Where to use my escooters in Pennsylvania (not street legal)

swldguitar

My wife and I own escooters and live in a state that it is not street legal in. We use them at car shows, camp grounds, etc. However I want to become a weekend rider. Based on past experiences, are trails or parks frowned upon? Has anyone ever had experiences with police at a time when not street legal?
My brother in law says to just ride it on the street and play dumb, however I don’t like that stigma or potential penalties.

ItsAqua

swldguitar I don’t live in PA but try looking the laws on e scooters because you might be able to find out if you can use them on trails and parks

2muchcoffee4me

swldguitar Technically they are not legal here, but they are all over the place. I’ve ridden past cops sitting in their car, and they didn’t even look twice at me. I should clarify that they have not been deemed ILLEGAL here, they just haven’t been legalized in every city here yet. So it’s a grey area.

I can’t speak for there, but here they don’t bother you unless you’re being a jackass or riding with no helmet (bike helmets are law here, so I assume it also applies to scooters and EUC). That would get you a no helmet ticket, not an illegal e-scooter ticket.

MichaelJohnston

swldguitar Hi, I own an electric scooter retail and after sale service company in South Philadelphia. My team and I ride our scooters every day to run errands or to just cruise around the city. The Philadelphia cops don’t really care about what your riding as long as you follow the same “guidelines” as E-Bikes do. Some unspoken rules and guidelines we follow are:

Go with the flow of traffic (ride in the same direction as traffic)
If there is a bike lane use it and be mindful of cyclists
If there is no bike lane, ride behind other vehicles in a staggered position (stay behind the vehicle in front of you) so other vehicles see you. Don’t ride on the side of the cars, you may end up in a blind spot.
Don’t think you have the same rights as pedestrians because you don’t but also don’t be a pin ball for bad drivers help them be aware with educating them not throwing your scooter at there car.
Follow the local traffic laws (don’t go faster than the speed limit posted).
If there is a group of you and your scooters can go as fast as the speed limit, ride on the street together so you are seen which will help car driver’s be more aware of you.
Most people don’t know that E-scooters are illegal on the public streets of Pennsylvania, so don’t give them a reason to even question it.

I’m sure I didn’t get everything, but I hope this helps. E-Scooters are still a very new thing for a lot of people and like most things, educating is more effective than anything else. Come by the shop and if you would like to discuss more. You can contact us at 267-357-6519.

ItsAqua

Another way to find out is talk to law enforcement but don’t take one officers word for it since many will say different things.

ItsAqua

Since cops won’t say anything gear up ride safe and have fun. Also don’t switch from being a pedestrian to a driver back and forth because you’ll definitely get in a lot of trouble and that may cause PEVs to be banned since it’s still a grey area

PaulN

Totally agree with the last two comments. They (5-0) leave me alone as well.
Gear up, drive responsibly especially if there are situations you have to blend with car traffic. Wear a proper helmet and consider if your scooters max speed is 30kph vs 60kph or more to choose that helmet. I think leeway will be given partly because of the gas prices are so high (i see a lot of people on e-bikes), Plus technically a scooter is probably pound per pound the most efficient green vehicle currently. How many legitimate vehicle grade forms of transport get 150 miles on $1.00 of electricity without peddling?
I have to say it even bothers me to see some intelligent person riding their Vsette down the sidewalk, no helmet, track pant’s, no gloves, at 40 mph, Someone like that will die or kill someone else, and then they will ban them in yours or my cities because of a few morons.

2muchcoffee4me

PaulN I saw a dude the other day doing 50km/h down the road the other day in traffic. He was on an EUC with no helmet, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, sipping on his Starbucks while texting. What an idiot.

PaulN

2muchcoffee4me I bring my scooter into my office to charge. One of my coworker’s saw it charging and said “Oh your one of those guys..” then proceeded to tell me how a similarly attired guy (to your comment above) on a scooter went around him, cut in front of him , and slowed down and generally pissed off all the drivers near him. So of course that labels all of us…

swldguitar

Appreciate the responses!

ItsAqua

PaulN that’s rude. Just because someone did that doesn’t mean everyone will do that. I had this one guy beep at me because I was only going 18mph on a shared road where bikes and cars have to use the same lane because there’s no sidewalk and the road is too small to for a bike lane and there’s even the bike lane sign thing painted on the road and this guy kept beeping at me to tell me to move over for him of course I didn’t move over for him because you’re being rude and not respecting the law but I don’t see us PEV riders going around saying oh you’re one of those people that cut us off or try to hit us to people who drive cars (almost everyone) and obviously there’s going to be morons out there that do stuff like that but you can’t generalize a group of people based on one persons actions. That proves that people don’t learn

2muchcoffee4me

PaulN It’s always the one that ruins it for the many.

swldguitar

Luckily for me I have my m class license and am used to jerks doing dumb things while I’m on 2 wheels. My wife however…. I’ll have to keep an eye on her, she doesn’t understand how crazy people can become when your not in a car.

My neighbor is a “Karen”. So I’m sure the moment she sees us riding in our neighborhood she’ll have to say something about it.

GTRXRider

And sometimes even the most responsible guy makes a call of judgement that is wrong and endangers a pedestrian or close call in traffic. Or both make a mistake at the same time (not that anything has to happen).

I find it sad when the city thinks PEV belong on sidewalks with pedestrians because “shared cycle sign” and on/off cycle lanes on freeways are a bit dangerous…

So far, i still got many more positive responses (they are legal here, in the sense of not banned) than negative and i can talk about the guy on a traditional skateboard and reading or the car pushing the most visible cyclist ever off the road almost on a right turn, but yeah, motorcyclist can talk quite a bit about that…

ItsAqua

GTRXRider the reason why people should get retested for their drivers license but that’s just me honestly

2muchcoffee4me

GTRXRider Here we stay off the sidewalks (other than the students riding their small 350W scoots with no helmets) and ride in the bike lanes on the roads. The bike infrastructure here goes almost everywhere, so there’s always a bike lane.

GTRXRider

Ah, i´d rather have safe and livable cities instead of what is prevalent here. Like, Amsterdam or Kopenhagen or so. Or just going into that general direction of actually caring for 2-wheeled peddled or non-peddled vehicles, PEV and pedestrians. There are so many small details, that are not really obvious (like how lanes turn and even huge signs etc.).

But at anyway, i see more scooters around here than last year, so might be harder to ban or even gain (more) acceptance, so it is seen as normal.

ItsAqua

2muchcoffee4me I’m so jealous there’s bike lanes for scooters where you live. Where I live we only have bike lanes in a few places and it’s rare to find bike lanes. The only I can ride on the roads is when it’s the neighborhood roads or the lane where cars pull over to or park in and those are only in a few places

2muchcoffee4me

ItsAqua Yea, the bike lanes are great here. I totally thought the a-hole, jersey wearing Uber cyclists would give me grief for riding in THEIR bike lanes, but they don’t.
Even as they’re huffing up a big hill doing 20km/h and sweating, and I blow by doing 35, lol.

There’s also TONS of electric bikes here also.

ItsAqua

2muchcoffee4me here they just look at me like they never seen a electric scooter before

2muchcoffee4me

ItsAqua There are an insane amount of bicycles here, and TONS of EUCs running around. They’re the latest fad, so the local dealers are pushing to sell them to anyone who walks in.

As for scoots, I haven’t seen any other higher end ones yet. It’s all students and Skip the Dishes drivers running around on Gotrax and other cheap ones. Everyone always checks out my VSETT 9+ when I roll up.

GTRXRider

Yeah, the city boasts about being pro active-transit and then defending their goal of basically increasing car traffic (by numbers). The bike lanes that suddenly stop are also weird and the defense of shared pathway “see, we have a sign”. Problem is, once people are not using a car, and the number of pedestrians increases, this is ripe for conflict and constantly ringing the bike bell. It just works for now, because there is basically only a handful of people outside a car..

Suburbia is safe on the street though, the sidewalks there are not really meant to walk on anyways and quite small.

ItsAqua

GTRXRider EUC aren’t that popular here yet. I only seen 3 people who have one and one person with a one wheel and a bunch with eskates but e scooters are more of a common thing but I have only seen one person with a $1000+ scooter because they were zipping down the street but I think they had a nanrobot or a YUME their scooter was built bulky and big and they had the big headlights that look like the ones you’ll find YUME scooters and possibly a few others couldn’t ask him about his scooter because I was late for work and he flew by me