On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool
Article Table of Contents
Introduction #
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s a recent post from the Sportique Scooters instagram:
This is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”.
I once had a vehicle just like this photo. The helmet I used (and still use) is not as charming as this helmet, unforunately, but it is a bit safer, and I want the best head protection I can get. 1
There’s more to say about this kind of vehicle, and I’ve tried to, a few different ways. This page currently serves as “just” a jumping off point to other scooter-related resources.
Collections of writings about scooters #
See, it’s not really about scooters, per se. It’s the verb of the thing. Scooters are different than cars, but the only reason it matters at all is because scooter-ing is vastly different than using a car, or a bike, or a motorcycle.
👉 https://josh.works/scootering
My tiktok has lots of footage from/about scooting, mostly of me experimenting with different aspects of showing trips from place to place, or how I might view a certain feature of american road design.
I’ve happily and comfortably ridden scooters around countries where nearly every motor on a roadway is attached to a scooter, and the driving norms are sometimes generous. It can be so peaceful. traffic flows very smoothly and at an incredible number of vehicles-per-minute through relatively low-square-meter intersections, in terms of land allocated to the intersection.
Footnotes #
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I always wear a full-face helmet of the “modern” style. An integrated sun visor is ideal, along with a clear visor that can be completely closed.
If you see some of my scooting videos you’ll have a sense of it.
These kinds of helmets are the most protective, provide the most protection from wind and sunlight and noise.
I also wear a disposable painters mask. It’s a heavy-duty N95 “Odor respirator”. Scooting makes one quite aware of air quality issues. Obviously there is plenty of vehicle tailpipe emissions, but also tire rubber microplastics AND metal dust from brakes, so there’s a lot in the air I want to keep out of my lungs.
Here’s what the internet has to say about these kinds of masks.
An R95 Odor Respirator 8246 is essentially the same as an N95 respirator in terms of filtering 95% of airborne particles, but the key difference is that the R95 is designed to be somewhat resistant to oil-based particles, while a standard N95 is not, making the R95 a better choice for situations where oil mists or fumes might be present; both are NIOSH-approved respirators.
fumes? brake dust? airborn bits of rubber? I’ll wear the best mask I can, please, and I’ll wrap my whole head in a bubble (inside my full-face helmet with a closed visor) of mostly un-moving air, with all the vents closed up, unless the air is super clean.
Here’s the exact 10-pack I last got off of Amazon. Once you try a nice mask like this, it might be hard to go back. Once I started getting choosy about masks, I started wearing them a lot. I appreciate that to smell a vehicle or be downwind of it while it’s changing its speed via brakes and thus increased rolling friction on the ground, or its changing its speed via the engine, and thus increasing the particulate shedding rate and tailpipe emissions, is to be sorta ‘bathed’ in a plume of emisssions. ↩