Read the AODA Alliance’s February 29, 2024 Brief to the City of Toronto Explaining Why Toronto Must Not Lift Its Ban on Riding Electric Scooters in Public.

Riding Electric Scooters in Toronto is Dangerous and Must Remain Banned – For Toronto to Allow E-scooters Would be to Knowingly Create New Disability Accessibility Barriers

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance brief to the City of Toronto

February 29, 2024

I. Introduction and Summary

A few weeks ago, on a residential Toronto street, a boy, age around 10, was spotted riding an e-scooter on a public road. AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky told him it is illegal. The boy denied this. He then helped his younger brother, age around 4 years old, get on the e-scooter and ride with him, after giving the younger boy his helmet (leaving the 10-year-old unhelmetted). A caregiver was with these children but did nothing to stop them from this dangerous activity.

The City of Toronto has overwhelming proof that the ban on riding e-scooters in public should remain in place and should be effectively enforced. This brief explains why.

The non-partisan, grassroots, volunteer-driven AODA Alliance has played a leading role in raising serious disability safety and accessibility concerns with e-scooters. To learn more about the AODA Alliance’s advocacy efforts to protect people with disabilities and others from the dangers that e-scooters pose, visit its e-scooters web page.

We have repeatedly heard over and over from diverse members of the public, a seeming silent majority including those with and without disabilities, that they strongly object to e-scooters. Past and present members of City Council 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.

Meanwhile, City Hall continues to have to endure a feeding frenzy of e-scooter corporate lobbyists, which the AODA Alliance first publicly unmasked in a report it made public in the fall of 2020. The disability community had to mount an exhausting campaign against the efforts of those well-funded e-scooter corporate lobbyists, convincing Toronto City Council to vote unanimously on May 5, 2021, not to legalize e-scooter riding in public places.

More recently, 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.

Some other cities in Ontario have conducted pilots with e-scooters. Results of the pilot programs prove that the disability community’s safety-based objections to e-scooters were well-founded. Toronto does not need a pilot project to again prove this.

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 are being considered. 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.

Toronto should not lift the current ban on riding e-scooters in public places, whether permanently or for a pilot project, whether privately owned e-scooters or rental e-scooters. For Toronto to 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:

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, which further burdens Toronto’s overloaded hospital emergency rooms. Making this worse, their batteries can spontaneously catch fire.

If Toronto 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 other cities that permit e-scooters. They are a tripping hazard for blind people. They block accessible paths of travel for people using wheelchairs, walkers, or strollers. Toronto already has far too many accessibility barriers in public places and has been getting less disability accessible. E-scooters would make this even worse still.

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

If Toronto allows e-scooters but bans them from sidewalks, e-scooters will nevertheless regularly be ridden on Toronto sidewalks, as shown by experience in other cities. This would endanger innocent pedestrians.

Toronto lacks 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 ban on riding e-scooters in public.

Toronto City staff has found no other city that has found an effective way to permit and regulate e-scooters and to effectively enforce those regulations.

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.

Over the past four years, Toronto City Council has received strong united opposition to e-scooters from the disability community, reflecting the needs of vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors. This includes three successive compelling unanimous resolutions against e-scooters by the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee, 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 to the mayor and City Council members from many people with disabilities and their supporters.

In disregard of these serious dangers, a relentless push for e-scooters in Toronto has been mounted by corporate lobbyists for e-scooter rental companies. They have unleashed an extensive, well-financed and well-connected lobbying feeding frenzy at City Hall.

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,” Toronto 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.

It would be appalling for Toronto 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. In addition, the City of Toronto has no effective way to accurately track the injuries that e-scooters cause.

The public use of e-scooters in Toronto 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 the City of Toronto, e.g. through its Bike Share program.

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.

We seek the leadership of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. We need her and all City Council members to stand up for people with disabilities, seniors, children and others endangered by e-scooters. We need Mayor Chow and City Council to stand up to the e-scooter corporate lobbyists.

II. Overwhelming Proof That E-Scooters Create Twin Serious Dangers

1. The Twin Dangers

An e-scooter is a motor vehicle that a person rides while standing up. A first-time rider can very quickly throttle it up to speeds of 24 kph or faster. It is silent even when ridden at fast speeds.

Experience in city after city shows that e-scooters, a silent menace, present twin dangers to public safety. First, riders and innocent pedestrians get seriously injured or killed. E-scooters especially endanger vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities.

People who are blind, who have low vision, or who are deafblind can’t know when silent e-scooters rocket at them at over 10 or 20 kph, driven by unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, unhelmetted, fun-seeking joyriders. Fragile seniors, and those whose mobility is slow or limited, cannot easily get out of the way, even if they know a silent e-scooter is racing towards them.

Second, when left strewn on sidewalks, e-scooters are dangerous tripping hazards for people who are blind or partially sighted. They are accessibility barriers to a clear path for wheelchair users.

These dangers are not limited to times when an e-scooter is ridden on a sidewalk. There are times that pedestrians must walk on the road, such as when they cross a road, or where there is no intersection.

2. Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee has Told Toronto Three Times to Say No to E-Scooters

Three times in the past four years, the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee commendably gave Toronto’s mayor, City Council and City staff its strong and unequivocal recommendation that e-scooters should remain banned in public places. These were passed on February 3, 2020, February 25, 2021, and February 5, 2024.

It is especially important for Toronto to adhere to these strong, unanimous resolutions. The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requires cities like Toronto to create a municipal accessibility advisory committee. They exist in order to alert municipal governments to important areas where priority municipal action is needed on accessibility for people with disabilities. In making these recommendations, they are fulfilling their core mandate, for which Toronto hand-picked them.

Their core mandate includes, among other things, recommending action needed to prevent the municipality from creating new accessibility barriers. If a municipal government creates a new accessibility barrier after it was warned not to do so by its accessibility advisory committee, that government will be acting in a deliberate, intentional and harmful way, contrary to the AODA’s goal. Here, the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee has repeatedly warned about the disability barrier created by allowing e-scooters to be ridden in public places.

3. Major Disability Organizations Unite Time and Again to Call for E-Scooters Not to be Allowed in Public Places

A strong voice has emanated from the community of disability organizations, insisting that e-scooters should not be allowed to be ridden in public spaces. For example:

On January 22, 2020, 11 organizations co-signed an open letter to this effect that was addressed to the Ontario Government and all Ontario municipalities.
On October 25, 2023, an open letter to Toronto City Council to this effect was co-signed by 22 disability and community organizations.

4. Individuals with Disabilities and Seniors have Told each Public Hearing of City Council Committees on E-Scooters to Say No to E-Scooters

Over the past four years, there have been several meetings of committees of Toronto City Council where the topic of e-scooters has been included on the agenda, including the Infrastructure and Environment Committee and the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee. At each such meeting in which public deputations have been permitted, the overwhelming response from deputants who are seniors or people with disabilities has been strong opposition to allowing e-scooters in public places in Toronto.

5. Media Coverage Objectively Documents Serious Harms Caused by E-scooters

Here is a sampling of media coverage objectively documenting the harms and injuries that e-scooters can cause.

E-scooter hit-and-run crash leaves pedestrian, 65, seriously injured in hospital in Greater Manchester, UK
Woman left with brain injury after being hit by e-scooter when getting off bus in Auckland court hears
Six e-scooter riders before courts for intoxicated riding – UK pilots
According to the Edmonton Journal, in Edmonton 94 percent said they saw e-scooters used on sidewalks, 68% said more enforcement needed.
The Washington Post reported on January 11, 2019 that a 75-year-old man in San Diego tripped over an e-scooter. He was taken to hospital, “where X-rays revealed his knee was shattered in four places.” The article quotes Wally Ghurabi, medical director of the Nethercutt Emergency Center at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. Ghurabi said, “I’ve seen pedestrians injured by scooters with broken hips, multiple bone fractures, broken ribs and joint injuries and soft tissue injuries like lacerations and deep abrasions.” The article also reports incidents involving pedestrians in Dallas, where a 32-year-old man was “left with scrapes on his knee and face, as well as a deep gash above his right eye that required seven stitches,” and Cincinnati, where a 44-year-old woman incurred approximately $1000 in medical expenses after being “throw[n] … to the ground” — both following collisions with e-scooters.
Euronews reported on June 18, 2019, that Paris intended to implement speed limits and parking restrictions for e-scooters following its “first death on an electric scooter.” The French transport minister also announced a nationwide ban on e-scooters on sidewalks, effective September. A week prior to the announcements, a 25-year-old man riding an e-scooter had died after being hit by a truck. The report details other incidents, involving both riders and bystanders. In Sweden, “a 27-year-old man died in a crash while riding one of the electric vehicles in May.” In Barcelona, “a 92-year-old woman died in August 2018 after she was run over by an e-scooter — making it the first case of a pedestrian being killed by the electric vehicle.”
On July 26, 2019, CBC News reported that since e-scooters became available in Calgary, “Calgary emergency rooms have seen 60 patients with e-scooter-related injuries.” The report added that “about a third of them were fractures and roughly 10 percent were injuries to the face and head.” These figures have triggered a study by the University of Calgary.
The Guardian reported on August 11, 2019 that Paris had experienced its third e-scooter-related death in four months: “A 30-year-old man has been killed after being hit by a motorbike while riding his e-scooter on a French motorway.” The report went on to state that “ [t]he scooter rider was not wearing a helmet and was reportedly travelling in the fast lane when the motorbike hit him from behind,” despite the fact that “[u]sing scooters on motorways is banned in France.” Moreover, “The day before the accident, a 27-year-old woman suffered serious head injuries after falling from an e-scooter she was using in a cycle lane in Lyon. A few days earlier a 41-year-old man had been seriously injured after falling from his e-scooter in Lille.” Finally, the report provided details on another, earlier e-scooter-related death in France: “An 81-year-old man died after he was reportedly knocked over by an e-scooter in Levallois-Perret, a Parisian suburb, in April.”

6. Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health told City Council in 2021 that an E-Scooter Pilot Project is Not Supported

In 2021, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health did not support an e-scooter pilot. This sends a strong message to City Council on behalf of Toronto’s public health infrastructure about the safety danger that e-scooters pose. Since then, Toronto Public Health has not reached out to the AODA Alliance, which is highly visible on this issue, to see if the danger that e-scooters create for vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors has been reduced or eliminated.

7. A Pilot Project Cannot Effectively Document the Injuries that E-Scooters Cause

Those advocating for e-scooters have suggested that a pilot project could study how many injuries are caused by e-scooters. Yet it is unethical and arguably contrary to the Charter of Rights for any level of government to conduct such a human experiment. It would use the public as unwilling guinea pigs while endangering their safety.

In addition, the City of Toronto has no effective way to accurately track the injuries that e-scooters cause. Neither police accident reports nor hospital records ensure that injuries are documented as caused by e-scooters.

Some who are injured by an e-scooter may not call police or go to hospital. They may instead see a family doctor, physiotherapist or other health provider. Toronto also has no way to track the e-scooter victims who do that as a result of injuries.

It would be wrong and insufficient to leave it to innocent victims of e-scooters to have to report their injuries to some city official in order for this to be tracked. Members of the public would not know that they can or should do this or to whom they should report. It is unfair to saddle the public with such a burden, to compound their being injured by e-scooters, just so the City can study how many people are injured by e-scooters.

Finally, knowledge of the option of filing complaints is not likely to reach tourists who get injured by an e-scooter, and who hours later return home to another city, province or country. They would not know to whom they should report their victimization, even if they had any idea that they could do so and wanted to do so.

As a result, any pilot project is doomed to render substantially incomplete data on the injuries that e-scooters have caused. That alone is a strong reason to reject the idea of conducting an e-scooter pilot project.

8. E-scooters Present the Danger of Spontaneous Fires

E-scooters are equipped with batteries that at times have spontaneously burst in flames. This too presents a danger to people and property wherever they are allowed.

Canada has no e-scooter safety standards protecting the public from this. If Toronto legalizes the riding of e-scooters in public, this danger too will increase. The more e-scooters there are in Toronto, the greater is this danger.

9. It Is Not Sufficient to Ban E-Scooters Only from Sidewalks

It does not protect the public to allow e-scooters on streets and bike paths and to ban them only from sidewalks. E-scooters are frequently ridden on sidewalks in cities where they are banned from sidewalks. No one has found a way to effectively prevent this.

This is hardly surprising. A person riding an e-scooter would feel a strong desire to ride on the sidewalk, in order to stay as far as they can from cars that travel much faster than an e-scooter. To them, the sidewalk will appear to be a much safer place to be. They will also want to avoid the danger of being thrown from their e-scooter, when its small wheels, whose size is unregulated, hits a pothole or other crack in the road pavement.

Similarly, restricting e-scooters to bike paths will not stop e-scooters from being ridden on sidewalks. Very few of Toronto’s roads are accompanied by bike paths. To the contrary, Toronto has unfortunately increased the likelihood of e-scooters being ridden on sidewalks by building new bike paths on sidewalks rather than at road level.

A widely viewed November 2023 AODA Alliance video showed how it creates serious dangers to pedestrians with disabilities such as blind people to have a bike path built as part of a sidewalk, at sidewalk level, rather than at road level, as part of the road. After we revealed this danger and the media gave it significant coverage, the City of Toronto has done nothing to correct this. Instead, Toronto is continuing to build even more of these dangerous new bike paths while publicly denying that they present any problems for pedestrians with disabilities.

For example, if e-scooters are allowed on bike paths, this means that they’d be ridden in the middle of several blocks of the Eglinton West sidewalk, where a new bike path has been situated by Toronto.

We understand that this bike path design has spread to different parts of the city. Therefore, the option of allowing e-scooters on bike paths is out of the question from the perspective of vulnerable people with disabilities. E-scooter riders could not know which bike paths they can use and which they cannot. If anything, these new bike paths signal to cyclists and others that it is now okay to ride on any sidewalks, despite the danger to the public.

Toronto has even located bus stops right next to these dangerous bike paths. A person could exit a bus, thinking they are stepping onto a safe sidewalk, only to face an oncoming silent e-scooter racing at them at 24 kph or faster.

10. Ontario Law Requires that Toronto Must Not Create New Disability Accessibility Barriers

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires Ontario, including Toronto, to become accessible to people with disabilities by 2025. Ontario is far behind reaching this goal, according to the 2019 AODA Independent Review conducted by former Lieutenant Governor David Onley, and the 2023 AODA Independent Review conducted by Rich Donovan. The provincial government appointed both of those reviews.

One deputant after the next has told Toronto City Council committees that in recent years, Toronto has become less, not more, accessible to people with disabilities. Allowing e-scooters will only make this worse, contrary to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.

As but one illustration of this, Toronto sidewalks have become much harder for pedestrians with disabilities to navigate. They are cluttered with more and more street furniture, art, signs, and other obstacles. E-scooters make this worse.

11. Toronto Must Not Entrust Any Part of Law Enforcement to E-Scooter Rental Companies

Some cities have wrongly entrusted some part of e-scooter law enforcement to the e-scooter rental companies. Toronto must not do this.

No enforcement should ever be assigned to anyone who is in a conflict of interest. E-scooter rental companies are in a hopeless conflict of interest when it comes to enforcement. They have a financial interest in having as many renters as possible and in playing down the numbers of e-scooter violations that are reported to the City. It is hard to believe that in the 21^st century, anyone would even consider giving a for-profit business any part of the role to enforce the law against their own customers.

Speaking at the February 5, 2024, Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meeting, a Bird Canada corporate lobbyist said that the best enforcement is giving e-scooter rental companies the power to ban a rider for riding on the sidewalk or misparking the e-scooter. However, this ban occurs only after the rider has finished their ride, and the danger has already been caused. It does not stop the ride as soon as an infraction occurs.

At the February 5, 2024, Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meeting, Bird Canada in effect conceded that they have had riders in other cities who improperly rode their e-scooter on the sidewalk or misparked it. Bird’s enforcement, Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee was told, begins with “education,” i.e. Bird telling the rider after the fact that they are not supposed to ride on sidewalks or mispark the e-scooter. They only purport to ban a rider after another infraction. This too shows that they have experience with multiple offenders.

Bird Canada conceded at the February 5, 2024, Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meeting that their “ban” attaches to a device i.e. a smart phone. Therefore, if the rider uses someone else’s device, they are free to immediately ride a Bird e-scooter with impunity.

Bird Canada did not claim that its so-called “enforcement” provides any protection from or proof of an e-scooter rider injuring an innocent pedestrian and then riding off with impunity. Of course, none of Bird’s so-called “enforcement” applies to any privately owned e-scooters. Moreover, if the joyrider is briefly visiting from out of town as a tourist, they won’t care if the e-scooter rental company forbids them from again using their e-scooters in Toronto.

III. Fully Refuting the Bogus Arguments Made in Support of E-Scooters

In the face of these powerful reasons for not allowing e-scooters in public places in Toronto, e-scooter corporate lobbyists and their allies have advanced a grab-bag of bogus arguments. These claims are all transparently meritless. This further shows why Toronto should leave in place its ban on riding e-scooters in public places and should start to effectively enforce the law.

1. New Tech and AI Aren’t the Solution

Claim: New technology, such as GPS, geo-fencing and AI, can now prevent the past dangers that e-scooters create, such as riding e-scooters on sidewalks and leaving e-scooters strewn on sidewalks.

Reality: This claim is entirely unproven. GPS available to the public is only accurate within several meters. The difference between an e-scooter riding on the street and riding on the sidewalk is a matter of inches. GPS and geo-fencing cannot reliably track that.

For years, e-scooter corporate lobbyists have claimed that they have new technology that will prevent e-scooters from endangering the public. Yet cities that allow e-scooters still create these twin dangers for seniors and people with disabilities. It would be wrong to use vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors in Toronto to try once again to prove such bogus claims.

The recent media fetish with artificial intelligence creates in some an incorrect sense that AI can solve every problem. One need only spend a few minutes with ChatGPT to realize how prone to error AI can be.

In any event, this claim is a red herring. Even if it were true despite all the contrary evidence, it applies only to rental e-scooters. It does not apply to any of the privately owned e-scooters that are now being illegally ridden in Toronto with impunity. They include no such technology.

2. Adding a Beeping Sound is Not Sufficient

Claim: E-scooters can be equipped to emit a sound so that they are not silent, warning pedestrians with vision loss and others.

Reality: There is no proof that this has worked. The e-scooter would have to continuously emit a sound that is loud enough to be easily heard in loud city noises, over loud trucks, construction jackhammers and noisy leaf-blowers. It would have to be loud enough to be heard when the e-scooter is still far enough away to enable a pedestrian, including one with mobility limitations, to safely get out of the way. We have heard from blind people in Ottawa who took part in a demonstration of possible e-scooter sounds that none were loud enough to meet these needs.

Even if those conditions were met, this measure is fatally flawed, as blind individuals described at a recent CNIB virtual town hall on the e-scooters issue. A pedestrian with vision loss, hearing such a sound from an oncoming e-scooter will not know which way to step to safely get out of the e-scooter’s path of travel. They could step to one side, only to end up right in the path of danger.

Here again, this measure would apply only to rental e-scooters. As such, it would not protect anyone from privately owned e-scooters. They do not come equipped with this beeping feature, much less are they required to have it.

3. E-Scooters are Not Necessary for a Robust Micromoibility Strategy

Claim: E-scooters are an important part of micromobility, the wave of the future.

Reality: Toronto can have a robust and expanding micromobility program without allowing e-scooters. Toronto already has in place a successful and growing BikeShare program. Bicycles are a tried-and-true form of micromobility. The use of BikeShare in Toronto has grown during the pandemic. Toronto could take steps to grow it even further.

BikeShare and bicycles can provide all the benefits that e-scooters are alleged to provide without the added dangers that e-scooters create. Bikes are better than e-scooters as a form of micromobility.

Bikes typically make a sound when ridden. They don’t spontaneously catch fire. Traditional bikes don’t have batteries that eventually end up as harmful landfill.

A person who has never before ridden a bike cannot get on board, even after drinking, and instantly throttle up to 24 kph or faster. They can do this on an e-scooter.

Even if it is assumed that e-scooters reduce car traffic and greenhouse gases (which is unproven), bikes would do the same thing. Bikes can easily be used for the first mile and last mile, in combination with public transit.

Before e-scooters can be justified as a form of micromobility, it is necessary for their proponents to prove that they add significant value beyond what bikes already provide as a form of micromobility and that their added dangers can be effectively prevented. E-scooter advocates and corporate lobbyists have proven neither. E-scooters provide no added value but do add significant new dangers.

Toronto can explore other new tech options for micromobility, beyond bikes. A robust micromobility strategy does not need to include e-scooters.

4. Banning E-Scooters, Not Regulating Them, is the Only Solution

Claim: Because e-scooters are already being ridden in Toronto, it is better to try to regulate their use.

Reality: It is a false dilemma for e-scooter corporate lobbyists and advocates to make it sound like Toronto has only two stark choices, either allowing the current free-for-all or regulating how and when people can ride them. There is a third, superior, and as-yet untried option, namely enforcing the ban on riding e-scooters in public in Toronto.

In fact, it is far easier for the law enforcement authorities to enforce a ban on riding e-scooters in public than to try to enforce a bylaw that permits e-scooters to be ridden in public with regulations on how they are used. For example, as noted above, Toronto City staff reports have confirmed that in cities where e-scooters are allowed on roads but banned on sidewalks, they are still regularly ridden on sidewalks.

If Toronto tried setting a restriction on the weight of an e-scooter, police would have no way to prove what an e-scooter weighs unless they got a search warrant (which is unlikely), seized an e-scooter, and weighed it. In contrast, it would be extremely easy for police to lay charges against anyone riding an e-scooter on a road, sidewalk or bike path, if they are banned in all public places. Police would have all the proof they need, simply by observing and photographing a person riding the e-scooter.

It is therefore far more costly to enforce regulation of e-scooter use than to ban them from being ridden in public places. Moreover, at the July 9, 2020, meeting of Toronto’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee, Toronto law enforcement officials told City Council members that they had no resources to enforce new regulations on e-scooters. With the recent budget crisis facing Toronto, this situation likely has not gotten any better.

5. Just Because Some Other Cities Allow E-Scooters Doesn’t Justify Toronto Making the Same Mistake

Claim: Some other municipalities around Toronto are allowing e-scooters, so Toronto should do so too.

Reality: The fact that some other cities near Toronto have allowed e-scooters does not justify Toronto doing the same, given the proven twin dangers that e-scooters pose for vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

None of those nearby municipalities have prevented the twin dangers to vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors that e-scooters create. Each of those communities disregarded the proven danger that e-scooters create for people with disabilities and seniors when they decided to run an involuntary public experiment on them. None disproved the contents of the 2020 and 2021 Toronto City staff reports on e-scooters, which documented those dangers and showed that no effective way to prevent those that danger has been created.

Put simply, those neighbouring municipalities acted wrongly by creating new disability barriers. That does not justify Toronto deciding to do the same.

6. E-Scooters Won’t Effectively Combat Climate Change or Car Traffic

Claim: allowing e-scooters in public places is needed to reduce congested car traffic and to fight climate change.

Reality: We agree that it is important to reduce traffic in Toronto and to fight against climate change. As noted earlier, all these goals can be achieved through bikes, supplemented by a robust BikeShare program. Moreover, Toronto City staff have reported in the past from their research that if anything, people who ride e-scooters would otherwise have walked or used public transit. Therefore, e-scooters do not materially reduce car traffic or climate change.

Moreover, the entire claim by e-scooter corporate lobbyists rests on a harmful hidden premise. Those lobbyists claim that people will leave their car at home and ride public transit if they can use e-scooters for the first mile and last mile of their journey, i.e. the distance from home to public transit, and then from public transit to their destination. This would require our city to be flooded with rental e-scooters lying around everywhere so that an individual is assured that an e-scooter will always be free and right at hand, waiting for them nearby for their first mile and last mile journeys. This would require Toronto to be inundated with e-scooters, an urban blight about which we have heard from some other cities that allow rental e-scooters.

Such inundation of rental e-scooters would, of course, be great for the profits of e-scooter rental companies. However, it would be very bad for Toronto.

Having e-scooters darting in and out around traffic itself can create traffic issues. Moreover, in cities that allow e-scooters, Ontario allows e-scooters to be ridden at a maximum of 24 kph (a speed limit to which private e-scooters are not electronically restricted). Therefore, in cities that permit them, e-scooters are supposed to be ridden on public roads at speeds far slower than the speed limit for cars. That too can contribute to traffic problems.

7. Wrong to Compare Car Injuries to E-Scooter Injuries

Claim: Cars cause more injuries than do e-scooters.

Reality: This distracting red herring is a false comparison. It wrongly compares apples and oranges.

Toronto is not now considering whether to ban either cars or e-scooters altogether from public places. Cars exist on public roads and will continue to do so. The question under consideration is whether to lift the ban on riding e-scooters in public places in Toronto.

Cars exist on the roads, not the sidewalks. They are subject to extensive regimes of licensing, insurance, regulation, and law enforcement. As noted earlier, e-scooters are regularly ridden on sidewalks, whether it is legal or illegal to ride them on the sidewalks or the roads.

Moreover, there are far more cars than e-scooters being driven in public. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that cars therefore cause more injuries than e-scooters.

8. E-Scooters Will Trigger Major Costs to the Public, Despite Claims to the Contrary

Claim: Allowing e-scooters, including rental e-scooters, won’t cost the public anything.

Reality: To allow e-scooters will inflict real costs on the taxpayer, at a time when Toronto has had to discuss imposing a major controversial tax increase due to its budget crisis.

The maximum cost to the public of allowing e-scooters cannot be quantified in advance. This will include added healthcare costs due to e-scooter injuries, cost of added infrastructure to accommodate e-scooters, added law enforcement costs, added regulatory and monitoring costs, and other liabilities triggered by e-scooters.

The City of Toronto could be exposed to civil lawsuits if it allows e-scooters to be ridden in public after having been clearly warned of the dangers that they create. This is all the more so if Toronto offers e-scooters to the public through something akin to a BikeShare program. The June 24, 2020, City staff report to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee found:

There is a significant risk that the City may be held partially or fully liable for damages if e-scooter riders or other parties are injured. Transportation Services staff consulted with the City’s Insurance and Risk Management office (I&RM) to understand the magnitude of the City’s liability if allowing e-scooters. At this time, loss data is lacking on e-scooters due to generally lengthy settlement times for bodily injury claims. The City has significant liability exposure, however, due to joint and several liability, as the City may have to pay an entire judgement or claim even if only found to be 1 per cent at fault for an incident. The City has a $5M deductible per occurrence, which means the City will be responsible for all costs below that amount. In terms of costs, Transportation Services staff will also be required to investigate and serve in the discovery process for claims.

At the February 25, 2021, Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meeting, City staff reported that the City’s insurance and risk management people believe that there would be significant costs to the City if a pilot were to be held. The costs to the City of allowing e-scooters would include costs of claims, cost of police enforcement, cost of City Transportation staff dealing with litter issues enforcement, the cost of City data collection, and the cost of staff monitoring and providing oversight. In a city that is so full of disability accessibility barriers, it would be especially cruel for Toronto to allocate public money and assign public staff to an e-scooters pilot program, rather than allocating those resources to reducing disability barriers, as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires.

Many e-scooter riders who injure others are likely to be judgment-proof. Toronto must proceed on the assumption that e-scooter riders will cause injuries and property damage without carrying insurance for claims against them. Moreover, it will be hard if not impossible for an injured victim to identify an offending e-scooter rider who injures them and then races off into the sunset. E-scooters are not required to have a large, readily visible license number on them, and are not required to be licensed. They are also not required to be insured. Injuries may also be caused by a tourist from another country who rents an e-scooter and then leaves Canada before they can be identified and sued.

9. Wrong to Reward Law-Breakers

Claim: E-scooters are a reality in Toronto, sold in stores and ridden on our streets and sidewalks, so it is better to simply legalize them.

Reality: What that claim boils down to is this: Some people are now breaking the law with impunity and endangering the public, including some of Toronto’s most vulnerable residents. The proper solution is supposedly to legalize their illegal conduct rather than protecting the innocent people whom they endanger.

We would not for a moment seriously considering legalizing crack cocaine, which is a very dangerous illegal drug. Yet it is regularly used in our community despite being illegal. The fact that law enforcement has not totally wiped out its use does not lead our society to legalize it, replete with all its dangers.

The proper solution is to enforce the ban on riding e-scooters in public rather than legalizing plainly illegal behaviour.

10. E-Scooters are Not Inevitable in Toronto Unless Our Political Leaders Allow Them to Become So

Claim: It is inevitable that e-scooters will be a part of Toronto, so we should embrace them.

Reality: Public e-scooter riding is only inevitable if we let it happen. Some argued in 2020 that e-scooters are inevitable. Yet in 2021, Toronto City Council wisely decided in a unanimous vote to ban them. Some other places like Montreal and Paris decided to disallow them after initially allowing them. If Toronto legalizes e-scooters in public places, the problem will just get worse. E-scooters are not inevitable in Toronto unless City Council votes to make them legal.

11. Toronto Should Listen to Toronto’s and Not Ottawa’s Accessibility Advisory Committee

Claim: Ottawa’s Accessibility Advisory Committee this year is said to have withdrawn its earlier opposition to e-scooters, so Toronto should allow them too.

Reality: Toronto City Council should be guided by the advice of its own Accessibility Advisory Committee. Pro-e-scooter advocates should not be allowed to cherry-pick another Accessibility Advisory Committee that was not created to advise Toronto, that has no representation from Toronto, that did not seek any input from Toronto before reportedly flip-flopping on the e-scooters issue, and that never purported to say what Toronto should do.

As stated earlier, the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee has thrice spoken in consistent, clear, strong and categorical terms against e-scooters. Moreover, the AODA Alliance has heard from grassroots disability advocates that e-scooters still present dangers for them in Ottawa. We have no indication that the Ottawa Accessibility Advisory Committee held any form of public hearings before reportedly flip-flopping on this issue, having earlier voiced strong opposition to e-scooters.

Finally, Ottawa, like other Ontario cities that have allowed e-scooters, is nothing like Toronto in terms of population, density, jammed downtown streets, and the like.

IV. Conclusion — E-Scooters are Giving Bikes a Bad Name

As addressed earlier in this brief, we strongly support bikes as a form of micromobility and as being good for public health. The twin dangers posed by e-scooters, and patterns of reckless joyriding on e-scooters, threaten to give bikes and cyclists a bad name. That works against many important public policy goals, including the green agenda.

For all these reasons, Toronto should not lift the ban on riding e-scooters in public. It should start to effectively enforce that ban. It should work on expanding the safer, clean, healthier micromobility option of bikes and BikeShare.