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Every time I walk around my neighborhood — we live in a residential area on the edge of Arad which, technically, is private land, because it doesn’t belong to the city hall yet and the streets haven’t been handed over — I see, especially in spring and summer, that the electric scooter thing has really taken off.
Even though people post non-stop in the neighborhood group about not riding two on a scooter, I’ve seen three people on the same scooter. Three.
And in a way, I think it’s partly on the parents. Or how do I put it, parents are to blame for not supervising their kids better.
Here’s why I’m even thinking about this: a month ago I fell off my own scooter, right here in the neighborhood, right by my house. I hit the brake wrong and went flying forward. I hit my eyebrow, my face swelled up, and I walked around like that for a few weeks.
I was alone on the scooter. But if someone falls when there are three people on it, it’s way harder to control — you don’t even know who falls first or on top of who.
When you’re the one driving, you’re more careful, because you’re the one doing the steering. But when you’re in the back and you don’t even see it coming, the risks are way too high.
As a parent, I wouldn’t want to leave my kid totally unsupervised, because little kids don’t have a sense of danger until something actually happens to them. Now, watching them 24/7 isn’t a solution either — I get the people who say “let them have their childhood” and so on. I’m not saying you need to track your kid non-stop, but every now and then you should at least check what your kid is up to.
There are plenty of reckless people in our neighborhood riding two or three on a scooter. And on top of that, I have a feeling some of these scooters have their speed unlocked.
And honestly, after what happened to me, it seems pretty risky when I think about it now.
The thing is, I’m not sure what I can even do about it. If I call the police — even the local police might not show up, because these are private streets. Technically, they have no jurisdiction there.
Although, funny enough, when I had my own situation — a neighbor got annoyed that we had too many guests over and that we “blocked” the intersection (it wasn’t really blocked, just a car parked a bit too close to the corner) — he called local police and they came. So they do show up, if they feel like it.
But for some kids on a scooter? By the time local police get there, the kids are already gone, run home, and there’s no one left to catch. So I don’t think they’d bother for something like that.
So I don’t really know what to do in these cases. But I think parents should have a bit more caution if they know their own kid has an electric scooter within reach.
That’s about it.
The conversation continues here.