Call in to CBC Radio’s Cross-Country Checkup Program Today Between 4 and 5:30 PM EDT to Explain that Electric Scooters Endanger Vulnerable People with Disabilities, Seniors and Others

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update

United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities

Website: www.aodaalliance.org

Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com

Twitter: @aodaalliance

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance

 

Call in to CBC Radio’s Cross-Country Checkup Program Today Between 4 and 5:30 PM EDT to Explain that Electric Scooters Endanger Vulnerable People with Disabilities, Seniors and Others

 

August 4, 2024

 

SUMMARY

 

Move fast! Here’s a great chance to let the public know about a serious barrier facing people with disabilities, seniors and others in a number of cities in Canada: the silent menace of electric scooters (e-scooters).

 

Today, between 4:00 and 5:30 pm EDT, CBC Radio’s weekly live national call-in program Cross Country Checkup will discuss whether e-scooters are a good or bad thing. The AODA Alliance has worked closely with several other disability organizations to oppose e-scooters being ridden in public places. CBC pre-taped a short interview with AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, which we hope they will air as part of this program.

 

CBC’s web page has details on the different options for how to listen to this program.

 

How You Can Help

 

Please call in to Cross Country Checkup today. Tell a national radio audience that e-scooters are a serious disability barrier endangering people with disabilities, seniors and others. They should not be allowed on roads, sidewalks or other public places.

 

Start dialing well before the program begins at 4:00 pm EDT to try to get a good spot in the line. The number to call is 1-888-416-8333.

 

We know that the e-scooter corporate lobbyists will be busy trying to fill up the CBC program with their message. Make sure the disability concerns with e-scooters reach CBC’s huge audience.

 

Points to Make During Cross Country Checkup

 

Here are some points you might wish to make:

 

  • An e-scooter is a silent motor vehicle. A person with no license can race around on an e-scooter at speeds of 20 kilometers an hour or faster.

 

  • Reports by Toronto City Staff in 2021 and 2024 show that e-scooters pose a real danger to public safety in places that allow them. E-scooter riders and innocent pedestrians can and do get seriously injured or killed.

 

  • E-scooters especially endanger seniors and people with disabilities, such as people who are blind or have low vision or balance issues or whose disability makes them slower to scramble out of the way. A blind pedestrian can’t know when the silent menace of an e-scooter rockets toward them at over 20 KPH, driven by a fun-seeking unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, unhelmetted joyrider. Sighted pedestrians cannot hear silent e-scooters racing towards them from behind.

 

  • In cities where e-scooters are allowed, rental e-scooters, left strewn around public places, become mobility barriers to accessibility for people with disabilities. For people who are blind, deafblind or have low vision, those e-scooters become a serious, unexpected and dangerous tripping hazard.

 

  • E-scooters left on sidewalks create serious new accessibility barriers for people using a wheelchair, walker or other mobility device. An e-scooter can block them from continuing along an otherwise-accessible sidewalk. People with disabilities using a mobility device may not be able to safely go up on the grass or down onto the road, to get around an e-scooter.

 

  • It won’t solve these dangers for a city or province to allow e-scooters on roads but ban them from sidewalks. Cities that have tried that find that e-scooters are nevertheless regularly ridden on sidewalks. We’d need police on every street corner to effectively police e-scooters. There’s no city anywhere that allows e-scooters and that gets enforcement right.

 

  • To allow e-scooters will cost taxpayers money. There are new law enforcement costs. There are OHIP costs for treating those injured in our already-overcrowded hospital emergency rooms. The City could also be sued by people injured by e-scooters. We have more pressing priorities for spending public money.

 

  • If any city or province allows e-scooters, the e-scooter rental companies will be laughing all the way to the bank. Their corporate lobbyists have been relentlessly turning up the heat on city after city and City Councilors to allow e-scooters.

 

  • No city should allow a pilot with e-scooters. A pilot to study what? How many of us will be injured by this silent menace? We already know they do, from cities that allowed them. Don’t subject us to an unnecessary human experiment where we can get hurt.

 

 

  • Several major disability organizations, as well as several municipal accessibility advisory committees in Ontario have called on city after city to not allow e-scooters, and to enforce any ban on them that is in place.

 

  • Our cities are already full of disability barriers and getting more new barriers all the time. To allow e-scooters is to make a community even less accessible to people with disabilities.

 

  • Some might ask, if we allow bikes, why not e-scooters? A person who has never before ridden an e-scooter (or bike) can hop on an e-scooter and instantly throttle up to over 20 KPH, silently endangering us. In contrast, you can’t instantly pedal a bike that fast, and especially if you’ve never before ridden a bike. In any event, we’ve already got bikes. We don’t need the dangers of e-scooters.

 

For more resources on the fight against e-scooters as a danger to people with disabilities, seniors and others, visit the AODA Alliance website’s e-scooters page.

 

A Big Thank You to Geof Collis for Years of Volunteer Effort Spearheading the Accessibility News Website and Newsletter

 

As of this week, the wonderful Accessibility News website and newsletter sadly come to an end. We want to extend a huge thank you to Geof Collis for single-handedly operating these excellent services for years and years. He has always been a strong supporter of the AODA Alliance and the AODA movement. In the early years of the AODA Alliance, he also generously provided support for the startup of the email service that originally used to deliver AODA Alliance Updates to our many supporters.

 

We wish Geof all the best. Our grass roots movement is the product of so many heroes who devote their volunteer time and effort to our shared campaign for a barrier-free society for all people with disabilities.