Thriving scooter rentals have authorities worried

BAR HARBOR – Though a scooter rental company is doing booming business as tourists pay to whiz around Mount Desert Island in style, a few minor scooter-related accidents have some Acadia National Park authorities worried.

“Safety is our main consideration,” Ranger Therese Picard said last week. “There’s a good possibility that someone’s going to get hurt.”

Jeff Templeton, 23, is the owner of Bar Harbor Scooter Rentals. The young entrepreneur has commuted from Hampden since July to rent 10 sleek red scooters out of a Cottage Street parking lot for as little as $25 an hour or as much as $100 for a full day. The idea to start the company came to Templeton after an MDI vacation got a little dull.

“I was out here with a buddy, and we were lacking things to do by days five, six and seven,” he said.

So after a June cross-country trip to Ohio with a trailer to pick up the Wildfire 50 CC scooters, his rental business was born.

Business, he said, has been good when the weather cooperates. Templeton is planning to come back next summer with a slightly enlarged stable of scooters.

Though a motorcycle license is unnecessary, renters must sign a waiver form and receive scooter instruction from Templeton before taking them on the road. Not all roads, however, are supposed to be accessible to the scooters. They’re not allowed on 50-mph roads or up Cadillac Mountain, Templeton said.

“Before anybody gets on the scooter, I go over the controls,” he said. “I tell them to watch sand on the road and watch the sandy pull-offs. I send them out side streets so they don’t deal with traffic at first.”

That level of instruction might not be enough, Picard suggested.

“We’ve had one reported accident, where the woman lost control of the scooter and ended up with lacerations on her head and road rash,” she said. “There have been a number of reported near misses.”

Most of the accidents, Templeton agreed, have been due to operator error. One incident involved a man who was traveling on a 50-mph road.

“He missed his turn and ended up in the sand on the side of the road,” he said. “It was minor.”

The absence of a helmet law in Maine is another concern, Picard said.

“You can still get good speed on these mopeds,” she said. “It’s a good idea to wear an appropriate helmet, like a motorcycle helmet, on a moped.”

Bar Harbor Police Chief Nate Young said that despite one minor accident on Lower Main Street, he has no concerns about the scooter rentals.

“We haven’t had problems with them,” he said.

The rental scooters have been sighted as far afield as Bass Harbor, and with their quiet ride and high fuel efficiency, it’s no surprise that they have been popular. The scooters get 120 miles per gallon, Templeton said.

A group of wind-blown Canadian tourists was all smiles Monday afternoon when they dismounted from their scooters after two hours spent cruising the Park Loop Road.

“It’s really fun,” Lara Kervin of Moncton, New Brunswick, said. “You can’t stop smiling. … We’d definitely do it again, it’s so fun.”