I want to start this article with a misconception about electric scooters. After the bankruptcy of Bird, the company that partnered with my university to rent electric scooters, a few students were happy about the collapse of this company. This reaction spurs from the perception that people riding electric scooters are ruining the lives of everyone who doesn’t. This perception of electric scooters happens due to the low skill required to use them, which can help navigate a university campus. Although this idea is accurate, it’s more complicated than that. It has more to do with the jealousy around people who only walk from one spot to another at a college campus. And there are other solutions with the same risks as scooters, like bikes and electric skateboards. Let’s talk about why I use an electric scooter.
Besides using a car, electric scooters are one of the fastest ways to get from point A, like your home, to point B, like your class. Sure, other options include bikes, hoverboards, and regular scooters. Depending on where you attend university, these options work better than electric scooters. But I want to talk about why I personally chose electric scooters.
I attend UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), and the campus is notoriously hilly. The heart-shaped campus has most undergraduate dormitories on one side and everything else on the other, meaning lots of minutes are consumed from point A to point B and walking up and down the hills. It’s unbelievable that you must walk that much for a campus that's not that big. It’s only some 400 acres of land, but you tend to walk an hour and a half from front to back. Not to mention, your classes are all over the place. You may go from some class at Royce Hall (that basilica-looking building that is instantly recognizable as the symbol of the university), have a class in 10 minutes to Boetler (an incredibly confusing building that has floors I couldn’t recognize), and have a class to Bunche. And that’s just classes. Forget about the whole extracurricular and hangout stuff because that makes the walk rewarding or stressful, depending on your goals.
You can bike to campus, but going up is a workout, and you’re probably not better than just walking. You cannot take your bike to your dorm (the dorms on campus are tiny, and you’ll likely live with roommates, making your space infinitely smaller. You can try off-campus, but I think you’re not getting much luck with off-campus.), and there’s a good chance that your bike will get stolen. A car is doable, but parking is enormously complicated, and getting a permit or an exemption is no easy task. So, there are two options: an electric scooter or a hoverboard. Most people choose an electric scooter because it’s safer. The handrails are way more helpful than balancing yourself on the hoverboard. I’m saying that the electric scooter is one of the few options for undergraduate students to go from point A to point B quickly. In my experience, it shortens my time by around 20-30 minutes.
Before getting your electric scooter or registering an account on Bird, you need a bike lock and a helmet. These two items are essential and save my life.
I hope you know how electric scooters help me get to class faster. Let’s talk about how to ride scooters properly.
Before getting your electric scooter or registering an account on Bird, you need a bike lock and a helmet. These two items are essential and save my life. A helmet can protect you from collisions on the head and can keep your brain. And the bike lock can help your scooter lock in place. The scooter is foldable, but carrying these things is a workout. These scooters are heavy; you can save your arms if you don’t trust your bike locks.
For my suggestions on bike locks, there are quite a variety of locks. I use a U-lock because it’s relatively simple to lock your scooter. The problem with using a U-lock is that it uses a proprietary key to open the thing. So, it’s a pain actually to have that open. The second thing with the U-lock is that the materials discourage thieves from breaking that thing loose, except for chainsaws. UCLA doesn’t contain a lot of crime, though. The other option that I rarely use is cable locks. My cable lock doesn’t use a key but a key code that some random person can scramble a code to unlock the cable. Cable locks are good but have the same problems as U-locks, the keycode, and the pain of wrapping the scooter. There are other options, but I haven’t used those, like the chain locks. To pick the bike lock suitable for you in university, you should check the crime rate in the surrounding area. U-locks and chain locks are great for high-crime areas due to indestructible materials like steel and iron. But that’s from my own experience. You do you.
Bike helmets are more common than the bike locks I use. Despite the commonality, you must still be careful of the helmet you pick. With the helmet, you should figure out the traffic situation at your university campus. If the campus is bike friendly and when looking at 3D maps like Google Earth seems flat, you can pick a comfortable helmet with a good deal of protection. I have yet to learn about a good deal of safety because I bought the helmet several months ago. Get a very protective helmet. Usually, I use a helmet with a great deal of security in larger university classes, where the incoming class sizes are somewhere in the 5000 range. If not, then just pick a helmet that fits the best for you.
You should have a driver's license once you get the bike lock and helmet.
For international students, you should still follow driving laws. I recommend you check the university's location and follow the local bike rules because electric scooters, in most cases, are treated similarly to bikes. That means no biking on sidewalks, obeying all traffic regulations, staying in bike lanes, and finding bike racks to store these things. If any of these rules confuse you, just pick one and incorporate that every day. You can try the other one once you get the feel of that law. This process is one way of following the law, which could be better. I provide this dreadful advice because it’s the dumbest way for you to understand all the bike laws regardless of region. Sure, I have to follow bike rules in Los Angeles, California, but not everyone reading this article is from California. So, I’m providing the most general laws. To learn how to ride a scooter properly, you must follow local bike rules because they are the same. If there is a distinction between a bicycle and an electric scooter, follow the laws. That way, you don’t have to pay more taxes than necessary, considering the massive amounts of money burned into tuition and living expenses.
To properly use your scooter, you should get a helmet and a bike lock suitable for you and the university campus and follow local biking/electric scooter laws. If you follow all three steps, you will be the opposite of people’s perception of electric scooters. And you don’t have to face serious evasion charges from the local police, who are thirsty to pick anyone not conforming to driving laws. Having an electric scooter is a privilege that can speed up time for class and work. But having the privilege to do so requires some grand wisdom. And with that wisdom, riding an electric scooter can significantly save time and work far more efficiently than simply walking.
This article is a partial advice for riding electric scooters. I can write an article exclusively on riding electric scooters at UCLA. People outside of UCLA can take this as the definitive advice for their university, usually in situations different from those at UCLA. If that’s the case, I may not write an article to the best of my ability. I just finished my first quarter and have only been riding my electric scooter for a few months. I will say this: this article is supposed to be a wake-up call and a start to learning how to ride electric scooters properly. It’s supposed to be a way to go against the negative perceptions of riding electric scooters or any alternative form of transportation from point A to point B in a university setting. As said throughout the article, to get the most out of riding your electric scooter safely, you should read a bit about biking/electric scooter laws in your local area, one piece, and implement that one piece a day. Before long, you are harnessing your time in a way you cannot do before. That’s all I have for this article. I’ll see you in the following article.
This article is my first article in a couple of months. Lately, I haven’t had the time to write an article primarily based on a topic I’m interested in. I write articles based on productivity and things happening in my life. But lately, I face my first quarter at UCLA, which asks me to work harder than in high school. Sure, high schools with AP courses are complex, but university work, especially at prestigious ones, is more complicated and takes more time to get used to. Using sources like Quizlet is not helpful for university exams because they are used to regurgitate information. I have no idea how to use the word repeat. I probably would like to use the word remember information. Either way, remembering information is insufficient to do well in university classes. I have to tell the subject to myself or write them down in some notebook, usually a Word document, to gauge my understanding. I did okay in my first quarter, but it will take some time to work efficiently again.