Attack of the little-wheeled scooters
by Corey E. Devine
Quick - what's the hottest fad in campus transportation? It's made with ruggedly high-tech aircraft-grade aluminum, but even your grandfather would get a kick out of it. It's sturdy enough to hold 250 pounds, but it's small enough to carry around in your backpack. On top of all that, it's so trendy that movie stars like Kevin Spacey are jumping on the bandwagon ... err ... the scooter. That's right; scooters are making a comeback - a big comeback.
Scooters were originally used in Germany during the 1800s as a mode of transportation. They became popular in the United States during the '50s, experienced a resurgence in the '80s and are currently on the upswing once again.
Two years ago, a small company in Tokyo, Japan came up with the idea for a revamped scooter while trying to design a mode of transportation both fast and effective in the overcrowded streets of the small island.
It devised the light, fold-up scooter as an alternative to cumbersome bicycles. The new scooters are designed to be small. Razor, currently leading the market in sales, makes a model that folds to a little less than two feet in length.
They're constructed of super-light aluminum that keeps the total weight under six pounds. The brake control has been taken off the handlebars and moved to a foot pedal on the rear wheel.
Some of the models are even equipped with blinking LED lights, supposedly for added safety at night. I find it difficult to believe that two small LED lights could make someone riding a scooter at night much more visible.
All this technology does, however, come at a cost. Cheaper scooters with fewer features cost about $100, but if you're looking to buy something with all the bells and whistles (and blinking lights), you're going to pay upwards of $200. Yes, $200.
The most pricey scooter in the Razor line, the JD Razor 2000, is advertised on the company's Web site (http://www.razorscooters.com) as a special deal at $169.99.
Xootr's more yuppified scooters can run almost $400.
The price isn't stopping anyone from buying, though. "It's selling like the hula hoop," Kevin Masters, assistant manager of a Sharper Image store in the Galleria said. "We sell more than 150 of them a week. People come straight from work in pinstripe suits and pick up one for themselves, one for the kid and one for grandma. It's pretty wild." He did point out that the work force in Houston is less apt to buy a scooter than the work force in New York City. Houston is bigger and hotter; you can't ride a scooter from downtown to your home outside the loop.
"College kids are buying them like crazy," Masters said. "They're really an effective way to get around campus." They're so popular that even department stores like Neiman Marcus have made orders for Christmas. Walgreen's in the Rice Village already stocks them.
The whole fad still begs the question: Is riding a scooter any faster than walking? At Rice, we're hard pressed to find a building that's more than a 12-minute walk from any dorm on campus. Is the trouble of toting around a scooter even worth it?
It's apparently worth it to the seven or eight students a day I see whizzing around campus, but I have to disagree. I took my own test ride around campus to find out what all the excitement was about, and frankly, I was unimpressed.
The small wheels on the scooters aren't optimal for the rough sidewalks we have around campus. They work much better on smoothly paved walkways. That means any trendiness you might gain from riding one of these things around is mitigated by the fact that there's a constant droning rumble coming from your scooter with every push.
The other problem is that the sidewalks are small. They weren't really designed for someone gliding by at 10 mph. Just as I emerged from the stairwell to my dorm last week, some guy on a scooter caught the tip of his handlebars in the strap of my backpack. Luckily, I didn't fall, and he fell into the grass. I'd have to say that incident jaded my opinion a bit.
In all honesty, riding a scooter was faster than walking. I'm horrible at math, so I didn't do any complex mathematical computation, but the literature that comes with the scooter boasts that you can cover half a mile in only two minutes. I believe that. I made it from Will Rice College to the Student Center in just a minute.
The scooter does somehow manage to retain a certain European charm. I find the whole fad to be quite silly, but I'm just that kind of guy. I guess if I were going to participate in a trend, it would be one that seemed mildly European.
Whether they're cool or not, there has been quite a bit of concern about the safety of scooters. None of the Houston area doctors I contacted reported seeing any increase in scooter-related injuries, but the fad is relatively new here. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reported 4,000 scooter-related injuries in August alone, whereas there were less than 400 such injuries reported in May.
Most of the injuries seem to be caused by blatant negligence. "People want to ride the scooters as a mode of transportation but don't want to take them as seriously," Dr. Jill Poser, a Houston physician, said. "If you're going to ride a scooter, you should take the same precautions as if you were going to ride a bicycle or a skateboard."
The safety commission has also found that the small, hard wheels of the scooters are especially bad at handling wet pavement. They tend to slip and cause crashes. This might have been the reason for my not so pleasant run-in with a scooter last week.
The safety issue isn't really stopping the surge in sales, and most college students feel pretty comfortable operating a simple scooter. Since the weather in Houston is cooling off, these scooters might actually prove to be a viable way to get around campus, but I doubt they'll become a transportation mainstay.
If you're going to buy a scooter, make sure you look at all the models. There are quite a few companies producing these kickboards - Zappies, Xootrs, Hoverboards, Razors, Go-Peds and Know-Peds to name a few.
The ones I looked at were basically the same, but I did notice that the cheaper scooters are made from low-grade aluminum. I'd shell out the extra $20 for something that won't bend. Also, the wheels on the mid- and high-range scooters looked to be made of a much higher quality plastic.
Shop around and spend your money wisely, but remember, when the scooter craze is over, you might be stuck trying to unload your $200 kickboard on eBay.
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