Scoot! That a vehicle every bit as silent and speedy as the bicycle has been allowed to use the footpaths, while bicycles remain prohibited, is astonishing. Serious questions should be asked about who, or what, made the decision. Was it the result of quiet (but obviously effective) lobbying on behalf of “Lime”, the company responsible for unleashing hundreds of electric scooters upon the unsuspecting cities of Christchurch and Auckland? Certainly, the extensive public consultation normally associated with activities involving potentially serious and expensive social consequences does not appear to have been undertaken.
WHAT DOES IT SAY about the times we are living in, that
electric scooters are permitted to share our footpaths? These vehicles are
capable of speeds of up to 27 kms p/hr –
constituting a significant threat to the health and safety of riders and
pedestrians alike. Thirty years ago, the idea that local authorities would have
allowed such vehicles to travel where children and the elderly expect to walk
in safety would have been preposterous. That the owners and promoters of such
vehicles were motivated purely by the expectation of profit would have made the
notion of scooters on footpaths even more outrageous. And yet, here they are.
Now, before the partisans of electric scooting offer up the
usual ripostes to this partisan of vehicle-free footpaths allow him to freely
concede that pedestrians have been sharing the footpaths with
mobility-scooters, non-electric scooters, skateboards, roller-skaters and, of
course, cyclists, for many years. Unwillingly – for the most part.
Not surprisingly, exception was made for the
mobility-scooter. Had it not been, a wonderfully liberating invention for the
elderly would have been denied them. That the scooters travelled at roughly
walking speed and were easily identified when still many metres away did much
to ease their introduction. Non-electric scooters, skateboards and
roller-skates, while potentially as dangerous as the electric scooter, at least
made a fair amount of noise. You can hear them coming.
That is not the case with the bicycle. These are capable of
travelling silently and at speeds even greater than the electric scooter. Not
surprisingly, it was long ago declared illegal to ride a standard-wheeled
bicycle on New Zealand’s footpaths. In 2016, David Clendon, then a Green MP,
attempted to have the law changed, without success. Not that this stops all
manner of cyclists using the footpaths as their preferred cycle-way – much to
the fury and, all-too-often, the injury of innocent pedestrians.
That a vehicle every bit as silent and speedy as the bicycle
has been allowed to use the footpaths, while bicycles remain prohibited, is
astonishing. Serious questions should be asked about who, or what, made the
decision. Was it the result of quiet (but obviously effective) lobbying on behalf
of “Lime”, the company responsible for unleashing hundreds of electric scooters
upon the unsuspecting cities of Christchurch and Auckland? Certainly, the
extensive public consultation normally associated with activities involving
potentially serious and expensive social consequences does not appear to have
been undertaken.
Those consequences are readily apparent in every country
where the short-hire electric scooter companies have set up shop. In the
emergency departments of hospitals – and city morgues – physicians and
pathologists are dealing with the entirely predictable results of people being
allowed to travel at close to 30kms p/hr along crowded city footpaths and/or
dangerous city streets. Pedestrians struck down from behind. Riders struck by motor
vehicles; pitched over the handle-bars; dragged bare-legged across rough
concrete and bitumen. Electric scootering’s victims are running-up quite a tab
on the public purse. Needless to say, the hire companies contribute almost
nothing towards the medical and economic costs of their “service”.
Why, then, haven’t our national and local politicians
stepped in to remove electric scooters from our streets until a fulsome set of
regulations governing their safe and responsible use has been drawn up? The
answer lies in the culture that has evolved, both here in New Zealand and
around the world, since the economic liberalisation programmes of the 1980s. In
the thirty-something years since “the markets” were given their head, the whole
notion of “heavy-handed” regulation has been anathematised. Those who attempt
to protect the public from irresponsible entrepreneurs and their enterprises
are dismissed as promoters of “The Nanny State” – a political crime only a
short step away from full-throated Stalinism.
It is an interesting commentary on contemporary society that
the name given to the people (usually women) whom parents hire to look after
their children and keep them safe has become a term of political abuse. As if
there is something fundamentally wrong with a state that manifests a similar
level of concern for the welfare of its citizens.
This thirty-year disdain for government regulation in the
public interest has now been overlaid with the much more recent adulation of
“digital disruptors”. Entrepreneurs who have developed successful new
businesses out of the opportunities provided by the global positioning system
and the near ubiquity of smart cellular phones. Uber is the most famous, but it
has many, many imitators. With the right app, a company can attract billions.
And with those billions the digital disruptors can hire the
best advertising and public relations agencies in the world which, in turn, can
make their clients unchallengeably “cool”. So cool, that no politician or
regulator is going to be in any hurry to slow or obstruct the roll-out of their
service.
Never mind that their service is leading to an unacceptable
and ever-rising number of deaths and injuries around the world. Or, that the
massive cost of this new transportation craze is being heaped upon the
taxpayers of the countries in which the electric scooter hire companies
operate.
After all, who wants to be called old, cantankerous and not
in the “now”?
So, here they are. Electric scooters. With more to come.
Take care.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 2 November 2018.
