The Amish Are Driving Their E-Scooters Dangerously – Says One Lancaster Local
That’s according to one letter to the editor appearing at Lancaster Online – from a local person living in the heart of Lancaster County, PA.
The letter-writer, Dennis, sounds fed up with what he describes as Amish e-transport riders being “oblivious” to traffic.
And he has a few things to say about what he’s seen on local roads.
I have heard of backlash to e-scooters and the like in cities, but this is the first time I’ve heard complaints in a rural area (albeit a generally busy rural area).
And the subject of these complaints is the Amish, no less. That reflects some of the changes that have happened in recent years in the Lancaster County community.
E-scooters first became a “thing” in the community in the late 2010s through their use by volunteer fire company responders and EMTs in the Plain community.
The justification was that a scooter with an electric motor on it enabled the non-driving Plain volunteers to get to the fire station that much quicker, which could be important in getting to the scene of a call in time.
Amish fire company volunteers tend to be younger and often youth who are not yet baptized, which makes something like this easier to enter into use.
Bishops in Lancaster County were described as being “sort of negative about it” and that they were “working hard to get them put away.”
That evidently did not succeed. Fast forward several years, and e-scooters have become a “thing” in the general Amish population in Lancaster County – in similar ways to e-bikes in Amish communities like Holmes County, where bicycles are permitted.
“Oblivious to the traffic around them”
But back to Dennis’ letter. He writes that:
It’s time for someone in Harrisburg or at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to do something about electric bikes, electric scooters, electric skateboards and anything similar — especially in the Amish community!
I live in Salisbury Township (the heart of the Amish community) and I’m tired of these scooters and such being on the road.
And I’m tired of both kids and adults going between 25 mph and 35 mph and seemingly being oblivious to the traffic around them.
They seem to think they have the right to be out there while not paying attention to the cars and other traffic around them.
It’s not only the speed and behavior of e-scooter riders, according to Dennis, but also their visibility – he estimates that 90% have no lights or reflective material on them.
I can’t attest to that – that estimate feels quite high – but that would be a concern.
On that note, here’s an example of an e-scooter with a rather bright light (longer-time followers of this site might recognize the fellow on the scooter):
Dennis closes by asking PennDOT to take action, noting the young ages of some of the riders:
It’s bad enough that nobody is doing anything about buggies not having lights, let alone the 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds out there with seemingly no idea of road rules, no lights and no reflectors!
How big is the problem?
Is Dennis irked by some recent bad experiences, and possibly exaggerating the problem?
Or is this in fact as big an issue as Dennis conveys here? On the one hand, it’s one letter, from someone understandably aggravated by what he’s experienced.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that he is not coming up with this from nowhere.
You can understand the appeal of e-scooters and e-bikes for those Amish whose churches permit them (or at least “gray area” them).
The trend of their use among the Amish does not show signs of slowing, from what I can tell. So if there is as big a safety issue as Dennis writes (or even if it’s half as big), I would hope that those within the community will address it.
One question there would be whether “the community” refers to the Amish community…or the greater “community” such as local law enforcement, or even, as Dennis suggests, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
In that case, if the former doesn’t take action, eventually the latter might.
Amish and Road Rules
I live in western Chester County, PA just east of Lancaster county in a neighborhood that did not have Amish 28 years ago when I moved here but now we have so many that they built a school house. I am fine with that; they make great neighbors and are quiet and do not contribute to light pollution at night! But I am concerned about the children not being aware of the dangers of traffic and rules of the road when they drive buggies and scooters and ebikes. Accidents are happening and it is very worrisome. I hope that the parents will wake up and train the children better about the non-Amish traffic and how to be safer with sharing the roads. Wearing orange vests is a good start (I see that in Lancaster often) and lights on ebikes, too. Also using hand signals for turns and not assuming that car drivers see them. I hope that Penn Dot does not need to get involved.
Please provide more information on how other communities are handling this. Ebikes are a problem with non-Amish, too!
Thank you,
Joanne Trombley
Amish e-bike use in N Indiana
I’ve been studying this subject in the Elkhart-Lagrange Amish community where I live. I talked to one local Amish friend who went through the latest issue of the “Die Blatt” Amish newsletter and ran some numbers for me… Out of 238 Amish church districts here, she counted only 18 who permit e-bikes. Other local Amish people have told me that e-bikes here are not that much on the rise, since many church districts aren’t even discussing the possibility of permitting them, since they could destroy the iconic horse-and-buggy element of their culture… The church districts that do permit them are clustered around the growing Amish community near Bristol, IN, and even more so, around the town of Shipshewana – these are the problematic “town Amish,” as the other Amish in the area call them. That’s why visitors to Shipshewana (and there are 2.5 million a year, currently) get the mistaken idea that the Amish in this area “allow e-bikes.” In actuality, less than 10% of the Amish do.
Interesting story. We don’t have Amish communities in my part of New Jersey, or anywhere in the state as far as I know. However, in this crowded and mixed suburban/urban/farming area, we have experienced a rush of electric bikes and scooters in the last year or so. They are being ridden mostly by people who appear to be under and 30, but I have seen some gray haired riders.
There are many roads in this area with dedicated bike lanes, so the electric bikes and scooters do not present as much of a problem on those roads. However, because we still have an active and thriving agricultural presence in our small towns, there are many more rural roads that don’t even have shoulders. In those cases, the electric bikes and scooters are causing more concern.
E-bikes
Susan’s comment was very interesting. I was in the Shipshewana area last weekend for the first time in a year. I seemed to notice more E-bikes and scooters in Shipshewana than I did last year. I mentioned that during a visit with a young Amish couple. They rolled their eyes and said that they are getting more popular but that a lot of the churches are not real thrilled about it. This couple lived quite a bit farther south of Shipshewana in the Honeyville, Topeka area.