Jane Bowron: Use those legs and kick the Limes to the kerb
Friday, 26 October 2018
OPINION: When I was a child a magic carpet ride was the dizzy limit in travel. The carpet allowed you to quickly step into another realm and happily retreat into hours of escapist fantasy.
Perhaps it had something to do with having to spend so many years on tedious buses – an hour each way to and from school so that by the time you arrived, you were half a-sleep in a nicotine-coated torpor.
Back then I loved the smell of tailor-made cigarettes and gravitated toward the back of the bus to inhale the glamour smoke. Now the death sticks make me sneeze and I only take short bus trips, which don't send me soporific and make my head loll about like one of those fake kitsch dogs that used to stare out the back of car windows.
Walking has long been my preferred transport because it is as simple and unadulterated as it was when homo erectus got up on his hind legs and swung his neck round to cop a better view.
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Walking is straightforward. A pair of honest, no-nonsense legs are not susceptible to fashion or gimmick and quietly go about their business, putting one foot in front of the other without bothering others.
There is no need to hire a pair of legs, there is no requirement to spend money on a meter to park your body, and there is no queue to line up in to get a licence to drive it. All it asks is what it has always had, a humble strip of footpath allocated to the side of the road where the pedestrian can travel safely away from fast-moving carriages.
However, this simple sport is now under threat from the new kid on the block – the Lime. The bright green Lime electric scooter spotted in Auckland and Christchurch travelling at up to 30kmh, has scandalously been allowed to share the footpath.
We all know the nasty knock that happens when another person who is running bumps into you – the kinetic force of it sending you sprawling across the footpath. Magnify the impact of that force several times with Lime/upright human contact and ACC will need to hire new staff to process the backlog of broken limb, hip and knee replacement claims.
Auckland councillor Christine Fletcher narrowly avoided an accident when she was almost taken out and mauled by a savage Lime in an encounter on a pedestrian crossing.
Out-of-control, joyriding scooters should travel on the road along with skateboarders instead of weaving recklessly along footpaths and rushing up behind pedestrians, frightening the living daylights out of them.
It's all very well embracing alternative transport but if it cannot keep pace in the Limited Speed Zone of the pedestrian then it's 'On yer bike' and on to the road. Putting too much varied traffic on the footpath will force the pedestrian into the gutter.
First built for the safe passage of foot soldiers, the footpath has been around since Roman times and is a long-held sacred space. Prams and children's small push vehicles have been allowed, and even slow-travelling mobility scooters for the elderly, are tolerated.
If the assault on pedestrians continues, then it's Sharks vs Jets all over again, the Mobility Scooter vs the Lime anywhere, anytime. And don't go underestimating the grunt of the mobility scooter. Just ask the Aussie guy with a suspended driver's licence who got caught at a set of New South Wales traffic lights. Seen by police towing his boat behind his mobility scooter, he was detained and charged, but they're not sure what with yet.
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