When it comes to getting around the University of Maryland’s large campus, having your own means of micro-mobility transportation is a must. The campus is 1,339 acres large, with lecture halls, dining halls, and various other amenities for students to walk between. As a result, many minutes are wasted simply by walking! Imagine needing to wake up ten minutes early just because your puny legs are too slow to get to Marie Mount Hall from Hagerstown! It’s no wonder many students have chosen to pick up a bike or electric scooter to get to their classes faster. However, when making the decision between either the reliable bike or the convenient electric scooter, you should pick the bike over the electric scooter for five simple, irrefutable reasons:

1. You can bring them inside your dorm hall

Remember when someone brought an electric scooter into La Plata hall last year and the scooter burnt up into flames? Ever since then, the university has been extremely strict about bringing scooters inside, but not bikes! Bikes are still allowed inside all sorts of buildings, but most importantly, your bed. You’ll be able to snuggle up with your bike inside any dorm with the full permission of Darryll Pines himself! You can’t even set foot inside a building with your electric scooter without UMPD throwing you behind bars.

2. The police will never stop you

With the UMD Police Department actually taking note of micro-mobility users ignoring road laws such as stop signs, they have been keeping an eye out for many offenders across campus. However, look around you. You’ll see that many of those stopped are electric scooter users. So what about regular bikers? Invisible. Hidden from the police while they ride on the sidewalk and over pedestrians without UMPD noticing. Thus, when you just need to hide from the police’s watchful eye for traffic violations, use a bike.

3. Thieves will completely ignore your bike

We always hear on any social media involving UMD that electric scooters are always being stolen by some mysterious thief to either be used by them or sold on some super secret black market (The UMD Snapchat). Have you ever wondered why the regular bikes never appear in those stories? Because bikes are just too cool for the lowly thief to even comprehend! Their feeble legs can’t peddle your chad bike away, so they rely on stealing electric scooters instead!

4. Embrace traditionalism

No longer shall we rely on the advancements of today. Imagine needing to charge your means of mobility just to get from Hagerstown Hall to The Computer Science Instructional building. What if you forgot to charge it? What if the power grid goes out? What if all electrical devices are suddenly destroyed? Well, embrace the methods of the past! Do what the baby boomers have done and use your strong legs to bike across campus faster than the time it takes to charge a fancy doo-dad. You’ll only need yourself to do so!

5. Bikers just have a better aura than electric scooter users

Look at any story you hear about electric scooters on either Reddit, Snapchat, or the most trustworthy news source, The Hare, and you will be met with negative stories of electric scooter users being a nuisance to society! Parking in the way of pedestrians, inside buildings, driving in tight areas where only pedestrians should be allowed in. No matter where you go, all sorts of electric scooter stories cast the rider in a bad light, giving them negative aura. However, no such negative stories exist for bike riders. The humble bike user is untainted by the negligences and rudeness that come to mind with electric scooter users! Thus, when you ride a bike, you are immediately seen as a more awesome person than electric scooter users.

When it comes to which to pick and buy, the obvious choice for any self-respecting student should be the humble bike over the electric scooter. When you ride across campus on one, know that you’re already better than those who picked the electric scooter.

Read the companion piece: “Five reasons why electric scooters are better than bikes”

Image Credits: Joseph Kleinman