I’m visiting Italy and floored by the number of mopeds. Found the same thing in Vietnam. Having spent time in New York, Chicago, St Louis, Seattle, Miami and lots in Orlando, I’ve never seen anything like this in the USA. Is there a cultural reason or economic reason the USA prefers motorcycles over mopeds?
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Much of the US is connected by highways and not congested by heavy traffic like in parts of asia or italy.
I live in central seattle and you really need more than moped to get on the highway where people are driving at least 55mph.
A lot of talk of commute distances, but we also have huge cars making moped less safe and I believe not as good intercity travel infrastructure.
distances is the main reason but another big one is that they look stupid and you would be heckled by using one
Turn to grand theft auto and ride the moped and see what it’s called. That pretty much sums it up.
In Italy you can ride a moped at 14, but can’t drive a car until 18. Therefore a lot of teens drive mopeds.
In the US you can drive a car at 16, and there is a big teen driving culture.
Plus there’s the cost of fuel, which is much cheaper in the US than in Europe
Adding to that, the cars people drive are hella huge. I had a moped for a short time when I had a short commute on surface streets, and the number of times I nearly got plowed over by a giant SUV made me decide it just wasn’t worth it. I had a husband and kid to think of, so I sold it.
You do see them – in small compact cities with narrow streets and lots of older people. Newport, RI and Florida gulf coast comes to mind.
There are a several reasons. First, in much the US, cold weather, or hot weather, or wet weather makes mopeds not practical for much of the year. Second, public transportation is very uncommon in the US, so city streets are designed to handle cars, not smaller vehicles. Third, many people live in suburbs, where the distance traveled to work is quite far. Mopeds are not as fast and against subject to weather issues. Finally, gas is cheap in the US and there is a lot of disposable income, so people don’t have the incentive to save on gas that they have in much of the world.
If more people would watch Macklemore ‘s video for ‘Downtown,’ moped sales would skyrocket.
Lots of small towns let you drive a moped without a license so they call them liquor-cycles. Basically the amount of DUI’s in your town should correlate to the number of mopeds.
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