leaning off it VS leaning it

On a scooter its always better to lean your body into the curve than just leaning the scooter, because the scooter is so low and (compared to your body) so light; leaning it does nothing.

Scooters are or course not motorcycles (as I've mentioned before) and so cornering technique is different, but leaning off the motorcycle is actually still a common technique (even a MTB) when cornering, for example:

In the above picture my mate has altered the center of mass of the bike (and him as a unit) to enable him to keep the bike around the corner and not run out of tyre.

This is because eventually when leaning the tyre contact patch is reduced (by the lean) and the angles that the forces are being experienced are off axis from the suspension enough to unsettle the bike more when bumps are hit.

The situation on a motorcycle is that you may weigh only one third of the system weight (you and the motorbike) but still its helpful to lean (more so in wet conditions), BUT with a scooter its usually the case you weigh much more in that ratio (of you : scooter) with you being more than four fifths of the weight. So you leaning in a bit makes heaps more sense than attempting to stay "on axis" with the scoot and its stem.

The why

On my Widewheel this is even more easy to demonstrate.

So as you can see you're not only moving the contact patch off center by doing this, but you're also exposing your rim to more risk of damage because there is much less rubber there (Eg a mate was using my scoot on the weekend and although I've not put a mark on my rims in a year of riding, he dinged them on his first hour). You can see this ding ...

and here in a close inspection you can see that its been caused by him leaning it while entering back onto the road on a rough section

Essentially this is only cosmetic and these rims will take a likkin and keep on keeping on. But still, its nice to keep your ride looking neat isn't it. So ...

The how

Hopefully this video makes it clear:

So, lean in a little instead and have better grip and better steering dynamics ... on pretty much every scooter actually, but its more significant on the widewheel if you ride in rough areas (as I do).

HTH