President Bush yesterday warned that motorists would have to dig deep into their pockets all summer long. On the same day, and under election-year pressure to reduce surging gasoline prices, the president halted filling of the nation's emergency oil reserve; urged the waiver of clean air rules to ease local gas shortages; and called for the repeal of $2 billion in tax breaks for profit-heavy oil companies.

The White House was unable to say how much Bush's actions could affect the price of gas.

As such, it is no wonder that a new craze is taking place in the United States: "moped madness."

Nope, we wouldn't have seen it coming, either.

The Christian Science Monitor yesterday reported:

The moped and its bigger, flashier cousin, the scooter, are swarming out of Jimmy Carter's America and into George W. Bush's republic" — a movement propelled by soaring gasoline prices surpassing those of the late 1970s and by legions of Americans who take seriously the call for oil independence. If the serious intent is mixed with a little fun from "moped gangs" who call themselves the Heck's Angels or the Hardly Davidsons, so much the merrier.

(via Silas Crews photography)

According to Neil Howe, a cultural historian and coauthor of "Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation," the idea of "a big, bad, dangerous gas-guzzling machine" is not typically the style of what is collectively referred to as the "millennial generation."

And gas-guzzling machines are set to cause big problems this summer; point of fact, they already are. The national price for gasoline skyrocketed 13.1 cents over the last week to $2.91 a gallon, the fourth highest average retail price on record, the government said last Monday. As such, the price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is already way above the federal Energy Information Administration's (EIA) forecast last summer average of $2.62, and has topped $3 at service stations in many cities (See Spring and Summer's Not-So-Sunny Gas Prices, halfway down.).

Mopeds are not made to go fast -- they are just made to go. Typically, mopeds are restricted to 30-35 mph. Though they've long been popular by most of the rest of the globe, their acceptance has been glacially slow in the U.S., where a full-size truck is a top-selling passenger vehicle. But their popularity in young-blooded areas is picking up, particularly in cities such as Atlanta where travel through interconnected neighborhoods is safe (and where Euro cool is evident).

Indeed, U.S. sales of these low-powered motorized vehicles haven't yet hit their peak — 300,000 units, in 1978. However, sales are up 500 percent since 1999, and rose from 83,000 units sold in 2004 to 130,000 in 2005, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council and Christian Science Monitor.

Some experts note that the "millennial" generation, born just as the moped faded from American roads in the early 1980s, is the small cycle's perfect arbiter. They often prefer something that is not only socially responsible in a big sense, but also in a little sense: "It makes less noise, and it's less likely to get them into an accident." Coddled and safety-conscious, this younger generation also has an unapologetic sense of civic awareness. Fatalities of moped riders have doubled since 1999, to 100 in 2005. Yet nonfatal accidents dropped over the same period, from 6,000 to 5,000, says the National Safety Council.

To many riders, everything about the moped makes sense: price, gas mileage, performance, the moped clique (See Moped Army.), even the retro charm of the small cycle.

The Christian Science Monitor made special note of Devin Biek, Indiana resident and owner of a 1978 Rizzato Califfo. Four years after purchasing his moped, Biek is still hooked. "Once you ride one, you have to have one," he says. "It's consumed my entire life, and I have no real explanation for it."

Indeed.

Source

High gas prices propel a new 'moped madness'
by Patrik Jonsson
The Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 2006

(Of additional interest: In 2003, 20-year-old Avery Bloom traveled across the U.S. on a Kinetic TFR moped. He travelled 3,022 miles in exactly one month; almost 100 miles a day. See his trip's diary and photos at The Flock of Flemmings.)