Scooter Hire in Greece – Part 7, Ride in Style

This is part seven of an important series by Suntrap Holidays about scooter hire in Greece, and here you can pick up some great tips about riding style. You need to know this..

(If you have not read the earlier parts of this series on scooter rental in Greece, you can find it all here: Scooter Hire in Greece – The Series)

OK let’s get one thing straight – I make no pretences here about writing a complete guide to riding a scooter. For that, you need to look elsewhere. The motorcycling section at the Driving Standards Agency website is a good place to start.

Scooter Hire in Greece - Mountain Road, courtesy of flickr.com user: edoardotacconi

This article is a quick guide to those life-saving riding tips that you REALLY need to know if you are thinking of hiring a scooter in Greece for the first time:

Now, if you’re thinking “I just want to do a bit of scooter hire in Greece so just give me the basics PLEASE”, then here they are:

• You need to know what’s happening on the road, all around you, at all times.
• You need to know the state of the road and driving conditions and ride accordingly.
• You need to have a rolling plan of the path you will take along the road. You need to be able to stop within the length of this visible path at any time (e.g. the path is much shorter if you are about to come to a sharp bend).
• You also need to constantly scan this path and watch for developing hazards that may block it (such as cars pulling out of a side road) so that you can react as soon as possible.
• If you’re planning to make a significant change to what you’re doing, i.e. a change of speed or direction, you need to let other road users know so they can allow for it.

And that really IS a high-level summary. If that’s all you need, perhaps because you have some experience of riding, you can skip the rest of this article and head for the next part of this series:

Scooter Hire in Greece – Part 8, Hazardous Humans

OK you’re still here, and that’s good because I have some great tips here that really could keep you out of trouble. Now don’t worry, I’m going to make it nice and easy to read, nothing technical, OK? Right, first of all, mirrors:

Mirrors

Use ‘em! That’s it really. No, seriously, you need to be checking in your mirrors, the offside one at least, all the time, every five seconds. I mean it. It’s not as bad as it sounds because you soon get into the habit and it becomes second nature. The last thing you want is to be surprised when a massive tour coach or fully-laden cement mixer suddenly

Scooter Riding in Greece - Check those Mirrors, courtesy of flickr.com user: dainee

thunders past in a vortex of dust literally inches away from your left ear, perhaps so surprising you that you panic.

As well as the the regular mirror checks, you also need to do a mirror check whenever your scooter is going to “change”. By that I mean, change direction or change speed. Any time you plan to turn left or right, slow down, pull over, speed up, set off, pull out of a junction or even just swing out a little to avoid a pothole – before doing any of these things, look in the mirror and assess what’s going on behind you.

The mirror check before a “change” of direction or speed is just the start of the manoeuvre. To put it simply, after checking the mirrors, an instructor would say signal if appropriate and then just before executing certain manoeuvres you do a so-called life-saver glance, looking over the appropriate shoulder to check the blind spot you are about to move into.

When do you need to signal? Well, if you are turning 90 degrees, definitely signal. Same for setting off and stopping. For slowing down, speeding up, and altering your line of travel to avoid a grid, say – it’s not always obvious if you need to signal and you need to decide whether signalling would help or confuse another road user.

When do you need to do a “life-saver” glance? Again, it’s not always clear-cut and you need to use common sense. I would certainly do one just before positioning myself for a right or left turn, after the mirror check and signal; and also just before setting off and stopping, again after the mirror, signal. You have to be realistic though – you can’t safely do a lifesaver if you’re going at speed. Having said that, even when you’re travelling a bit and maybe need to veer out a little to avoid a pothole, a rapid chin-to-shoulder glance will show you the blind spot not covered by the mirror.

Hazards

To get a motorcycle licence in the UK you need to sit a separate hazard perception test, such is the importance given to this subject. You look at a series of video clips of cars pulling out, pedestrians wandering across the road – not to mention a lot of far more subtle hazards – and you have to click a button as soon as you notice any developing hazard.

If scooter hire in Greece is your first taste of biking, you may be doing this for real without having any of the training, you crazy kid! So, you’re scanning the road ahead and planning your path along it, and as you move along that path you need to be watching all the time for developing hazards.

Scooter Riding - Lifesaver Glance, courtesy of flickr.com user: dainee

And I don’t just mean “Will that car pull out?” or “Will that old woman walking in the road decide to totter across in front of me?”. More than than – for me, this also includes potential hazards that are not even “developing”, such as “Will the little urchin playing on the rubbish dump throw a glass bottle into my path?” (happened to me last time I was in Greece!) and “Is an unseen goat about to jump out of that hedge?” (yes, been there too!)

Defensive Driving

This is going to be very hard if you are the macho-man type, used to throwing insults and veering at other road users from the safety of your big metal box. When you take out scooter hire in Greece, you really must be defensive rather than aggressive. Defensive in this context does not mean defending yourself in a fight. It means avoiding the fight at all costs. This is because on a scooter, you are exposed. You lose. In any fight with a lorry, car, pedestrian, dog or goat, you lose. (OK I’m not saying the goat will be having a party either..)

So, you need to drop ALL of that attitude that went with your car driving, and get defensive.

Speed

I need to talk to you about speed. Speed is not in itself dangerous, but inappropriate speed for the conditions and circumstances is. The basic rule is that you need to be able stop safely within the visible path ahead. Thinking of racing round blind bends? Be my guest. While you’re at it, why not go full-on barmy and wear a blindfold too?

Leave plenty of stopping distance for the speed you’re doing, even more than in a car, and watch you don’t take a bend too fast especially if the road surface is wet, uneven – and especially if it looks oily.

If you’re doing the typical UK holidaymaker version of scooter hire in Greece – clothed in just the tee shirt, shorts and flip-flops, well, if I were you I’d be VERY careful about speed. I’m not going to spell it out because there could be kiddies reading this, but basically the more you think about what I’m getting at here, the safer your spell of scooter rental in Greece will be!

Brakes

If you’ve been to the Greek Islands on holiday you will know that many of them have bloomin big mountains in the middle, and often the roads of the island snake along the edges of these mountains, sometimes with a massive drop on one side, sometimes punctuated by hard-looking concrete blocks for barriers. Often I find myself careering down a steep stretch with a sharp bend at the end and the sea beyond, and I think, hmm.. what if?… What if BOTH of the brake cables suddenly snap when I grab the brakes?

I don’t want to scare you, because for both brakes to fail on a bike is virtually unheard of, but it’s a useful exercise to keep excessive speed in check. When you’re out on the bike, on a downhill stretch, as the bike accelerates under the pull of gravity and the breeze starts to whip past your head, think to yourself now and then – am I absolutely confident that I can stop safely if I need to, even if the brakes don’t do quite what I expect them to? It’s quite sobering, and the usual effect it has on me is that I slow down. A lot.

Well, that’s it for part seven. I’m not trying to put you off hiring a scooter in Greece, honestly. I love it and I want to make sure you stay safe so you can enjoy it too. But, before I talk about some of the real pleasures of riding a scooter in Greece, in the next part of this series, you can read about one of the biggest hazard of all – humans! Just click the link:

Scooter Hire in Greece – Part 8 – Hazardous Humans

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