Lime safety worries Uber
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She underwent a four-hour operation in which surgeons inserted pins and plates in the delicate column of bones down her back. And then, it was all up to her.
After 10 days at Middlemore, Vance was transferred to the Auckland Spinal Rehabilitation Unit, where, for 21⁄2 months she would painstakingly inch her way to independence.
THE trauma of Vance’s accident has been felt throughout the industry.
For Glynn Brick, Zedsational’s trainer, the enduring memory of that day is Vance’s hysterical cries as the doctors at Rotorua Hospital drained her lungs of blood before she was airlifted to Auckland. She had one lung drained of blood – an excruciating procedure that involved making an incision between her ribs and inserting a tube into her lung. When the doctors returned an hour later to say they would have to drain the other one, she was distraught.
‘‘I blamed myself – I realise it’s no one’s fault, that accident. But I sort of talked her into riding the horse in the first place, and then she fell in love with the horse.’’
It’s taken Brick some time to shake that guilt, helped by his cousin, Dan Buckingham, who suffered a spinal injury in a rugby game in 1999.
Zedsational raced once more after the accident, on the flat, at Te Aroha two weeks later. In early January, his owners made the call to retire him. Although they had planned to bring him back, the emotions were just too high.
Coming home was the hardest for Vance. Rattling around her parents’ Papakura villa, there were constant reminders of all the things she could no longer do. But she has quite literally made significant strides in her recovery.
She can walk short distances with her walker. It’s hard, and often by the afternoon her legs will stop cooperating, and she will need her wheelchair again.
In hospital, Vance asked every doctor and specialist she came across if she would walk again. None could give any guarantees. The one question Vance never asked was if she would ride a horse again. She already knew the answer.
For Vance, riding is therapeutic, her happy place. ‘‘So that’s my main goal – to get back on a horse. That’s all I want.’’
IT’S just a rickety old picnic table. One you might see in a park or schoolground.
This one sits on a pronounced lean in the middle of the Takanini stable yard leased by Vance’s parents. Beaten down by years of weathering, its timber has taken on a greyish tinge, splintering in places.
This ramshackle table is Vance’s launchpad to freedom.
She is confident that if she can find a way to get herself up on the table, she can once again ride Panda, her stationbred Palamino brought up from Cambridge while she was in hospital.
Just after sunrise on a balmy summer morning, just days after being given the all-clear by her surgeon to ride again, Vance is gingerly attempting to climb atop the table. Propped up underneath her father’s shoulder, she uses her hands to lift her stubborn left leg up onto the bench seat, before stepping her right leg up to meet it. They repeat this choreography to step up on top of the table.
Vance’s mother Jenny walks Panda alongside the picnic table, and in one quick but clumsy motion, Vance is thrown over the horse by her dad.
There’s no fuss. No celebrating or rejoicing. Just recognition, then acceptance. Now, it is just Vance and her horse. UBER is concerned about Lime’s safety issues as it looks to enter New Zealand with its own electric bikes and scooters this year.
San Francisco-based company Lime and Australian company Wave are the two shared electric-scooter operators in New Zealand, but Uber has been keeping a close eye on the difficulties Lime has been facing, including its relationship with city councils.
Uber acquired the shared e-bike and e-scooter company Jump in May last year, and it now features on its app in cities across the United States as an alternative to a car ride. Lime also appears on Uber’s app in four American cities.
However, Uber’s scooter lead Michael Beckmann said Lime’s safety issues had affected the decisions of its own expansion.
Lime e-scooters were pulled off Auckland and Dunedin’s streets on February 22 because of a software glitch that was causing its wheels to lock up but on Friday it was decided to allow Lime back on the streets during the next few days.
Uber was tightlipped on dates and the number of scooters or bikes it would launch, but Beckmann said safety was of the utmost concern and the company was offering helmets at launches.
‘‘We recommend wearing a helmet when using any of our scooters, but it’s been a huge problem for the industry.’’
‘ When I hit the ground is when I broke my back and probably my ribs, but when we kept rolling together is when I got quite a lot of the facial damage.’ MAIJA VANCE