Hood calls for rethink on escooters
DUNEDIN escooter safety campaigner Dr Lynley Hood says an incident in which an intoxicated Auckland escooter rider received serious injuries was a ‘‘warning flag’’, highlighting the need for tighter safety controls.
Aucklander Amy Gianfrancesco recently fractured her neck, lay unconscious for some time and was left with serious bruising after falling off a shareduse Lime escooter.
Ms Gianfrancesco has since called for tighter regulations and suggested escooters be ‘‘locked’’ at night so people who had been drinking could not use them.
But Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter said the Government would not ‘‘rush’’ to change the law concerning riding escooters drunk.
Ms Genter said escooters offered real benefits and she wanted to wait until the Lime scooter trial was complete before seeing if further regulation was required.
Dr Hood, who recently warned that escooter use on footpaths would ‘‘inevitably end in fatalities’’, is coconvener of the Dunedin Pedestrian Action Network and a trustee of the Visual Impairment Charitable Trust Aotearoa (Victa).
An escooter ‘‘craze’’ was under way in Auckland and Wellington, other people had also been seriously injured, and the scooters were ‘‘causing too much mayhem’’, she warned yesterday.
It was time to think again and take a more measured and safetyconscious approach.
‘‘It’s about speed and novelty. It’s just like when skateboards came in,’’ she said.
Skateboards had initially caused many problems, which had since been addressed, including with bylaws restricting their use in the Dunedin central business district and the establishment of skateboard parks, she said.
She said the process of legalising escooters had been rushed through, was now endangering public safety, and it was time for a rethink.
She took issue with an official gazette publication on September 17, later notified to Parliament on December 7, that declared that escooters were not motor vehicles.
She called for the regulation change to be dropped, given that it had apparently stopped the police from charging escooter users on footpaths with drunken driving and was effectively threatening the safety of pedestrians using footpaths, she said.