Is no one else tired of mopeds and motorized scooters on the campus? Forget watching basketball players zipping off to classes three at a time while everyone else has to either bike or foot it around the wind tunnel that is our campus – what about the safety issues, or even the legality of it all? With half of the campus plugged into iPods, it is only a matter of time until a serious collision occurs, and when 250 pounds of moped, 300 pounds of grade-A athlete and 100 pounds of sorority girl collide, we’ll be lucky if so much as her Uggs are left intact.
A similarly valid argument could be made for protecting these athletes themselves: Who hasn’t seen the scooters speeding by cars and weaving between pedestrians as they fly past the stop sign at the bottom of McKeldin Mall? Again, a collision is inevitable. Imagine, for instance, if Greivis Vasquez or Graham Zusi went down in a freak moped accident … catastrophe!
But beyond the obvious dangers of multiple people riding on motor scooters around the campus, aren’t there some sort of legal issues at play here? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t kosher to pass three cars with two people on the back of your moped as you floor it past the stop sign while laughing at the “State law: Yield to pedestrians” sign and cutting it up onto the sidewalk across the mall. This dangerous driving is unbeleivably dangerous, and all too common. I’ve literally watched this happen right in front of the Administration Building at the bottom of the mall – don’t they have windows?
It isn’t as if this issue has gone unnoticed, either: Just this past month, the Residence Hall Association sought stricter enforcement of the law prohibiting motor scooters on sidewalks.
But the desire to crack down on misbehaving riders has received little overt support from administrators. Is there some sort of motorized scooter conspiracy with our school’s administration working behind the scenes to keep our athletes riding them?
Finally, what about the rest of us? I realize that athletes potentially bring a lot of money to the university, but does this mean the campus should be their playground? I’m sick and tired of the alarm on one of the mopeds constantly blaring outside of my South Campus Commons apartment and of hearing the busted muffler on one of the 12 scooters outside of Charles Hall as its owner does laps during all hours of the night.
Isn’t it time to put an end to this obnoxious and dangerous practice of giving athletes mopeds to ride around the campus? Hell, forget about it being annoying, unfair and dangerous … it’s illegal!
Matthew Parrilla is a senior physics major. He can be reached at mparrill@umd.edu.
