TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin More lawlessness by scooter riders

Daily Herald link

These people are scofflaws. Everyone, be careful around these people.

Pretty darned brazen and another thing the island needs to shut down posthaste. Having seen the gangs in action, it is not something that makes one want to continue to support the island.

Terrible that this is going on. Police better get a handle on this. Appears these scooter groups are looking for trouble.

These people are punks .

This is one of the reasons I love Orient. I don't need to rent a car ( i hate driving), we can spend almost our entire vacation in the village.

But this will impact the entire island and not everyone spends their entire vacation on Orient. Some never even go to Orient.

Spending entire time in Orient and not enjoying the rest of island would be a waste of vacation time for me.

we witnessed something similar to this last year...although the driver of the car was lucky to get out of there before potential violence....from my post from last january:

we witnessed the immediate aftermath of a scooter incident just over a week ago…we were heading to Happy Bay from Cupecoy via Sandy Ground…just before Sandy Ground we saw a group of 8-10 scooter boys hanging out on the side of the road…as we approached they all pulled out in front of us…we followed them for a while but as we approached the Mercure Hotel, they all went wide open throttle and left us in the dust as we slowed for the speed bumps in front of Mercure

well seconds later, as we approached a slight curve in the road, we saw all the scooters stopped in the middle of the road blocking traffic, and a bunch of debris in the road…several scooters were laid over, and there was a small hatchback in the grass on the opposite side of the road, with obvious damage to the front bumper

we were the first car to arrive at the scene and expected to see some major carnage, but fortunately and amazingly no one looked hurt…surprisingly the car driver inspected his front bumper, then hopped back in his car and left

obviously this wasn’t the scooter boys’ first rodeo…a couple of them were quickly clearing all the debris from the road, then eventually moved their scooters from the road to allow traffic to pass…they had a procedure…lol

as we slowly passed, the guy who’s scooter appeared to have the most damage, was very visibly upset, and started yelling and kicking his wrecked scooter in frustration…emotions seemed to be running high, so we were glad to get out of there….that’s probably why the car driver was so quick to get out of there also

Sooooo....Today I was passed on BOTH sides by two charming dudes both doing wheelies with the bikes totally straight up on one wheel for a significant amount of time. They know there is NO repercussions by anyone so why not. Happened right before the airport roundabout...I won't say what I was hoping for.....but....it would have been perfect

We'd been repeat visitors for the last dozen years but have moved on to another island(Aruba) due to feeling less and less safe on our visits. The safety factor, along with the sargassum problems, not to mention the island government doing nothing with the old Club O site, left us little choice. I miss the good ol days.

They've been getting away with it for a long time, and it will not stop and both sides are useless in bothering with the scooter boys. It will ruin the island.

A sad assessment but accurate.