E-scooters seem fun but may also bring danger

Maybe it’s a guy thing because city council’s nine lads appeared as joyful as kids in a fudge factory this week, all flushed cheeks and gleaming eyes, while signing on to bring the latest cool toy to the potholed streets of Windsor.

“They were excited. Very excited,” agreed Ward 6 Coun. Jo-anne Gignac, the lone mom on council and lone dissenter in its decision to go all-in, and damn the helmets, on adding battery-powered scooters, hordes of them, to the city’s transportation network.

“I guess I’m not hip,” said Gignac of the council thumbs-down on her pitch to wait until they get input from city police (who were glaringly absent Monday night, which speaks volumes) and better information on how injuries will be tracked.

Being hip, of course, was one obvious driver in council’s decision. Being seen as cool, hip and on board with the latest is hugely important in 2020. Conversely, appearing old, stuffy and change-resistant is the kiss of death, even in a rapidly aging city.

No doubt some councillors winced at the prospect of being branded fossils if they failed to board the e-scooter train immediately.

It was almost touching how councillors asked administration more than once whether Windsor might be, gee whiz, the first city in Ontario to green-light e-scooters. In other words, a trailblazer.

“It’s possible,” came the diplomatic reply. First in Ontario perhaps, but Windsor comes a couple of years late to the e-scooter craze that has infected urban centres around the globe. So late that while we grow wide-eyed over the prospect of scooters zipping around our streets, just like the folks in downtown Detroit, other cities and countries are trying to figure out how to curb their excesses.

In Portland, Ore., ground zero of cool and an early adopter of e-scooters, dozens of the machines have been dumped in the local river in what the media has dubbed the “scooter war” between enraged pedestrians and scooter fans.

CNN reported in November that the scooter rental systems have popped up in more than 100 cities worldwide in the last three years “but this tiny-wheeled transportation revolution could be about to end as quickly as it began.”

It said Singapore announced a sidewalk prohibition following six rider deaths in 2019 and a possible outright ban this year.

Meanwhile, France has banned (to little effect) scooters from sidewalks and the U.K. has, on paper, prohibited them on public roads, sidewalks and cycle lanes.

“While they’ve attracted admirers for their convenience and fun,” reported CNN, “they’ve also incurred the wrath of those annoyed at having to leap out of the way of people riding across sidewalks and step over scooters lying in their path.”

Then there’s the safety factor. The Detroit Medical Center told the Free Press in November that it had admitted 18 patients with severe scooter-related head injuries since April, on top of larger numbers with broken bones and dislocations.

Gignac said it’s the safety issue that made her want to hit the pause button.

She gets the fun factor in whipping around on a scooter and sees a potential role in enhancing urban transit.

But it’s the thought of an unprotected cranium cracking into concrete at 24 kilometres an hour (double the speed of a recreational jogger) that brings her up short. So does the spectre of a mother pushing a baby stroller and clutching a toddler’s hand on a park trail while scooters silently whiz by.

Gignac, who was no fan of e-bikes on our roads either, said her worst nightmare would be hitting someone who has tumbled from a scooter into traffic.

“If I hit a pothole I could lose a hubcap or need an alignment job. Now picture someone on a scooter, with those two little handles, hitting something like that.”

She said she believes motorists (and this is still overwhelmingly a city of pickup trucks and SUVS) who are annoyed by e-bikes will be even more frustrated when they have to share the road with tiny scooters, which will happen as soon as spring arrives. Many more will follow when rental deals are signed.

Based on what happened elsewhere, the likelihood of keeping scooters off sidewalks and out of parks in the city ranges from slim to none.

It’s scooter time. Let the fun and games begin.