To the Editor:

Mopeds are dangerous. Indeed, mopeds are dangerous in several ways.

Mopeds are dangerous in the same way that bicycles, and skateboards, downhill skis and horses are dangerous: people use them to move themselves with significant velocity relative to other solid objects, all the while having no enclosure surrounding the body. (Drivers of today’s SUV’s and outsize pickup trucks, by contrast, wear the ‘tank’ theory of personal locomotion; their safety comes from the mass of the steel they are carried in.)

Mopeds are also dangerous because mopeds have small wheels, often have tires that might as well have come from a cheap garden cart, typically are set up with very short steering geometry, have less than capable suspension parts, sometimes have klunky bearings in the steering tree, sometimes have much older design drum brakes that grab or fade (although some of the recent disc brakes now coming out of China are excellent), almost always have electrical systems with small conductors with second rate easily-corroded copper, soft-shiny ‘smushy’ plastic insulation, and badly made ‘bullet’ connectors in thin vinyl sleeves, very often have “AC” electrical systems (running the CDI and all the lights – more on this later), typically have light fixtures (tail light etc.) nary a millimeter thick and not what a reasonable person would call ‘sealed’ against weather and water, usually have mirrors that give the rider only a perfect view of his own shoulders, are (basically) forbidden by law to have anything other than a rubber-belt-and-weighted-sheave ‘transmission’, get such power as they have from operating a too-small displacement at excessive RPM, tend to vacuum leaks (they use engine vacuum to pump fuel to the carburetor through hoses an ordinary person would be ashamed of; and the rubber intake connections stiffen and crack — most of the rubber on these them doesn’t do well when exposed to petroleum, whether gas or oil — and really doesn’t like alcohol) … and so forth.

Mopeds are also dangerous because the people who ride them put lots of weight on them above the already high center of gravity, because the riders don’t know how best to initiate a turn at low and not-low speeds, or how much to ‘lean’, or how to lean, or how to know when ‘lean’ is too little or too much in a turn (or what “contact patch”, “oversteer”, and “understeer” are. And, typically, if there are two people on a moped, even if one of them knows — the other definitely doesn’t.) People who are good at riding motorized two-wheeled machines are not all egghead Physics majors, but those who do become good, learn, for example, even if just by ‘feel’, that the steering response to throttle for a two-wheeled vehicle is basically opposite to that of a four- wheeled vehicle. (Without getting into the complexities, for the two-wheeled you want the rear tire to break loose first if either tire is going to skid.)

Mopeds are also dangerous because automobile drivers (with New York and Connecticut plates) have all received instructions (from each other, and during visitations from the avatars of their gods) that they must, absolutely must, immediately pass a moped whenever they come upon one, even while they are doing fifty on South Road in Chilmark, no matter what speed the moped is actually travelling, no matter how the road is marked, what intersection is ahead, or how narrow or curved the road. Automobile drivers (yellow-orange or cloudy blue plates again, of course) have decided that a moped, once successfully pinned to the ‘fog line’ on the very right hand side of the road will never want or need to make a left turn, and that the extended hand of the moped rider can’t possibly signal slowing — because he was already going so slowly.

In addition to being dangerous, however, mopeds are practical. They get ten times the gas mileage of those other big lunks on the road. They don’t take up a parking space. Registration is for two years for $40. You don’t need a garage with a lift and big red tool cabinets full of Snap- on stuff and ten thousand dollar diagnostic computers to fix them. The actual GY6 / 139QMB engine in a moped is basically (before you get to the mess it sits in) a good, and vernacular, design. Parts on Ebay for single digit dollars. Kit for a full rebuild for less than the cost of dinner downtown; time to do the work only about as long as it takes to have dinner and dessert. And on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where the average trip is a few miles and the longest is twenty, speed limits are thirty and forty, you can ride a moped and get there as soon as you would no matter what you drove.

The accident this summer was very horrible, very sad. In the nature of people and politics, attention now focuses on petitions to summon government to make and enforce a rule to require government licensing. Failure is often followed by demands for official bureaucratization. And even when the same failure later reoccurs, at least it will be surrounded by more ‘system’, and we will propose to take comfort in that.

We all have a couple of other things to do this fall and winter, and they are things we need to get done (I’m swamped), but perhaps among us are a few people who might rise to the challenge of actually making things having to do with mopeds better, and perhaps spend helpful effort rather than petitioning the (otherwise hapless in this matter) state government. (As an aside: none of this personally affects me. I don’t rent mopeds. I do have a motorcycle license — that is a living descendant of one that I got in Idaho forty-eight years ago).

We’re not going to fix the fix the fact that the moped rider is entirely exposed, and that it is the human body rather than a car body that will get crunched when things go wrong. We can, however, put some attention into making fewer things go wrong, and less often. We can improve the moped itself; we can improve the way mopeds are used and ridden; and we can improve the sharing of the road in the driving culture. Doing all three should make the situation significantly better, and ease the mood among the ambulance crews.

To improve the physical moped, we can create a set of guidelines for the rental fleet. They probably don’t even have to be mandatory — especially if they are thoughtful and reasonable, and the moped renters can make a rational transition to better choices. A list of what might be included, just as a list:

  • Lighting. The road bicyclists now have lights very well figured out. It has been common this Summer to have bicycles on the road with LED head and tail lights that draw enough of the motorist’s attention to the presence of the bicycle (or group of cycles) from a suitable distance, even at dusk. It remains common, however, to find a moped half-on and half-off the right-hand side of the road with no tail light (nor any light reflecting strip, etc.). Moped headlights are often weak, clouded over, yellow (and don’t give the moped rider a chance to see much either). Some of this has to do with the electrical system too often used on the moped. Without getting into technical details, the scheme used isn’t really a system. Even though the moped has a battery (for the starter) a winding on the magneto is wired (unregulated) to incandescent bulbs front and rear. This so-called “AC” system prevents use of modern, reliable LED lights (and saved fractions of a yuan at a factory in ChangSho). The better alternative, the so-called “DC” system, 12 volt – like cars, is available. There are very good lights available to put on a moped. (There are even good turn signal systems.) As noted at one scooter website: “The vast majority of scooter/car collisions happen at an intersection. Being vigilant at intersections and increasing your visibility to cars minimizes your chances of becoming a part of this statistic.”
  • Wheel size. Small wheels, even if made out of unsophisticated material, turn more quickly (and accelerate faster – less inertial mass). But that isn’t always a good thing — and it never works out well with holes, lumps and other irregularities in the road. I would suggest the rental moped on Martha’s Vineyard have a 13 inch wheel size minimum (and there perhaps be some encouragement to go larger as available and reasonable — there are already available 17″18″ and 19″ good quality wheels being made at a fair price that are being used by custom builder types). On a moped, one can actually “feel” the wheels cross the paint stripe on the road. (Partly the no-suspension, but also the small wheels). Iron drain grates are an event. Inadvertently riding over the cut-off end of a two-by-four that has fallen off a truck and is lying at the side of the road is a major — and possibly dangerous — thump.
  • Tires. Many Chinese rubber products can be compared to certain Chinese milk when it comes to reasonable suspicion about what is in the stuff. It smells weird, anyway. Mopeds regularly come with tires that are both too small and too narrow for riding here (where there are sand patches along the road, and unpaved sections of road, and an assortment of types of driveway (including loose gravel and shells and pine needles/tree roots). There are great tires available on the market at fair prices. With many of them things don’t go especially badly even when punctured resulting in complete pressure loss. Depends on the moped as to actually what size should be on it, but tire encouragement should be high on the list.
  • Electrical System. The wiring in cars is often unhelpfully made for the conveniences of the assembly line, but the wiring on most mopeds will just make you cry. For many mopeds, two five-cent connectors, a crimping tool, and five minutes can improve the connections to the coil and double the reliability of the ignition. Many mopeds use these funny little metal wire bundle holders that break off (and the wires sag and chafe). Again, much of this is model dependent, but encouraging wiring and connection improvement means that the moped doesn’t stop running where you’d really like it to keep working, that the turn signals work, etc.

And so on. But no, I don’t think there should be a state inspection system for mopeds. I think that there should be a group on the island that knows what is available on the market (and at what price) which meets and describes guidelines. And that, like the “Better Business Bureau” approach, the group should enable moped providers on the island to put “stickers” in their window and on the mopeds that say in effect, if in fact they have, that the guidelines of the moped group have been, and are being, followed. Let’s see whether that isn’t incentive enough. The (fair and gentle, please) guidance of insurers can surely help as well.

Moving along to the riding of mopeds. For which I would also propose a similar approach.

  • Weight. Most mopeds have a plaque on them that describes the “Maximum Gross Weight” at which the moped should be ridden. (It is typically something like 375 pounds (can be less/more). Sometimes there is a specification sheet that provides weight specs. For mopeds without a stated limit, or for which the limit given is clearly unreasonable, a fair Maximum Gross Weight can be readily calculated. Details skipped for now – it is arithmetic, not that hard.) Subtracting the “curb” weight of the moped, we get the permissible weight of the “payload”. Usually that is somewhere between 225 and 250 pounds. It may seem to some like there is space for two butts on the seat, and although the moped may do fine with two scrawny Malaysians aboard, the heft of one, just one, well-fed American is as much load as the thing can reasonably safely take.

It is more frequent that not to see mopeds on the roads well above responsible weight. One can daily observe mopeds with enough sitting on them to completely “bottom out” those not-so- well-engineered-in-the-first-place suspensions so that there will never be any “give” for any bump in the road.

The people who rent mopeds can agree to keep a bathroom scale at the rental shop. They can agree not to knowingly rent to payloads that are substantially above a reasonable gross weight. Just as a co-operative, and appreciated, and approved (with the “we’re doing it right and getting along with the community” sticker) practice. This is not prejudice against heavy people any more than airplane weight and balance regulations, or truck weight regulations, etc. etc. are. It will have the effect of reducing the number to two-person (one leaning one way in a turn, and the other the other) rides out on the road. That may not be the worst thing.

  • Licenses and a Video. Those who show up at a moped shop with a motorcycle license, or a certificate from a legit two-wheels safety course, should be otherwise permitted to rent. Why have a fight? Generally enough, it is a population with some experience.

Those who don’t have a license can take a short quiz. If they don’t do so well on the quiz, they get to watch an eight-minute video. The video can say some of the obvious things that are so readily forgotten: Mistakes have bad consequences; this is a no screw-up deal. Be visible, but ride as defensively as if you were invisible. Then goes over the basics of two wheel steering and handling. And then a little what-to-do: … if you find yourself “fighting the lean” in a turn, or if you see a patch of sand. If people are annoyed or bored, or don’t pay attention, so what? We’ve tried to be helpful and it took only a few minutes.

And then the little test ride that, supposedly, already happens.

Which brings us to helping the other motorists “share the road.” Again, a similar approach, and things that can be done.

  • Signs in the car deck areas of the ferry boats. Cars, and drivers, even those from the Big City (now called Brooklyn) or from the richest, most Republican state in New England, come to this island by boat. (Right, some of the people fly in on Gulfstream jets — but let’s work with the chances to communicate that we’ve got.) A design competition for amusing enough (non- commercial) postings perhaps three feet square on the walls in or near the car area of SSA boats that says that roads are best when shared, that traffic is often bad in Summer (and probably not going to get better), that the roads are in many places narrow (and not going to get wider) and that the speed limits are what they are, and pretty much should be, and that some thought was given to putting the right lines in the middle of the roads in the right places, and that, no matter what it is, if the vehicle ahead of you is doing sixty percent or more of the speed limit, trying to pass it across a double yellow line is typically not necessary and not helpful. (And if it is really going slowly, see whether you can work out the passing event so that there are no surprises.)

Creative people can come up with the right things to say, and good ways to say it. Maybe even some kind of “campaign”-like approach whereby people can be proud of being good at sharing the roads that we’ve got (and like, and that we don’t really want to turn into punishingly efficient traffic-shuttlers.)

  • This will be controversial, and I can hear some of the wailing already, but, for myself, I would not mind some adjustment, by convention, to the existing paint markings on the roads to indicate, just before it happens, when, for example, the shoulder of the road is going to narrow. The while fog line could become two narrower stripes, for instance, a hundred yards before the shoulder space narrows to less than three and a half feet, traveling in your direction. (Specifics to be worked out, but the idea is there.)

If a person knows the roads here well, something like this probably isn’t helpful, but for the visitors who make their travels on the far right hand side of the road, it might help avoid the accidents that begin with panic as one comes around a corner to suddenly be very scared by the apparent lack of width for you and the truck that is at your left elbow. Some the “wobble into roadside crash” accidents on both bicycles and mopeds might be avoided by having the road (in an agreeable and not offensive way) marked to help people on the roads space themselves along the width available.

I am not in favor of putting up a lot of roadside signs saying “narrow shoulder” and such (or displaying that “squeeze image” in yellow and black that has become so roundly metaphorical at some places). But I do think that using the marking running along the road edge to let people at the side of the road know what is coming for shoulder around the corner might be workable, and not ugly, distracting, annoying, or a paint to have to mow around when cutting the roadside grass.

With the thought that these measures could at least be a good start, I would encourage us to proceed by means of an effort that explicitly tries to makes things better.

Benjamin Reeve

West Tisbury