solution than the temporary one offered by Chicago D.O.R. Be there or don’t bitch!

ABATE of Illinois – Chicago Chapter

SF law student beats parking ticket

Michael, a San Francisco law student, was ticketed for parking his Vino on the sidewalk. Here’s how he beat the ticket in court. Note that your city’s laws, the circumstances of your ticket, the judge, and your command of legal jargon may vary, and 2strokebuzz does not endorse contesting tickets that you damn well knew you deserved. Michael’s arguments would be very unlikley to hold water in Chicago, but we thank him for sharing his experience, maybe it will help others.

Scooter Jacket Survey

David Wang and a group of students from the University of Washington in Seattle have prepared a Scooter Jacket Survey for a class, with the goal of using the collected data to design and prototype the ultimate scooter jacket, and to hopefully bring it to market. The survey takes about ten minutes, unless you spend another ten minutes adding your ridiculously specific demands in the comments section. 2sb wishes them the best of luck, hopefully they’ll come up with something close to the scooter jacket we’ve all dreamed of.

Get well soon, POC Renae

Renae from Pride of Cleveland Scooters lost two toes in a scooter crash last weekend. POC Phil was with her at the time of the accident, his vivid account is on the BBS. In short, a customer’s Genuine Buddy she was returning went wobbly at about 35mph, Phil suspects the bike’s large aftermarket windscreen was to blame. She lost control and slid along a Jersey barrier with the bike’s weight on her right foot. The friction of the pavement wore through her tennis shoes, skin, and bones so deeply that her two smallest toes needed to be amputated. Luckily she was out of the hospital in 48 hours and is doing fairly well, aside from being short two toes. Just another reminder to wear proper riding gear, and to make sure accessories don’t impede safety or handling. Get well soon, Renae! I’ll try to resist the temptation to call you Bunny Lebowski from now on.

News briefs

Check your paperwork!

Title fraud, or at least title negligence, seems to be growing as a problem in the scooter world. We’ve recently seen comments from a couple Xkeleton owners that they had serious issues getting paperwork for Xkeleton Tricksters bought on eBay. It appears likely that both bought from the same seller, so it’s probably not a widespread Trickster-specific problem, but be sure any scooter you buy is DOT/EPA/CARB certified and has proper paperwork, title, and documentation, and don’t take delivery without it. The problem isn’t limited to fly-by night eBay sellers, Vespa Philadelphia, which recently closed, allegedly lost their Piaggio/Vespa dealership rights and owner Vincenzo Mercuri is rumored to be under investigation for embezzling deposits, tax and title fees, and charging for service not performed. While there may be more to that story (and we’d appreciate any info), it’s proof that you should be extra-careful regarding paperwork.

Chicago scooter park-in: Sunday.

If you’re upset about the lack of legal scooter parking in Chicago, you’re not alone. The CHIscooterList Yahoo Group has planned a “Park In” this Sunday. The goal is to find a few consecutive parking spaces in the Loop and park one scooter in each, as per the law, for a photo shoot pointing out how ridiculous it is to not allow the sharing of parking spaces. The meeting and ride will start at The Players Club on Ashland, following the MotoGP race broadcast (the race ends around noon or 12:30). It’s a small first step in what will hopefully become an important city-wide scooter rights, advocacy, and education campaign.

News Briefs

I’m falling behind again, it must be the beginning of hockey season (and the launch of the Galewood Cookshack, more on that later).

NTSB reports troubling M/C stats

At a recent Public Forum on Motorcycle Safety, National Transportation Safety Board member Deborah Hersman reported that an increase in motorcycle fatalities is outpacing the growth of motorcycling. The NTSB reports that:

  • In the past ten years, there’s been a 230% increase in fatalities of riders over 40.
  • In the past ten years, there’s been a 540% rise in fatalities of riders over 50 riding bikes with 1,001-1,500 cc displacement.
  • Larger engine displacement, riders taking up cycling later in life, and fewer riders wearing helmets contribute to these trends.
  • in 2004, 41% of those killed in a solo motorcycle crash were legally drunk.

Bikers interviewed by AP, predictably, demanded “more data” and invoked Vietnam, rather than taking action to promote safe riding or sharing any sort of responsibility.

Segways recalled, still pointless

After a recall of all Segways sold to date, the BBC wonders why they never “caught on”. Their conclusion: the government banned them on sidewalks. 2sb’s conclusion: they’re pretentious, ridiculously expensive, comically slow, overengineered, and amazingly overhyped. Other than that, they’re great. I love the punters arguing in the comments that Segway was the answer to congestion problems, as if everybody driving overpriced wobbly giant chariots on the sidewalk wouldn’t be twice the nightmare of current city traffic.