Now, I don't believe that's because e-scooters are inherently dangerous. They're very easy to ride, very stable. I am willing to bet a significant proportion of those injuries happened after 10:00 at night on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, when the rider was pissed as a parrot and there were three to a scooter, tooting their hooter.
Putting e-scooter riders into cycle lanes isn't going to stop them falling off their perches, but it might protect innocent passers-by and pedestrians. National MP for Tukituki, Catherine Wedd, says the rules around where people were allowed to ride e-scooters were outdated and dangerous, and the government had work underway to change it.
Flamingo Scooters co-creator Jackson Love told Mike Hosking that it clears up confusion. He says bike lanes are clearly lot safer than the road, and it also helps keep footpaths clear for pedestrians. And the cycling action spokesperson Patrick Morgan agreed, as he told Ryan Bridge on Early Edition this morning.
Putting e-scooter riders into cycle lanes isn't going to stop them falling off their perches, but it might protect innocent passers-by and pedestrians. National MP for Tukituki, Catherine Wedd, says the rules around where people were allowed to ride e-scooters were outdated and dangerous, and the government had work underway to change it.
Flamingo Scooters co-creator Jackson Love told Mike Hosking that it clears up confusion. He says bike lanes are clearly lot safer than the road, and it also helps keep footpaths clear for pedestrians. And the cycling action spokesperson Patrick Morgan agreed, as he told Ryan Bridge on Early Edition this morning.
PM: This is long overdue. It makes sense for this to happen. Pedestrians really don't want e-scooters on the footpath, and often our streets can be quite hostile for people. So, it makes sense to put e-scooters on bike lanes. But we're going to need a lot more bike lanes, aren't we?
RB: How many more bike lanes do you reckon we need?
PM: We don't need a bike lane on every street. No one's asking for that. What we need is bike lanes on busy streets where people want to go, so to get people to our schools, workplaces, shops. There's a there's a trend in modern cities for people to get around by bike, e-bike, and scooter. So, I think councils and the government need to restart building bike lanes to meet public demand.
It would be interesting to know what that public demand is, given that cycle lanes are not swollen and congested. You do not see long, lengthy queues on cycle lanes. There are some that are better patronised than others. But there is clearly a heck of a lot more room for people on scooters, for people on bikes, for people on skateboards, for people on bloody horses to use the cycle lanes because they are not at capacity now.
I love a cycle lane. I love cycling. But it's some cyclists I'm less keen on. They want cycle lanes and they want them in most places, and I would love a cycle lane from my home to work. So I could get to and from work over the bridge on a fine day. I want to be able to use my car if it's raining or the bus. But I'd love to be able to cycle safely without aggressive nasty drivers taking aim at me.
But cyclists want cycle lanes and more of them, but they also want to be able to use the road when it suits them too. The man mules say they want to, they're way too fast to go into cycle lanes, mate. You should see the clicks I can get up to on my bike. They don't go into the cycle lanes because they're too fast and they say it's dangerous. So they need to be on the road and everybody needs to look out for them.
And despite the fact that there's a beautiful cycle lane that's been built on Meola Road in Auckland, and you could probably substitute Meola Road for just about any road in any city around New Zealand. There's a beautiful cycle lane there, wide, safe, glorious. But my lovely producer Helen came to work quite discombobulated because she'd had to slow down to go behind a lady commuter on her electric bike who was adjacent to the cycle lane, in the middle of the road, pootling along, not quite at the same speed as the traffic, but and there was a yawning, vast, empty cycle lane right next to where the lady cyclist was.
There are special bike lights to let cyclists know where it's safe to go and when they need to stop. Yesterday I was coming up Franklin Road in Auckland, again substitute any road in any city, and there's a lovely cycle lane there, and there were three cyclists on it from bottom to top, which is great. And the first cyclist got the green light, the green little cyclist, so through they went. That changed to red by the time the second cyclist got up. Did that deter them? Not a jot.
They wove through the pedestrians like the pedestrians, who were on the pedestrian crossing, were oddly shaped obstacles in a fun obstacle course. Weaved around them, the little cyclist, and nobody died, nobody got knocked into. Clearly very good at weaving through pedestrians and off he went.
I agree that the cycle lanes should be for anything that's motorised. Footpaths, it's in the name, foot. For people with feet to walk on. Not for scooters, not for bikes. I am all for different forms of transport being incorporated into everyday life. It makes no sense. I mean, you see it all the time in the cities where people have an appointment across town, so they'll hop on an e-scooter. Makes so much more sense than taking 45 minutes to walk or taking an Uber. Much more sense to hop on a scooter. Makes much more sense to hop on a bike if you've got a cycle lane that's close by you. And there's some really well patronised ones in Auckland that are just a godsend for many people. There is a place absolutely for bikes, scooters, skateboards, cars, buses, ferries.
But is it too much to ask that everyone stay in their lane and follow the rules?
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
Lazy people on e scooters, too lazy to walk or plan their time, and almost always wearing headphones.
Scooter riders seem especially incapable of consideration of others. Why else do they always abandon the scooters in the middle of the pathway? Motorists who have their doors stove in by bikes and scooters on the footpath effectively carry the cost of repair as it is impossible to extract payment and police do not lower themselves to assist with such trivia, even though it may involve a thousand dollars..Many bike lanes and footpaths are unusable on rubbish collection days and before and after as litterd with bins
While they're at it, perhaps the legislators could toughen up on and enforce laws relating to riding bicycles on footpaths. Where I live, walkers are constantly endangered by entitled cyclists, frequently of the elderly e-biker persuasion, who believe pedestrians should step aside. This despite there being a marked cycle lane within
There is an awful lot of fluff in Kerre's piece. All that needs to be said is that from the outset scooters were a moronic idea, and used on footpaths, a brain-dead action; the consequences were clear from their inception. Furthermore, cyclists (road lice) got more than they deserved from public money and the mess that cycle lanes have left Wellington in considering their numbers. The amount of resources put into the cretinous philosophy that cycling somehow affects the planet is beyond belief.
In many parts of the world pedestrians always first. In NZ cars rarely give way to walkers, almost always pulling well into streets and forcing pedestrians to wait or walk behind. Bikes and e scooters just as bad. Remember NZ's motto: 'no where to go in a hurry'.
I hate the "e"-scooters I consider them as a dangerous nuisance.
The people that use them are generally inconsiderate to pedestrians and other road users.
Hoping one day the fad will pass and they end up as landfill or dumped at sea...Isn't that where most environmental consumer toys end up?
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