Please Support the AODA Alliance’s Brief That Urges the Ford Government to Say No to Allowing Electric Scooters for Another Five Years

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

 

Please Support the AODA Alliance’s Brief That Urges the Ford Government to Say No to Allowing Electric Scooters for Another Five Years

 

September 24, 2024

SUMMARY

 

The Ford Government is holding a low-profile public consultation on a proposal that endangers safety and accessibility for vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities and others. The Government is proposing to extend, for another five years, its pilot project with the silent menace of e-scooters. That pilot lets Ontario cities decide to allow e-scooters to be ridden in public spaces.

 

On September 24, 2024, the AODA Alliance submitted a detailed brief to the Ford Government. It calls on the Government not to extend its e-scooters pilot for another five years. If that pilot is extended, despite our objections, it urges that the pilot be revised to embed desperately needed safeguards.

 

How You Can Help

 

Act fast! Let the Ford Government know that you want them to say no to e-scooters. Tell them if you endorse the recommendations in the AODA Alliances September 24, 2024 brief on e-scooters. Add any additional points you want.

 

You can read our summary of that brief below, and a list of our 19 recommendations. You can read the entire AODA Alliance brief on the AODA Alliance website.

 

How do you submit your feedback to the Government? We regret that the Government did not announce an email address for sending in your feedback. For at least some, that is an unfair accessibility barrier.

To send in your feedback go to the Government’s e-scooters consultation page, and click on the option for giving your feedback by email. A form on the Government website opens up for you to compose an email to set out your feedback. It is somewhat problematic from an accessibility standpoint. We managed, but with some difficulty.

 

Learn more about our five years of advocacy to protect vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others from the dangers that e-scooters create by visiting the AODA Alliance website’s e-scooters page.

 

MORE DETAILS

 

Summary of Our Position

 

We oppose Ontario extending its e-scooters pilot for another five years. If Ontario does extend this pilot, despite our opposition to it, Ontario should add substantial new provincial safeguards to it. In any event, Ontario should enact strong penalties for unlawfully riding an e-scooter in public.

 

In 2019, we vigorously opposed the Ontario Government’s allowing e-scooters. They are a silent menace that endangers vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities and others. The Ontario Government did not listen.

 

Since then, the Ontario cities that have allowed e-scooters have proven that all our fears about which we warned in 2019 have come true. Five years of pilot projects in Ontario have shown that we were right. No city has found a way to effectively prevent these dangers.

 

We have heard over and over from diverse members of the public, including from those with and without disabilities, that they strongly object to e-scooters. Past and present members of City Councils have confided how they find e-scooters objectionable, as they race at them at high speeds, seem to come out of nowhere, and endanger themselves and others.

 

One of the world’s leading e-scooter rental companies, Bird US, went bankrupt, plummeting from a 2.5-billion-dollar valuation, though its Canadian counterpart remains in business. Far from the wave of the future, e-scooters are a problematic blight on cities, which has led cities like Paris and Montreal to stop allowing them after experience with them and which led to twice say no to the e-scooters provincial pilot.

 

We strongly support micromobility. All the goals of micromobility can be achieved through a much safer, healthier, environmentally friendly option that we support, namely bikes and BikeShare. Moreover, other micromobility options can be used. An effective micromobility strategy need not and should not include e-scooters.

 

We of course do not object to any mobility devices designed for or used by people with disabilities as mobility aids. Their use is not in issue here.

 

For Ontario to again allow people to ride e-scooters, whether ones they own or rent, would knowingly and seriously endanger the safety of people with disabilities, seniors, children and others. It would knowingly create new accessibility barriers against people with disabilities. This would fly in the face of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and the guarantees to people with disabilities in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Ontario Human Rights Code.

 

We summarize our position as follows:

1. The Ontario Government’s current e-scooter public consultation is seriously flawed. It should be restarted and properly conducted.

 

2. E-scooters are a silent menace, ridden by unhelmetted, untrained, unlicensed and uninsured joyriders. E-scooters cause an increase in personal injuries, including serious personal injuries to innocent pedestrians and e-scooter riders. This further burdens Ontario’s overloaded hospital emergency rooms. Making this worse, their batteries can spontaneously catch fire.

 

3. If Ontario again permits e-scooters, this will create new serious accessibility barriers impeding people with disabilities. This will happen especially in public places like sidewalks where they will be left strewn about, as in cities that have permitted e-scooters. They are a tripping hazard for blind people. They block accessible paths of travel for people using wheelchairs, walkers, or strollers. Ontario already has far too many accessibility barriers in public places and has been getting less disability accessible. E-scooters would make this even worse.

 

4. Having been forewarned of these dangers, for any Ontario municipality to lift the ban on e-scooters would expose the City to major claims for knowingly endangering its residents and knowingly creating new accessibility barriers against persons with disabilities. For an Ontario municipality to do so knowingly is the same as doing so intentionally.

 

5. If Ontario again allows e-scooters but bans them from sidewalks, e-scooters will nevertheless regularly be ridden on sidewalks, as shown by experience in cities that allow e-scooter on roads but ban them from sidewalks. This endangers innocent and vulnerable pedestrians.

 

6. Ontario Municipalities lack the law enforcement capacity to effectively police nuanced new rules regarding e-scooters, such as a ban on riding or parking them on sidewalks. It is easier and costs less to enforce a categorical ban on riding e-scooters in public.

 

7. No city has found an effective way to permit and regulate e-scooters and to effectively enforce those regulations.

 

8. Lifting the ban on e-scooters will inflict new financial burdens on the taxpayer, such as added health care costs due to e-scooter injuries, cost of added infrastructure to accommodate e-scooters, added law enforcement costs, added regulatory and monitoring costs, and legal liabilities triggered by e-scooters.

 

9. Over the past five years, Ontario municipalities received strong overwhelming opposition to e-scooters from the disability community, reflecting the needs of vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors. This includes, for example, three successive compelling unanimous resolutions against e-scooters by the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee as well as in some other cities, strong opposition by many respected disability community organizations, passionate deputations against e-scooters by persons with disabilities presenting to City Council committees and emails and phone calls and emails to elected municipal officials from many people with disabilities and their supporters.

 

10. In flagrant disregard of these serious dangers, a relentless push for e-scooters has been mounted by corporate lobbyists for e-scooter rental companies. They have unleashed an extensive, well-financed and well-connected lobbying feeding frenzy. We need the Ontario Government to stand up to the e-scooter corporate lobbyists, and stand up for Ontarians with disabilities.

 

 

11. The e-scooter corporate lobbyists’ entire campaign is based on the erroneous assertion that rental e-scooters will significantly reduce traffic and pollution, because instead of driving, people will take public transit, and then rent an e-scooter to ride the last mile to their destinations. Yet the vast majority of e-scooter rides are NOT taken to connect to public transit. They thus won’t reduce traffic or pollution. Indeed, a proportion of e-scooter renters use an e-scooter instead of walking or taking public transit. Moreover, for e-scooters to be effective for this “last mile,” a city must be inundated with thousands of e-scooters, so one is available whenever a rider wants one. This would exacerbate city clutter and disability barriers.

 

12. It would be unconscionable for a municipality to use the public, including vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors, as involuntary guinea pigs in a “pilot project” that is, in truth, a human experiment to which those who are endangered have not given consent. Ontario municipalities have no effective way to accurately track the injuries that e-scooters cause.

 

13. The public use of e-scooters should remain banned in any form, whether privately owned by the rider or rented, e.g. through a shared e-scooter program. The AODA Alliance opposes any e-scooter rental program, whether run by the e-scooter rental companies directly or by a municipality, e.g. through its Bike Share program.

 

14. E-scooter corporate lobbyists and their allies advance bogus arguments to support their cause. For years, they have inaccurately claimed that new tech eliminates e-scooter dangers. Adding a beeping sound to e-scooters is not sufficient to enable blind pedestrians to scurry to safety in time. E-scooters are not necessary for a robust micromobility strategy, because other safer options are available, such as bikes. Banning e-scooters is a more effective option than trying in vain to regulate how they are ridden.

 

15. If another e-scooter pilot is to be conducted despite our objection, we recommend the following requirements for the pilot:
    1. The pilot should only be extended for one year, not five years.
    2. Health-related preconditions should be required for any e-scooter pilot
    3. No Ontario municipality should be able to entrust any part of law enforcement to e-scooter rental companies
    4. Rental of e-scooter should not be allowed.
    5. Municipalities should not be allowed to permit e-scooter riding on sidewalks.
    6. The maximum E-scooter Speed limit should be provincially set at well below 24 KPH.
    7. E-scooter Drivers should be required to have a driver’s license and proper training.
    8. E-scooters should be required to have a vehicle license that must be displayed in plain view on the e-scooter.
    9. An e-scooter’ owner and driver should be required to carry valid insurance.
    10. All e-scooter drivers of any age should be required to wear a helmet.
    11. Every e-scooter should be provincially required to emit an ongoing loud beeping sound when powered on.
    12. Any municipality conducting an e-scooter pilot should be required in advance and after each year of the pilot to conduct an open public consultation with vulnerable communities, including people with disabilities and seniors, on the impact of an e-scooter pilot on them. Municipal Council members should be required to take direct part in these consultations. The consultations should not just be online.

 

AODA Alliance’s Recommendations

 

#1 despite all the dangers that e-scooters are known to create for vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others, if the Ontario Government wishes to consider extending its pilot with e-scooters, it should restart its public consultation now underway, including:

 

1. a) Effectively alerting the broad disability community about this consultation from the start.

 

1. b) Ensuring that all its public posts on the consultation are in an accessible format.

 

1. c) Prior to the consultation beginning, releasing a research paper or discussion paper on the information learned from the first five year pilot with e-scooters, including the dangers they pose for vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others.

 

1. d) Including in the consultation a series of focused inquiries about the impact of e-scooters on accessibility for people with disabilities, seniors and others.

 

1. f) Identify in advance a range of additional provincial safeguards that could be enacted beyond the inadequate ones now in Ontario regulations.

 

#2 The Ontario Government should not enact a regulation to extend the e-scooter pilot beyond 2024.

 

#3 The Ontario Government should enact a strong penalty for anyone unlawfully riding an e-scooter, whether or not Ontario extends the provincial e-scooter pilot.

 

#4 If the e-scooter Ontario pilot is to be extended, despite all the dangers documented in this brief, this extension should only be for one year.

 

#5 Before any pilot with e-scooters can be undertaken, the Ontario Government must first have implemented sufficient measures to ensure that data can be effectively gathered on injuries that e-scooters cause. For example:

 

1. All police report forms and hospital report forms should be revised so that they will explicitly record if an injury was e-scooter-related.

 

1. Health care providers should be put under a legal duty to report to a designated provincial official whenever they become aware of an e-scooter-related injury.

 

1. Provincial funds should be allocated to cover for the cost of this reporting.

 

1. All such data should be required to be sent to a central repository at the Ontario Government. The Government should be under a duty to promptly make it public, deleting any identifying information about patients.

 

1. The Ontario Government should be required to retain a trusted independent organization with expertise in public safety to study the impact of e-scooters during that pilot project, and to make the full results of that study public.

 

1. f) The only e-scooters that should be permitted to be sold or ridden in Ontario should be required to meet CSA safety standards. If no such standards yet exist, the pilot should await CSA’s creating them.

 

#6 No e-scooter rental company should be permitted to take part in any aspect of law enforcement regarding e-scooters.

 

#7 The rental of e-scooters should be strictly forbidden, even if private ownership of an e-scooter by a user of that e-scooter were to be permitted.

 

#8 If another e-scooter pilot is to be allowed over our objection, provincial regulations should categorically ban them from being ridden on sidewalks and like public places, with the e-scooter forfeited and high penalties for contraventions. Municipalities should be placed under a strong legal duty to enforce this ban on sidewalk riding.

 

#9 The Government should not treat a ban on riding e-scooters on the sidewalk, while necessary, as a sufficient protection against the threat to public safety that e-scooters present.

 

#10 The speed limit for e-scooters should initially be set much lower than 24 KPH, such as 10 or 15 KPH.

 

#11 Ontario should ban the sale of e-scooters that can go faster than the speed limit which Ontario sets for them. Any e-scooter that is able to go faster than that speed limit should be subject to forfeiture.

 

#12 A person wishing to drive an e-scooter should be required to first take required training on its safe operation and on the rules of the road, and to have a driver’s license.

 

#13 Each e-scooter should be required to be licensed and to display a readily-seen license plate number.

 

#14 The owner and driver of an e-scooter should be required to carry sufficient liability insurance for injuries or other damages that the e-scooter causes to others.

 

#15 If e-scooter rentals are permitted despite our opposition, the e-scooter rental company should be required to carry all-risks insurance, and to be automatically liable for any injuries that a rental e-scooter causes. The e-scooter rental company should not be able to get around this by adding self-serving terms and conditions to its rental agreements with its riders.

 

#16 All e-scooter drivers, regardless of their age, should be required to wear a helmet whenever operating an e-scooter.

 

#17 If e-scooters are to be permitted in Ontario, they should be required to make an ongoing beeping sound when they are powered on, to warn others of their approach that is continuous, and loud enough to be heard at a safe distance, when ridden in a noisy city environment with constructions, leaf blowers or other loud noises nearby. It should be illegal to sell or offer for sale e-scooters in Ontario that lack this feature. Any e-scooter that lacks this feature should be subject to immediate forfeiture.

 

#18 Any municipality conducting an e-scooter pilot should be required in advance and after the each year of the pilot to conduct an open public consultation with vulnerable communities, including people with disabilities and seniors, on the impact of an e-scooter pilot on them, with the results of these consultations being made public. Municipal Council members should be required to take direct part in these consultations. The consultations should not only be online.

 

#19. Any municipality conducting an e-scooter pilot should be required in advance and after each year of the pilot to conduct an open public consultation with vulnerable communities, including people with disabilities and seniors, on the impact of an e-scooter pilot on them. Municipal Council members should be required to take direct part in these consultations. The consultations should not just be online.