November 15, 2020

Scooter rider misbehaves in Rotterdam, gets jailed in Italy

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

On 14 November a woman decided to drive over the sidewalk in Rotterdam with her scooter, ending up ramming an automatic teller. As luck would have it, she got caught by the police.

Then, she wasn’t able to produce a driver’s licence for the scooter or identify herself, as she didn’t have any ID on her. In the Netherlands everyone over 14 year of age is obliged to identify themselves if the police asks.

When the cops figured out who she was, they also found out that she was supposed to be doing three years of jail time in Italy for a drug-related crime.

The moral of the story: don’t try and get caught if you’re trying to avoid getting caught.

(Link: ad.nl, Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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January 22, 2014

It’s a moped… it’s a scooter… it’s a bike! And that’s a problem

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

A German electric bicycle (aka e-bike), the blueLABEL cruiser (the pic is just a run-of-the-mill Vespa) can reach speeds of up to 45 km/h. Only a handful of them have been sold according to De Volkskrant newspaper, but they are popular, even with a price tag of 3,050 euro.

And although the blueLABEL cruiser is a fully functioning bicycle and looks like one too, Dutch law has problems classifying it as a bike, and apparently should have it down as either a moped (‘snorfiets’) or a scooter (‘bromfiets’) allowed to go up to 45 km/h.

If the blueLABEL cruiser is in fact a scooter, then you’d need a helmet, insurance and a different license plate (a blue one) to ‘drive’ it. If it’s a moped, you’d need yet another license plate (a yellow one). And when it goes over 25 km/h, it has to be driven on the road, not on a bike path.

The clincher is, the blueLABEL cruiser looks just like an ordinary bike, making the cops’ life difficult. In 2017 this type of bike, known as a ‘speed pedelec’ will be considered a scooter, which sounds about right. In the mean time, pricy German stealth bike it is.

Remember the Segway? That was a huge headache as well in the Netherlands.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl, Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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