From over ten years of riding the electric scooter experience, the Soversky team sorted out Five riding mistakes that our riders made, and we’d like to share with you how to avoid them to keep safe during riding.

Tip #1 CHOOSE THE RIGHT STANCE
So typically, there are three writing stances.
· The 1st one is right foot forward, which is considered goofy.
· Left foot forward, which is considered regular.
· And side by side, which is considered dangerous. I don’t recommend ever riding side by side with your feet like this because when you break or accelerate hard, you don’t have any stability on the scooter, which could lead to you going over the handlebars. We’ll get to that later.
Now, which foot forward you use is not dependent on whether you’re regular or goofy foot when you’re skateboarding, but rather which side of the street cars are parked. The most significant risk you have is that the car doors open as you ride past them. When you’re riding, you have your right foot forward because that’s the side of the cars are on. When the car door opens, and you want to get out of the way, then your shoulder and the side of you are the things that are most exposed.
Imagine riding with your left foot forward, so you’re turned this way. Avital organs and everything that you don’t want to have hit will be revealed as you’re trying to get out of the way. So that is why I recommend riding with your right foot forward, because you can tuck into a crouch position, meaning that you can throw your shoulder into that car door if you have to hit it, rather than your chest.
That’s not going to be very fun. Whereas this, you might still be able to walk away from that type of accident. Probably the easiest thing you should know to do while riding is not your knees. So what you want to do is have a slight bend in them. It’s also safer, so you don’t risk injury to your legs when you hit an unforeseen bump. But then also, if you’re riding with your legs locked out on really bumpy terrain, you can have that kind of vibrating brain massage, which leads to blurred vision.

Tip #2 BE CAREFUL WHEN BRAKING
The next thing we’re going to cover is proper breaking. And breaking is something that I see people doing wrong all the time.
When you’re on a powerful scooter, especially one with two brakes, it’s pretty easy to go over the handlebars if you don’t know what you’re doing and breaking hard. So there are two techniques to breaking.
· The first one is in the correct position when you hit those brakes hard. This looks weird while I’m stationary, but your momentum goes this way when you’re breaking. So really, what you’re doing is counteracting the forces pushing you forward, and you’re trying to stay back. And the reason for doing that is that you’re trying to keep that back tire on the ground. When you break hard, the forces will throw you over the handlebars if you’re not putting your weight back and down. That’s something that you don’t want to have happened.
· The other half of breaking correctly, especially if you’re trying to get the least braking distance possible in an emergency. When you squeeze the brakes, you want to get as close as possible to locking out the tires without actually locking them out. That will get you the minimum breaking distance, which is the best in an emergency. One of the tests we do here at ESG is the breaking test, where we go from a little over 50 mi an hour down to zero in as little distance as possible. And we measure that in feet using race logic racing equipment. So you know you got it when you put very little pressure on the stem while breaking, your wheels are close but not fully locking out, and your rear wheel doesn’t lift off the ground.
Tip #3 OFF-ROADING
There’s a common misconception that electric scooters are for off-roading, and while some can handle off-road terrain, the real issue is with the jumps. What’s OK is when you’re on the roads and taking speed bumps at speed or hopping off the occasional curb, that is a little bit of pressure.
The key here is to avoid any jumps of one foot or more. It will cause too much pressure on parts of the scooter that are not built to handle that much force, and you’ll end up with, at best, a broken scooter and, at worst, an injury to yourself.
Now, what is OK is, when you have a train like this, where you know, the ground is sandy, but it’s pretty solid, you need to be careful, but it’s not a ton of jumps. With most scooters, you can traverse the train without too much problem.
Tip #4 CRUISE CONTROL
The next thing you’re going to pay attention to is cruise control. So for the first couple weeks of owning an electric scooter, I highly recommend not having that function turned on, if possible, on your scooter.
Often, there’s no audible or visual indicator that it has activated. So you might be going up the hill and pulling hard on the throttle a hundred percent, right? So rolling up to that stop sign, you got the trigger

pulled down. You let go of it.
You are thinking that your scooter is going to slow down naturally and come to a stop. But what happens is, because the cruise controls are activated, it’s thinking you want 100% throttle. So you’re letting off. The scooter is cresting the hill, so it’s now shooting forward, and you’re super caught off guard. That happened to me many times, and it’s not something I recommend anybody do.

Tip #5 USING BOTH HANDS
We all need to remember to keep both hands on the handlebars at all times.
On bicycles, you see people all the time riding without hands. You cannot do that on electric scooters. With bikes, the front wheel tends to stay very stable and straight. Scooter wheels are smaller, and they tend to wobble. And so you don’t want to get the wobbles. That’s how people fall.
If you need to wave at somebody, give them the winky face, or, you know, shrug a shoulder at them. And if you think you need to make a turn and want a signal, I recommend a signal with your foot. So if you’re turning right, put a right foot out. If you’re turning left, put a left foot out. Do it safely, but that’s a lot safer than putting it than taking a hand off the handlebar and getting the wobbles and falling.

I hope this blog helped you learn from my mistakes and safe riding all the time.