Video shows someone riding their tiny scooter on a busy Toronto highway

Everyone has places to be, and those nifty little e-scooters can be a practical means of getting from point to point in a busy city. But if your commute involves highway mileage, leave the kick scooter at home.

It's a memo — and a law — that one e-scooter rider failed to take note of, spotted casually driving their motorized personal transport device along the shoulder of Highway 427.

A video making the rounds on Twitter shows the scooter travelling in the northbound lanes of the highway as it passes below The Queensway in Etobicoke, all captured by an astonished motorist.

Scooter On Hwy427 North. 🤦‍♂️
.#hwy427 #Toronto #scooter #ONHwys #RoadSafety #trucking #TruckDriver #OPP #trucker #fail pic.twitter.com/NiLhCwFoJg

— 401_da_sarpanch (@401_da_sarpanch) February 6, 2023

The rider would have had to travel a minimum of over half a kilometre to reach the point shown in the video, and would have had to travel a distance of over two kilometres between the onramp at Evans Avenue and the offramp at Dundas Street West.

This, of course, is operating under the assumption that the scooter driver accidentally strayed onto a highway, which seems more plausible than voluntarily putting yourself in this kind of danger to save a few minutes on your commute.

Whether the person shown in the video intended to drive onto the 427 or not, it is very much a no-no according to the Highway Traffic Act.

Under Ontario's five-year e-scooter pilot, drivers are not permitted to operate one of these personal transport devices on any controlled-access highways, which include all 400-series routes like the 427.

Motorists, or in this case, scooterists, who violate this very reasonable safety requirement can face fines ranging from $250 to $2,500.

Though legal in Ontario under the pilot program, Toronto has its own strict rules about electric kick scooters, essentially banning them outright by prohibiting use, parking, or storage on any public street, including bicycle lanes, cycle tracks, trails, paths, sidewalks or parks.

This is far from the first instance of people riding under-powered personal transport on highways where speeds in excess of 100 km/h are the norm.

Just a few months earlier, a cyclist was recorded braving the busy 401, though this person was less lucky, pulled over by OPP officers in a low-speed encounter that would have made even OJ Simpson's Ford Bronco seem like it was travelling at the speed of light.