Scooter, 50km/h, Road Licence

[p.dath]

I was driving in my cage yesterday and came up behind a scooter rider doing 35km/h who was wearing a pretty pink jacket, normal build, and hugging the left hand side of the road.

I was thinking. Perhaps scooter riders tend to hug the left because that is what it says to do in the road code when your doing your car licence. Perhaps because they haven't done any motorcycle training they simply don't know to own their lane.

But the other bit I don't get. Why only ride at 35km/h. I've never ridden a scooter, so have no experience in this area.
Do scooters have trouble have trouble going 50km/h? This was on flat road, and the rider was not overweight. It looked like a 50cc scooter to me.
Why not ride at the speed limit?

[NordieBoy]

Some just can't get to 50.

[The Baron]

I think it all comes back to no rider training.

They do not know the danger they put themselves in.

[crazyhorse]

Scooters are not the safest vehicles out there - and with their little tyres, tend to wobble all over the place. Best place for them is to the left of the lane - that way, cars can go around them safely.

You don't need a motorcycle license to drive them, only a car - therefore scooter riders have no real motorcycling sense (unless they are on the very big scooters you can buy)

[slofox]

Little old ladies and little old men driving mobile shopping baskets are just the fuckin' same...got stuck behind two lots of 'em this morning...bastards!

[SMOKEU]

My old 50cc scooter wouldn't go past 40kmh

[steve_t]

A number of scooters really struggle to hold 50km/h. Once they hit any kind of uphill gradient, they're getting passed by people on bicycles
It's especially funny when you see a scooter take off from the lights and the rider uses their legs to help get the scooter up to speed
Other scooters seem to have no worries getting up to about 70km/h. Guess it depends on which ones and, as you've said, how heavy the rider is

[p.dath]

I almost wonder if the minimum standard (and I assume one exists) needs to be raised for scooters.

Having a device on the road that can't even do 50 km/h doesn't sound that safe to me.

[klingon]

Scooters are not the safest vehicles out there - and with their little tyres, tend to wobble all over the place. Best place for them is to the left of the lane - that way, cars can go around them safely.

You don't need a motorcycle license to drive them, only a car - therefore scooter riders have no real motorcycling sense (unless they are on the very big scooters you can buy)

I strongly disagree that hugging the left is the safest place for them. It makes them hard to see, vulnerable to car doors being thrown open, people pulling out of driveways, pedestrians stepping out... and it doesn't make it easier for cars to safely overtake them. They're just more likely to push them off the road and into the gutter.

I've ridden a few 50cc scooters. Vespas and other decent brands can maintain 50kph even on some quite long hills (eg College Hill in Auckland). But I borrowed a friend's Li Fan scooter just for fun - and it was NOT fun. It couldn't maintain 50kph even on the flat (and yes, I'm a 'normal sized' person).

To make it worse, 50cc scooters don't need a warrant, so this one had a barely-working front brake and goodness knows what else wrong with it. There is no way it should have been on the road.

I agree with the comment that riders often have no idea of how to behave on the road. My friend who owned the Li Fan thought the safest place for him to ride was on the left, and that it didn't matter that the front brake didn't work because you don't need to use the front brake anyway.

He ended up replacing it with a 180cc Piaggio Hexagon which has no trouble maintaining 50kph - in fact it easily does 100kph on the motorway.

[Qkchk:Me]

Must of been one of those 'bargin' plastic-engined chinese scooters.

[awayatc]

Little old ladies and little old men driving mobile shopping baskets are just the fuckin' same...got stuck behind two lots of 'em this morning...bastards!

driving into the supermarket again were you.....?

[slofox]

driving into the supermarket again were you.....?

Nah - driving back from Gilmours with a bootload of booze...was in a hurry too - excise men were on my tail...

[SMOKEU]

It's better for them to be on the left of the road if they can't maintain traffic speed (55kmh), otherwise they will be holding up traffic.

[Squiggles]

They ride them like they're bicycles, and stick to the left. Not safe for them, they need to own the road or they'll be pushed off of it.

[Ixion]

Scooters can have a top speed of 150kph+.

What you are talking about are mopeds.

By law, a moped must have an engine capacity of no more than 50cc, power output no more than 2KW (I think); and must not be capable of exceeding 50kph on the flat

So, any hill and a legal moped will be way under 50kph.

Of course many (most?) bikes registered as mopeds are capable of a lot more than 2KW and more than 50kph (and sometimes more than 50cc too). Some are legal, they're the slow ones.

That's because until this month the law made no provision for checking them. You rolled into LTSA, said "I've got a moped to register" and they took your word it was according to the rules . That changed last month. now if you want to register a moped you'll have to prove it complies (NB register, not licence)

BTW if we agree that mopeds should not left hug despite being incapable of 50kph, for lots of god reasons, should not the same logic apply to pushbikes?