My heart says yes to Lime scooters, despite my humiliating fall from one

Friday, 11 January 2019

OPINION: If you were in St Asaph St, Christchurch, on November 30 around lunchtime, you would have witnessed a spectacular accident involving a Lime scooter and a tall, only slightly overweight guy with glasses.

Without going into too much tedious detail, the scene consisted of the no-longer-young man losing contact with the Lime vehicle he was riding and ending up prostrate on the footpath some distance from the scooter.

As the scene unfolded, the man picked himself off the footpath, brushed the dirt and gravel from his trousers, quickly checked he could still walk unaided and mounted the scooter again to whizz off into the sunset.

When he was far enough from the scene of his humiliation to ensure he did not have to face the sympathy (or ridicule) of onlookers, he searched for the pain from his lower right arm to find a swathe of skin missing and blood dripping.

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He had arranged to meet his sons for lunch and had hoped to cruise up to their lunch destination and nonchalantly dismount as they watched their cool, early-adopter Dad with insuppressible admiration.

Instead they were confronted with a dishevelled, grimacing individual holding a bloody hanky to an arm.

Needless to say the man lived to tell the tale and is writing this column. So when I speak of the dangers of Lime scooters I speak from bitter-sweet experience.

Nevertheless I remain a great fan of the new vehicles. They are amazing additions to city life. The most amazing thing is that they were allowed at all.

Consider the concept. You take a large motorised scooter which can travel at nearly 30kph and provide access to essentially everyone who can afford a cellphone and a few bucks to feed the meter.

Users need no licence or training and no safety equipment like a helmet or safety pads. In theory no-one under 18 is allowed to ride them but nobody is checking.

Riders are able to use footpaths, cycle lanes, crossings and essentially any bit of road not occupied by a bigger vehicle at the time. In other words there are essentially no rules and even if there were, nobody is monitoring or enforcing them. Riders can be intoxicated, drugged to their eyeballs or totally incapable of riding anything more than a toilet, and nobody will do a thing.

The dangers faced by riders are obvious and readily accepted. The hazards faced by pedestrians are just as obvious but the essential difference is they never volunteered for the great experiment of scooterdom in the first place.

Nothing of the concept is mysterious or hard to grasp. Yet somehow it got through the authorities without a raised eyebrow.

The question of whether people will be badly hurt by the scooters, either as a rider or pedestrian, has been answered. People have been and will be. No doubt someone will be killed or die from their injuries.

The real question then is what level of collateral carnage we are prepared to tolerate as a result of having Lime scooters in our inner cities. This involves a cost-benefit analysis.

For instance we accept nearly 400 deaths and countless injuries on our roads each year as the price of convenient transport of goods and people. These modes of transport provide huge benefits and savings. Can the same be said for Lime scooters?

I won't lie to you. I have yet to see anyone riding a Lime scooter who looks as if they are doing anything more useful than blow-drying their hair. In fact most scooter trips could easily be done on foot by people who could use the exercise.

In the end you have to conclude scooters confer no serious benefit on society.

Yet there is something fantastic about them. For a start they are a boost to individual liberty. No waiting for communal transport or joining up with the herd. Swipe, mount and do what you like.

In some ways the scooters allow us to thumb our noses at risk-averse authority. We live in a society where everyone is so scared of being blamed for a mishap or accident that we tolerate a truly draconian regime of health and safety regulations. We are so used to being wrapped in cotton wool and strait-jacketed rules that we have stopped thinking for ourselves or taking responsibility. A whole industry has grown up around safety and, although that may be a good thing, a bit of anarchy and rebellion can be refreshing.

The other great thing about the scooters is that they are fun. They allow riders to treat the city like a big amusement park to be enjoyed at effortless speed. And because the scooters smack of youth and quickness, they add a zip to the city that would be hard to deliver with anything else.

But how much death and injury are they worth? Thankfully I don't have to make that decision but my head says none. My heart, however, says an awful lot.