Well-meaning friends ask me why I don’t get a scooter. I don’t want a car, I take the subway and walk. In LA, this is madness, apparently, and yes, it makes some things awkward. To some, the bicycle I want is not real transporation. Real transporation involves an engine that goes vroom. And scooters are cute! Like sixties Italy!
But I think in LA, a scooter is more dangerous than any other vehicle. You’re explosed, with no factory-manufactured exoskeleton. On a similarly vulnerable motorcycle, you’re at least traveling at the same height as people in cars, and you can move faster than they do. On a bike, you can veer away from dangerous traffic onto sidewalks if need be. On a scooter, no matter how cute you are, you still have to travel with big cars that are faster than you, whose drivers can’t see you well, and that can cause tremendous damage.
Or, maybe you smash into a tree.
DeWayne McKinney, who spent nearly two decades in prison for an Orange County murder he insisted he did not commit and went on to start a multi-million dollar business in the Hawaiian islands, was killed this morning in a scooter accident in Honolulu, authorities said today.
McKinney made national news in 2000 after Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas obtained his release from prison, saying he’d been wrongly convicted of a 1980 robbery-murder at a Burger King in Orange.
The 47-year-old McKinney crashed into a wooden light pole at about 12:30 a.m. and was thrown onto the pavement, said Caroline Sluyter, a spokeswoman for the Honolulu Police Department. McKinney, who was not wearing a helmet, died at a local hospital.McKinney had parlayed a $1-million legal settlement with the Orange Police Department into a multi-million dollar ATM business on the Hawaiian islands and had been in discussions with movie studio executives about turning his life story into a feature film.
In the years after his release from prison, McKinney spoke frequently at anti-death penalty conferences. Prosecutors originally sought the death penalty for McKinney, but instead he was sentenced to life in prison without parole after jurors deadlocked in the penalty portion of his trial.
When he was released from prison in January 2000, McKinney was forced to start his life from scratch. He didn’t have a driver’s license, Social Security number, savings or a place to live. Initially, he settled in Orange County, working at UC Irvine as an audio-visual technician and living for free in an apartment funded by a local businesswoman….
At the time of his death, McKinney owned 42 ATMs on three Hawaiian islands and had a net worth of more than $6 million, said Carl Stein, who owned a company that processed transactions for McKinney.
“To spend 19 years in prison and get out and do what he did, it was amazing,” Stein said. “He had this way with people. They just couldn’t say no to him.”
“He really appreciated life in a way that most people can’t because of all the time he lost,” Rawitz said. “He laughed easily. He made friends easily and he appreciated every day he lived.”
Too bad he also rode a scooter.
I can’t really fault his chosen mode of transportation so much as his decision to ride it without a helmet. Good chance he might still be around to scooter another day if he’d been wearing one.