Let escooter users join the crowd on cycleways
WHILE out walking and catching sight of cyclists riding threeabreast on Portsmouth Dr, I underwent a blinding flash; a ‘‘eureka’’ moment of insight regarding the next questionable fad to descend upon our city. I refer to ‘‘escooters’’.
Instead of our council groping its way towards a milliondollar ‘‘fix’’ for the onset of this impending menace, they might instead congratulate themselves on having preemptively provided a readymade solution to this problem.
It seems obvious that a mass movement towards cycling is never going to really take off, despite the protestations of a vocal lycraclad minority, who likely congratulate themselves on having achieved the facilties for their chosen sport at ratepayers’ expense.
Underused cycleways, on the other hand, provide everything needed for ‘‘escooter’’ users, plus skateboarders and those who ride other wheeled contrivances over which their exponents, arguably, have limited control.
Put them on to the cycleways and let them sort out their differences for themselves. Ian Smith
Waverley
Medical products
THE Medical Technology Association of New Zealand maintains that ‘‘adverse events are a rarity’’. Given the statistical definition of ‘‘rare’’ is 0.01% to 0.1%, one would assume a reasonable level of confidence in the safety of medical devices. But many who have been adversely affected by medical implants would beg to disagree.
Take surgical mesh, with a medically accepted rate of adverse events of 2%5%, and a growing body of evidence that the rate may be higher than 10% for some products. These rates fall within the definition of ‘‘common’’ to ‘‘very common’’. While I absolutely agree that medical devices do save and improve many lives, we cannot lose sight of the fact that many lives are also devastated by devices that have been insufficiently tested. This misleading MTANZ statement does nothing to progress patient safety and engender public trust in the medical device industry and associated regulatory bodies.
Renate Schutte
Titirangi