Want to drive around the Greek islands? You better read this first
Fed up with those pesky quad bikes on Rhodes, Mykonos, etc? So are the Greeks
There I was on the Greek island of Milos — you know, the pretty one the cruise ships miss not far from Santorini and that has fallen prey to Instagram overexposure and overdevelopment controversies — when she flipped over.
Anybody could have seen it coming. I’d been driving along a winding road (well, every island road is a winding road) and spotting a hairpin curve up ahead, slowed down accordingly.
But the little group of tourists riding quad bikes ahead did not. I was a safe distance behind when I saw one of the quads just wobble and flip over.
Fortunately the driver wasn’t gunning it and she was wearing a helmet, but seeing a tourist sprawled out on the asphalt in a state of shock while she and her friends waited for help to arrive was not a pretty sight.
It wasn’t so much that they were driving recklessly — it was what they were driving.
This is a pattern that repeats itself throughout the Greek islands, where often you both do and do not need a set of wheels to enjoy and/or explore the whole island properly. Otherwise, you sort of get stuck in the port or find yourself at the mercy of often erratic bus schedules.
The market has filled some of that ambiguous middle space with ugly things called “quad bikes”, which when combined with the young and often inexperienced drivers who rent them adds up to some risky business.
Road safety is inevitably compromised.
Not only for them. As any longtime driver knows, slow drivers on highways can be just as dangerous as speeding Susans. While quads don’t exactly clog the narrow roads of Milos or Mykonos, they do interrupt the flow of traffic. That in itself is not only annoying for other drivers, it’s a hazard.
Now it seems the Greeks have had enough. Greece’s Citizen Protection Minister, Michalis Chrysochoidis, said in an interview with state broadcaster ERT that he would favor a total ban on quad bikes as they are “linked to a growing number of serious and sometimes fatal accidents, particularly involving tourists.”
He said that helmet use should be mandatory. That’s great, but a bunch of hormonally hyped Gen-Z peeps wearing helmets taking on roads they don’t know in an effort to zoom to a beach they saw on Instagram doesn’t really change the fact that quad bikes pose a danger to everybody. A pitbull on a leash is still a pitbull, right?
Mr. Chrysochoidis also indicated there might be a coming crackdown on the use of electric scooters — to us, though, those are more of an annoyance in the center of Athens, especially because people just “park” them on the sidewalks with no penalty, apparently, for the inconvenience caused to pedestrians.
Meanwhile, expect a bigger police presence on the Greek islands this summer to enforce existing regulations on all these dang things.
Our recommendation is to always rent a car, not a moped, not a scooter, and certainly not a quad. You’re not 18 years old, so why pretend to be?
Despite the talk of a clampdown, it seems more likely that quad bike use is coming under greater scrutiny and a sort of probationary period — so don’t expect them to disappear overnight.
That means drivers of cars on islands need to be especially careful when driving, because in general the kinds of people who drive quads are not.
Even if they are, those ungainly vehicles themselves are not exactly Volvos.
Steer clear.
Need to rent a car in Athens or elsewhere in Greece? There are many agencies, mostly American and European, that we’ve found to be frankly not great. We do, however, recommend Kosmos Car Rental.