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WASHINGTON: For the longest time, big has been beautiful in America,
at least in terms of cars. But as fuel prices bite into pocketbooks,
US motorists are ending their love affair with hulking SUVs and
trucks, with many considering the ultimate step in downsizing:
losing two wheels and riding a scooter.
“Americans love cars, especially big cars, and
for them to decide to use something different has not been an easy
decision,” Paolo Timoni, chief executive of Piaggio Group
Americas, producer of the classic Italian Vespa and Piaggio scooters
that crowd roundabouts from Rome to Naples, told Agence France-Presse.
“But it appears that gas prices at $4 a gallon
have been a tilting point that has pushed people toward making the
change,” Timoni added.
Scooter sales ballooned more than ten-fold in
the US between 1997 and last year, climbing from 12,000 to 131,000.
The median price for gasoline—the point where half the prices are
above and half below—in 1997 was around $1.18.
In the first quarter of this year, scooter sales
grew by 24 percent compared with the same period last year, Mike
Mount of the Motorcycle Industry Council said.
“We think that fuel prices have weighed in on
some people’s decisions to purchase two-wheeled transportation,”
Mount said. In May, a monthly record 2,758 Piaggios were sold in the
US and a Piaggio official forecast that June sales would vastly
exceed that record, meaning that sales for those two months would be
equal to nearly half of sales in 1997.
Days of cheap gasoline over
“The days of inexpensive gasoline appear to be
over,” Bob Chase, who set out last month with a scooter-loving
friend to ride two Piaggios across the US, told AFP.
“People are getting out of their big vehicles
and getting into more economical modes of transportation,”
72-year-old Chase said.
The rise of the scooter has lent a European
flair to many US cities, Chase’s riding partner, Buddy Rosenbaum,
71, said.
The scooter began being popular in the US in
2000 and many Americans embraced it as a mode of transport, not just
a trendy vehicle.
“The same driving conditions that exist in
Europe, where millions of people commute on scooters every
day—high gas prices and terrible traffic congestion—are becoming
a reality in the US,” Timoni explained.
Sage advice
Scooter commuters can dart in between cars and
avoid road jams, but riding a scooter requires a new mindset and
isn’t for everyone, cautioned Dean Thompson, spokesman of the
Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF), which oversees and runs rider
education courses throughout the US.
“If you’re accident-prone, you should
perhaps rethink if a scooter or motorbike is the best mode of
transport for you,” Thompson said.
“People think: I can do this, it’s like a
bicycle. It’s not. You’re in the traffic stream mixing it with
cars, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, buses,” he said.
“You’re not in a cage surrounded by 2,000
kilos of steel, glass, plastic and rubber .”
-- AFP
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