Justice For The Small Scooter

Scooters are often dragged from their spots by drivers who think it’s okay to do this to free up more space for themselves to park.

From, Illegally parked Vespa

While scooters are great because they have a small carbon footprint, their size and shape makes them vulnerable to damage from larger vehicles. Even when parked legally, as in the picture above, scooters face plenty of extra risk due to sharing the roads with other, more powerful vehicles. Not only does the typical scooter rider need to take extra care while riding, but they also need to take the same defensive attitude when it comes to where and how they park their Vespa scooter.

In the last few years, I’ve seen registration fees on my 2007 Vespa GTS 250 almost double, so that they cost almost as much as the fees for larger vehicles. While riding my Vespa GTS, I’ve received more fines for parking infractions than all those I received in my 30 years of driving. I’ve also experienced my scooter being dragged from its spot by other drivers who think it’s okay to do this to free up more space for themselves to park. As governments around the world struggle to find solutions to climate change, it’s clear that more needs to be done to encourage people to ride these environmentally friendly Vespa scooters, and stamp out the common problems that riders face from other drivers.

On the one hand, we face the problem of other drivers moving or damaging our scooters in order to park themselves in our spots. On the other, we run the risk of large parking fines for parking scooters elsewhere, in a safer spot. Clearly, something needs to be done to alleviate this problem.

View images of my ‘illegally‘ parked GTS Vespa on the iVespa Beat Forum.