Read the September 24, 2024 AODA Alliance brief that urges the Ford Government not to make another 5 year extension to its pilot project with dangerous electric scooter

Ontario should Not Conduct Another Five Year Pilot Project that Allows Electric Scooters, Which Endanger Vulnerable People with Disabilities, Seniors and Others – A Brief by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance to the Ontario Government

 

September 24, 2024

Part I. Introduction and Summary

 

1. Openers

 

Five years ago, in late 2019, the Ontario Government passed a controversial new regulation. It let any Ontario city choose to run a pilot project for up to five years, allowing people to ride electric scooters (e-scooters) in public. If a city did not pass a bylaw permitting this, then it is illegal to ride e-scooters in public in that municipality.

 

Some 16 municipalities have used this opportunity to conduct a pilot project, allowing e-scooters to be ridden in public. Some of these municipalities limited this to riding an e-scooter that is privately owned. Others also allowed e-scooter rental companies to rent e-scooters to the public.

 

The 2019 Ontario regulation that permitted all of this expires in November 2024. The Ford On August 28, 2024, the Ontario Government posted an invitation for the public to give input online on its proposal to extend this pilot for another five years. The AODA Alliance submits this brief to the Ontario Government as its feedback on this public consultation.

 

2. Who is the AODA Alliance

 

The AODA Alliance has extensive experience with the design, implementation, and enforcement of accessibility legislation in Canada. Founded in 2005 shortly after the AODA was passed, we are a voluntary, non-partisan, grassroots coalition of individuals and community organizations. Our mission is:

 

“To contribute to the achievement of a barrier-free Ontario for all persons with disabilities, by promoting and supporting the timely, effective, and comprehensive implementation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.”

 

To learn about us, visit the AODA Alliance website. Our coalition is the successor to the non-partisan grassroots Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee. The ODA Committee advocated for more than ten years, from 1994 to 2005, for the enactment of strong, effective disability accessibility legislation. Our coalition builds on the ODA Committee’s work. We draw our supporters from the ODA Committee’s broad grassroots base. To learn about the ODA Committee’s history, visit the ODA Committee’s legacy website.

 

The AODA Alliance has played a leading role in raising serious disability safety and accessibility concerns with e-scooters. We have advocated on this issue at the provincial and municipal levels. 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 the AODA Alliance website’s e-scooters web page.

 

3. 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:
16. a) The pilot should only be extended for one year, not five years.
17. b) Health-related preconditions should be required for any e-scooter pilot
18. c) No Ontario municipality should be able to entrust any part of law enforcement to e-scooter rental companies
19. e) Rental of e-scooter should not be allowed.
20. e) Municipalities should not be allowed to permit e-scooter riding on sidewalks.
21. f) The maximum E-scooter Speed limit should be provincially set at well below 24 KPH.
22. g) E-scooter Drivers should be required to have a driver’s license and proper training.
23. h) E-scooters should be required to have a vehicle license that must be displayed in plain view on the e-scooter.
24. i) An e-scooter’ owner and driver should be required to carry valid insurance.
25. j) All e-scooter drivers of any age should be required to wear a helmet.
26. k) Every e-scooter should be provincially required to emit an ongoing loud beeping sound when powered on.
27. l) 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.

 

In this brief, we describe problems with the current consultation. We then explain why a further e-scooter pilot should not be created in Ontario. We then give recommendations for safeguards that Ontario should enact if it proceeds with another e-scooter pilot over our objection.

At the end of this brief, Appendix 1 lists all our recommendations. Appendix 2 sets out the October 25, 2023 letter to Toronto in opposition to e-scooters from many key players in the disability community.

 

 

Part II The Ontario Government’s E-Scooters Public Consultation is Severely Flawed

 

The Ontario Government’s current public consultation on whether to extend its e-scooters pilot for another five years is severely flawed. It should be restarted from scratch and extended, for the following reasons.

 

First, the consultation announcement does not even identify as an issue, or request specific input on the impact of e-scooters on vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors. In municipality after municipality, exemplified by Toronto and Ottawa, the leading issue that emerged from public input was the danger that e-scooters create for vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others. Toronto City Council twice directed City staff to investigate this, among other issues, in 2021 and 2023. It played a central role in Toronto’s twice rejecting e-scooters.

 

This public consultation should be restarted, with focused questions asking for input on the impact of e-scooters on vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others.

 

Second, in light of the central importance of disability concerns with e-scooters, the Ontario Government should have taken concerted steps to effectively publicize this consultation to the disability community. Yet it did not even notify the AODA Alliance that this public consultation was going on. We only heard of it from the grapevine, partway through this consultation.

 

It is well known to the Government that the AODA Alliance has played a leadership role raising disability concerns with e-scooters, working with others in the disability community. We have been all over the media on this issue. We have corresponded with the Ontario Government as well as with municipalities on this issue.

 

In August 2019, it was the AODA Alliance who made public the fact that the Government tried to slip a rushed 3 day public consultation by the public on its first proposed e-scooter pilot, over to be held during the 3 days before the 2019 Labour Day weekend. The volunteer AODA Alliance has likely done far more than has the well-funded Ontario Government to bring this consultation to the attention of the disability community. Its September 10, 2024 AODA Alliance Update was sent to our many supporters.

 

Third, the public posting for this consultation includes a background document in pdf format, without a corresponding accessible MS Word or html posting. This creates unfair accessibility barriers. It flies in the face of the AODA, the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Charter of Rights. The posting should be provided in an accessible format, and should be restarted to ensure that everyone has an equal shot at having their input. It is a cruel irony that in a consultation where disability issues should have been front and centre but are not, the Ontario Government created this accessibility barrier in its consultation process.

 

Fourth, the Ministry of Transportation’s (MTO) regulatory posting that announces this consultation states that the purpose of another five year pilot is to gather more data on e-scooters. It states:

 

“This extension will enable MTO to gather additional data to support its review and analysis of e-scooters, providing a clearer understanding of the program’s impact and guiding future policy decisions.”

 

There is no need for another pilot to do this. Ontario has already conducted a five year pilot for that purpose. The Government does not need more time for this, much less five more years.

 

Toronto City staff were able to exhaustively study this topic twice, each time in under one year, and to produce detailed and comprehensive reports. Ontario should be able to do so at least as quickly.

 

Fifth, the Ministry’s announcement of this consultation pledges that:

 

“safety remains a priority.”

 

Yet as shown throughout this brief, a further pilot with e-scooters creates serious safety dangers for vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others. It wrongly treats them as expendable guinea pigs, on whom the province and municipalities are free to experiment at with impunity. This was wrong for Ontario to do for five years starting in 2019. It is even more demonstrably wrong to do it again now for another five years.

 

Sixth, in light of all the dangers to vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others that have been identified here and throughout the past five years, any public consultation should at least contemplate much stronger safety protections for innocent pedestrians. Yet the Ontario Government’s proposal does not even have this on the table. It has not proposed any further safeguards in the provincial regulations. The MTO regulatory posting states:

 

“No additional changes are proposed to the existing e-scooter pilot program rules and requirements.”

 

The Ministry of Transportation should have consulted at some point over the past five years with the broad disability community. No such consultation was ever announced. The MTO never reached out to the AODA Alliance to get our feedback, despite our widely-publicized participation and leadership on this issue.

 

Before deciding to post a proposal to extend another five year e-scooters pilot, MTO should have extensively consulted with an centrally involved the Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility. Yet that Ministry has not been publicly seen at all on this issue over the past five years.

 

A restarted public consultation should include the province proposing additional safeguards that could be built into the provincial regulations, such as those discussed in this brief. For example, as the City of Toronto has requested, Ontario should enact a specific enforceable penalty for unlawful riding of an e-scooter.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

Part III. Why Ontario Must Not Extend the Pilot with E-Scooters in Ontario

 

We ask that the Ontario Government not extend the e-scooters pilot at all, much less for another five years. This part of this brief explains why.

 

1. The Debate is Over! E-Scooters Endanger Vulnerable People with Disabilities, Seniors and Others

 

The proof is overwhelming that e-scooters endanger vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others. It comes from communities where e-scooters have been allowed within Ontario, and elsewhere around the world. We don’t need another five year “pilot” to prove this. If the pilot is extended, this will create a risk that there will be more e-scooters on the road by 2029. That will make it even harder to protect the public by banning them after that.

 

 2. Overwhelming Proof That E-Scooters Create Twin Serious 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 can 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. The same is so for sighted pedestrians, when an e-scooter comes at them from behind. Fragile seniors, and those whose mobility is slow or limited, cannot easily get out of the way, even if they see a silent e-scooter 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 major accessibility barriers to a clear path of travel 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 on a road where there is no sidewalk.

 

3. 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 in Canada’s largest and most diverse city. This sends a strong message on behalf of Toronto’s public health infrastructure about the safety dangers that e-scooters pose.

 

4. E-scooters Present the Danger of Spontaneous Fires

 

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

 

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

 

5. Toronto Wisely Blazed the Way in Ontario in Opposition to Allowing E-Scooters

 

Toronto City Council has carefully studied e-scooters twice. Both times it voted not to allow e-scooters, but to support several other micromobility options.

 

By far, Toronto is the Ontario city whose municipal staff most thoroughly researched e-scooters. It submitted detailed reports to Toronto City Council in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024, after completing two major rounds of research. No other Ontario municipality conducted comparable research. No city staff in any municipality refuted the detailed findings in the Toronto City staff reports. Some, such as Ottawa’s City staff, marginalized and downplayed the proven dangers that e-scooters pose for vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others.

 

The newest Toronto City Staff report in April 2024 again concluded that e-scooters pose a real danger to safety and accessibility for vulnerable members of the public, including people with disabilities. For example, that report found s follows:

 

“1) For both personal/private and shared/rental e-scooters, the design of e-scooters with their small-wheels and high centre of gravity makes them less stable than bicycles. The inherent instability of e-scooters poses risks for serious and fatal injuries to riders when encountering uneven road surfaces (e.g. potholes and streetcar tracks) and leads to sidewalk riding which endangers pedestrians. E-scooters pose a risk for serious and fatal injuries (due to collisions and/or falls) to pedestrians, seniors, and people with disabilities due to the e-scooter’s maneuverability, silence and faster speeds. Cities that have allowed e-scooters have observed a high incidence of sidewalk riding by e-scooter users (both personal/private and shared/rental) whether permitted or not on sidewalks. Seniors, people with disabilities, and those with socio-economic challenges could face negative outcomes if injured in a collision or fall.”

6. Media Coverage Objectively Also 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% 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.”

 

7. Major Disability Organizations and People with Disabilities and Seniors Have United Time and Again in Opposition to E-Scooters in Public Places

 

A strong overwhelming voice has emerged out 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. (Set out in Appendix 2)

 

Over the past five years, there have been several meetings of committees of municipal City Councils where the topic of e-scooters has been included on the agenda. Among others, this has included municipalities’ Accessibility Advisory Committees. 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.

 

8. Several Municipal Accessibility Advisory Committees Have Recommended that E-Scooters Not Be Allowed

 

Several municipal accessibility advisory committees have called on city after city to not allow e-scooters. Three times in the past four years, the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee 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. Hamilton’s Accessibility Advisory Committee advised against allowing e-scooters, important advice which Hamilton City Council disregarded. Ottawa’s Accessibility Advisory Committee recommended against allowing e-scooters, which Ottawa too disregarded. Earlier this year, the Ottawa Accessibility Advisory Committee changed its position, but restored its opposition to e-scooters a few months later. Yet again, Ottawa acted in contravention of that advice.

 

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires cities with at least 10, 000 residents 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.

 

9. 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 uses the public as unwilling guinea pigs while endangering their safety.

 

In addition, municipalities have 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. Toronto City staff pointed this out in their staff reports to Toronto City Council.

 

In addition, 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. Municipalities have no way to track those e-scooter victims’ injuries. Those health professionals are under no duty to report these e-scooter injuries. There is no central place to which they would know about to report the e-scooter injuries.

 

It would be wrong and extremely unfair to leave it to innocent victims of e-scooters to have to report their injuries to some city official in order for e-scooter-injuries 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 an unfair burden to saddle the public with such a burden, to compound their being injured by e-scooters, just so the City can track how many people are injured by e-scooters.

 

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 too 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, much less another five years of the same.

 

10. It Is Insufficient to Simply Ban E-Scooters from Sidewalks

 

It does not protect the public to allow e-scooters on streets and bike paths but 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. They would want to stay as far as they can from cars that travel much faster. To them, the sidewalk will appear to be a much safer place. They will 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.

 

Restricting e-scooters to bike paths will not stop e-scooters from being ridden on sidewalks. Very few roads in Ontario are accompanied by bike paths. The Ontario Government has announced its intention to introduce new legislation that will make it harder for cities to build new bike paths.

 

Even if e-scooters could be effectively restricted to bike paths, that will not sufficiently protect vulnerable pedestrians. There is a very troubling and growing practice of building new bike paths on top of 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, the media gave it significant coverage. Yet nothing has been done to fix any of such bike paths that were built using this dangerous design in Toronto.

 

If e-scooters are allowed on bike paths, this means that they could lawfully be ridden on the growing number of bike paths which are situated on sidewalks. That presents all the dangers to vulnerable pedestrians with disabilities that are highlighted earlier in this brief.

 

If anything, these dangerous new bike paths signal to cyclists and others that it is now permissible to ride their e-scooter on any sidewalks, despite the danger to the public.

 

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

 

11. Ontario Law Forbids Ontario and Municipalities From Creating New Disability Accessibility Barriers

 

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires that Ontario, as well as all municipalities, must become accessible to people with disabilities by 2025. Ontario and its municipalities are all 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 those AODA Independent Reviews.

 

Deputant after deputant have told municipal city council committees that in recent years, Ontario municipalities have become less accessible, not more accessible to people with disabilities. Allowing e-scooters makes this worse, contrary to the AODA, as well as the equality rights of people with disabilities guaranteed by the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

 

As but one illustration of this, municipal sidewalks have too often 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.

 

12. Wrong to Reward Law-Breakers

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists argue that e-scooters are a reality in Ontario, sold in stores and ridden on our streets and sidewalks, even where they are not permitted. They argue that it is therefore better to simply legalize them.

 

What that claim boils down to is this: some people are now breaking the law with impunity and endangering the public, including some of Ontario’s most vulnerable residents. The proper solution is supposedly to legalize their illegal conduct rather than effectively 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 should 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.

 

13. Banning E-Scooters from Being Ridden Public Places, Not Regulating Them, is the Only Solution

 

There is no safe and effective way to simply lay down provincial or municipal rules for riding e-scooters in public, and effectively enforcing those rules. The City of Toronto’s staff have twice studied communities that allow e-scooters in different parts of the world. In 2021 and again in 2024, Toronto City staff concluded that no community has establish an effective way to permit, regulate and enforce e-scooter use. In 2021 and again in 2024, Toronto City Council took a close look at the Toronto City staff’s research and findings, vigorously debated them, and as a result, voted to not to allow e-scooters in public places. In both instances, Toronto City Council had specifically requested that City staff conduct that research to assist Council in deciding how to proceed with respect to e-scooters.

 

As Toronto City staff’s 2021 and 2024 reports showed, in cities where e-scooters are allowed on roads but banned on sidewalks, they are still regularly ridden on sidewalks. Municipalities have not come up with a way to effectively stop this from happening. They’d need police officers on every street corner.

 

Ontario has now run a five year pilot to see if any Ontario municipality has come up with a safe and effective way to regulate e-scooters being ridden in public places. None have succeeded. That is ample proof that Toronto was correct to say no to e-scooters. What is missing in Toronto is any effective effort at enforcing the ban on riding e-scooters in public.

 

We expect that the e-scooter corporate lobbyists will again argue that because e-scooters are already being ridden in some Ontario cities, it is better to try to regulate their use rather than prohibiting them from being ridden in public places. Yet it is a false dichotomy for e-scooter corporate lobbyists to make it sound like Ontario cities have only two stark choices, either allowing a free-for-all or regulating how and when people can ride them. There is a third, superior, and as-yet untried option, namely providing better tools for enforcing a ban on riding e-scooters in public. That is what Ontario needs to do.

 

It is far easier for law enforcement authorities to enforce an outright 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, if a municipality or the province 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 in public. It is therefore far more costly and less effective to enforce regulation of e-scooter use than to ban them from being ridden in public places.

14. Just Because Some Ontario Cities Allowed E-Scooters Doesn’t Justify Ontario Extending the Pilot for Another Five Years

 

We expect that the e-scooter corporate lobbyists will argue that because some Ontario municipalities are allowing e-scooters under the 2020 pilot regulation, this pilot should be continued for another five years. We disagree, 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 Ontario municipalities that allowed e-scooters 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. Non municipalities tried to disprove or indeed did disprove the contents and findings of the Toronto City staff reports on e-scooters. Those Toronto reports documented those dangers. They showed that there is no effective way to prevent the dangers that e-scooters present, short of banning them from being ridden in public.

 

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

 

The e-scooter corporate lobbyists argue that allowing e-scooters in public places is needed to reduce congested car traffic and to fight climate change. We agree that it is important to reduce traffic and to fight against climate change. Yet, all these goals can be achieved through bikes, supplemented by a robust BikeShare program. Moreover, Toronto City staff have reported in 2021 and 2024 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.

 

This 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 cities 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 Ontario cities to be inundated with e-scooters, an urban blight about which we have repeatedly heard from some other cities that allow rental e-scooters.

 

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

 

E-scooters darting in and out around traffic can exacerbate traffic issues. 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 compound traffic problems.

 

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

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists argue that cars cause more injuries and worse injuries than do e-scooters. This distracting red herring wrongly compares apples and oranges.

 

Ontario is not now considering whether it should ban either cars or e-scooters from public places. Cars exist on public roads and will continue to do so. The question under consideration is whether to continue to allow municipalities to run a pilot with e-scooters for another five years.

 

Cars drive 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. There is now no regime for licensing or insuring e-scooters or e-scooter riders.

 

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

 

17. E-Scooters Will Trigger Major Costs to the Public, Despite Claims to the Contrary By E-Scooter Corporate Lobbyists

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists argue that allowing e-scooters, including rental e-scooters, won’t cost the public anything. The reality is that allowing e-scooters will inflict real costs on the taxpayer, at a time when municipalities are cash-strapped and asking the provincial government for more financial help.

 

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.

 

An Ontario municipality 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 a municipality offers e-scooters to the public through something akin to a BikeShare program. The June 24, 2020 Toronto City staff report to the Toronto City Council’s 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 enforcement, the cost of City data collection, and the cost of staff monitoring and providing oversight.

 

When Ontario cities are so full of disability accessibility barriers, it would be especially cruel for them 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. Ontario 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.

 

18. New Tech and AI Are Not the Solution

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists claim that they have fancy new technology, such as GPS, geo-fencing and AI, that will prevent the past dangers that e-scooters create, such as riding e-scooters on sidewalks and leaving e-scooters strewn on sidewalks. This claim is entirely unproven. It must be viewed with a truckload of salt. Had they had such technology, they would have already deployed it in cities where they rent e-scooters around the world, with ample objectively-verified evidence to prove that it all works.

 

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 only a matter of inches. GPS and geo-fencing cannot reliably track that.

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists have made these claims for years. 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 Ontario to try once again to test such bogus claims.

 

The recent media fetish with artificial intelligence creates in some an incorrect sense that AI can magically 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 available. They include no such technology.

 

The Government should be wary about the claims by e-scooter corporate lobbyists. They have at times offered bizarre solutions, in order to look like they care about dangers to people with disabilities. Some have proposed adding Braille information on an e-scooter, to assist blind pedestrians. A blind pedestrian is hardly going to chase after a speeding e-scooter, with their hand outstretched, in case they can find Braille text on the e-scooter. If a blind pedestrian is hit by an e-scooter, they are also not likely to crawl around, in hopes of finding an e-scooter with Braille on it.

 

19. Adding a Beeping Sound to E-Scooters is Alone Not Sufficient

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists claim that e-scooters can be equipped to emit a beeping sound so that they are not silent. They say that this will warn pedestrians with vision loss and others.

 

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 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.

 

20. E-Scooters are Not Necessary for a Robust Micromobility Strategy

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists argue that e-scooters are an important part of micromobility, the wave of the future. The reality is that an Ontario municipality can have a robust and expanding micromobility program without allowing e-scooters. For example, 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 substantially increased during the pandemic. There is room for it to grow even more.

 

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. Traditional bikes don’t have batteries that can spontaneously catch fire.

 

A person who has never before ridden a bike cannot climb on board one, even after drinking, and instantly throttle up to 24 kph or faster. Yet they can do this on an e-scooter, endangering innocent pedestrians.

 

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 additional value above and 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.

 

Ontario municipalities can also explore other new tech options for micromobility, in addition to bikes. A robust micromobility strategy does not need to include e-scooters. Toronto just did so earlier this year. It adopted a comprehensive and expanded micromobility strategy that allows for new forms of micromobility without allowing e-scooters.

 

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

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists claim that it is inevitable that e-scooters will be a part of Ontario, so we should embrace them. The reality is that public e-scooter riding is only inevitable if we let it happen.

 

Some argued in 2020 that e-scooters are inevitable. Yet in 2021 and 2024, Toronto City Council wisely decided to ban them. Some other places like Montreal and Paris decided to disallow them after initially allowing them.

 

22. There Are Important Differences Between E-bikes and E-scooters

 

It would be wrong for the Government to proceed on the basis that it should allow e-scooters by virtue of the fact that it already allows e-bikes, for several reasons. First, if, as we have shown, e-scooters present a safety risk, that safety risk neither magically vanishes nor in any way reduces just because Ontario now allows e-bikes.

 

Second, there are some important differences between the two. A person cannot ride an e-bike unless they already know how to ride a bike. In contrast, a person with no prior experience can, in some other jurisdictions, pay a rental fee, hop on an e-scooter, and immediately start racing in public at 32 KPH. As well, we are not aware of any companies that rent e-bikes on the terms used elsewhere for e-scooters, where they are regularly left as barriers in the middle of sidewalks.

 

A regular bike is not a motor vehicle. An e-scooter is a motor vehicle.

 

23. Don’t Impose More Hardships on the Disability Community to Fight E-scooters in One Municipality After the Next

 

The province’s pilot with e-scooters over the past five years has imposed a huge and unfair burden on the disability community. We have had to mount exhausting campaigns in one city after the next to battle to protect vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others from the dangers that e-scooters impose. We are up against the well-funded and well-organized e-scooter corporate lobbyists. We have documented the sheer stunning magnitude of the e-scooter corporate lobbyists’ feeding frenzy at Toronto City Hall. Toronto is one of the few Ontario municipalities that requires corporate lobbyists to register their lobbying activities in support of their product.

 

Ontario is about to reach 2025, with the province failing to meet its legal obligation to have become accessible to people with disabilities, a deadline which the AODA set. On June 6, 2023, the Ontario Government received the final report of the Government-appointed 4^th AODA Independent Review by Rich Donovan. It concluded that Ontario is in an accessibility crisis, requiring a crisis response. The Ontario Government should not make this terrible situation worse, by yet again imposing this enormous burden on the disability community to continue to fight a rear-guard campaign to try to protect vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others from e-scooters.

 

24. Primary Recommendations

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

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

 

25. Enact a Strong Provincial Penalty for Unlawful E-Scooter Use

 

The City of Toronto staff identified the need for Ontario to enact a strong penalty for unlawfully riding an e-scooter in public. Whether one supports or opposing ever allowing e-scooters to be ridden in public, this is needed now.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

Part IV Recommendations If Ontario Extends the E-Scooter Pilot Over Our Objection

 

1. Pilot Should at Most Only Be Extended for At Most One year

 

If the Ontario Government chooses to extend the e-scooter pilot despite all of the evidence against doing so, it should not be extended for five more years. At most it should be extended for one more year.

 

As noted earlier, the Government’s stated reason for an extension is to gather more data, after five years has already been available for it to do so. At a maximum, only one more year would be needed for that purpose.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

2. Health-Related Preconditions Should Be Required for any E-Scooter Pilot

 

If Ontario is to allow for more e-scooter pilots despite our opposition, it should set important health-related preconditions. These should be mandatory to fulfil the Ontario Government’s pledge in its regulatory posting that “…safety remains a priority.”

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

3. No Ontario Municipality Should Be Able to Entrust Any Part of Law Enforcement to E-Scooter Rental Companies

 

If another e-scooter pilot is to be permitted, provincial regulations should forbid municipalities from entrusting any aspect of enforcement to e-scooter rental companies.

 

Some cities, most notably Ottawa, have wrongly entrusted some part of e-scooter law enforcement to the e-scooter rental companies. 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.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

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

 

4. Do Not Allow Rental of E-Scooters

 

E-scooter corporate lobbyists are at the center of the push to allow e-scooters in Ontario. By their rental model, a member of the public gets an app on their phone to sign up for these rentals. E-scooters are left around the city, tagged with a GPS chip.

 

The individual uses the app to find the nearest e-scooter that is available. They pick it up and ride away. They do not go to a store, or deal with anyone directly and in person from the rental company, when they are renting an e-scooter at roadside. When they are finished with the e-scooter, they leave it on a sidewalk and walk away. That e-scooter then sits there until another person, using the app, decides to take it away and ride it, leaving it somewhere else, once they are done.

 

The rental model for e-scooters presents several serious problems. First and foremost, having users randomly leave an e-scooter on a sidewalk or other like public place when they are finished with it creates significant and unpredictable new barriers against people with disabilities. These barriers can instantly pop up anywhere, unannounced, and then vanish before the police could get to the scene.

 

We have received feedback about concerns with this from people with vision loss where e-scooter rentals have been allowed, even if e-scooters supposedly must be docked when a rider finishes with them.

 

Sidewalks or other like public spaces should not be made available to the private companies who rent e-scooters as free parking spaces, fully subsidized by the taxpayer. Taxpayers paid for the construction and maintenance of sidewalks as a safe place to walk.

 

It is clear that the desire to have e-scooters left strewn on Ontario sidewalks is central to the desire of at least some businesses who want to offer e-scooters for rental in this province. According to a September 10, 2019 Toronto Star article, the CEO of Bird Canada, one of the private companies that is pressing to rent e-scooters in Ontario conceded that it is central to their business that e-scooters be left on Ontario sidewalks between trips with them. The article included:

 

“Barring e-scooters from city sidewalks, recommended by a city committee on Monday, would make it impossible to introduce the concept to Toronto, according to the CEO of Bird Canada, an e-scooter company hoping to launch here in the spring of 2020.

 

“If you can’t park them on the sidewalk and you can’t park them on the street, I guess we’re parking them in the air?” Stewart Lyons said.

 

“I don’t know where we’re parking them. They can’t fly.”

 

Lyons was speaking after the city’s infrastructure and environment committee passed a motion that would temporarily prevent e-scooters from occupying sidewalks – at least until city staff can come up with a better plan, expected later this year.

 

Lyons said being able to park e-scooters on some sidewalks is a key part of the e-scooter program.

 

He said it would be hard to create enough demand if the scooters can’t be made available to customers right where they live and work, arguing that docking stations, such as those used by the current Bike Share Toronto program, wouldn’t be accessible enough.

 

Currently, users in cities where shared e-scooter programs are in place can locate scooters near them using an app.”

 

It would not be good enough for the Government to try to regulate where the scooters are left, e.g. by enacting regulations that e-scooters may not be left to block the sidewalk. As noted earlier, this has proven itself to be impossible to effectively enforce. Police are not always on the scene wherever these e-scooters would be left. Our police and courts are already overburdened. An e-scooter left on the sidewalk should be simply treated as abandoned and forfeited.

 

The rental model presents other safety risks. Under that model, a person could go into a bar, drink to excess, walk outside, look on their smart phone’s e-scooter app, and quickly find a nearby e-scooter to ride, endangering the public. As it is, drunk driving is a troubling problem in our society that leads to deaths and serious injuries. Our government should not expose the public to any more such risks.

 

Were an intoxicated person to walk into a car rental office and try to rent a car, they would have to deal with a human being, who no doubt would refuse to hand over the car keys. In the case of renting e-scooters via an app, there is no comparable control at the source, such as a salesperson, to refuse to hand over the keys.

 

It is no answer to say that drunk driving is already illegal. We already know that drinking and driving laws are too often disobeyed. Innocent people pay the price with permanent injuries or their lives. The Government should not increase that risk.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

5. Do Not Let Municipalities Allow E-Scooters to Be Ridden on Sidewalks

 

Even if Ontario allows another e-scooter pilot, despite our well-founded opposition, there should be a strict and strong provincial ban on leaving an e-scooter in a public sidewalk or like location. If an e-scooter is left in such a place, it should be subject to immediate confiscation and forfeiture, as well as a very high penalty.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

6. Reduce the Maximum E-scooter Speed Well Below 24 KPH

 

The faster an e-scooter goes, the less time its driver or a pedestrian has to avoid a collision. Moreover, the faster the e-scooter goes, the greater the injury it causes to an innocent pedestrian. There is no magic reason why an e-scooter should be allowed to race at 24 KPH.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

7. Require That an E-scooter Driver Have a Driver’s License and Proper Training

 

Because an e-scooter is a motor vehicle which can cause significant personal injuries to innocent pedestrians, a person should be required to get a driver’s license before they can drive an e-scooter. As well, a person should have to take appropriate training and show sufficient proficiency, including sufficient knowledge about the rules of the road and the threat to personal injuries that an e-scooter can cause.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

8. E-Scooters Must Be Licensed and Must Display a License Plate Number

 

It is important for each e-scooter to be licensed, and to display a license plate number, as is required for cars and motorcycles. This will make it far, far easier to enforce the law in case a person, driving an e-scooter, collides with a pedestrian, and then flees the scene. Without such a license requirement, it may well be impossible for an injured pedestrian to effectively identify the e-scooter that hit them, and thereby, to trace the driver.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

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

 

9. The E-scooter’s Owner and Driver Should Be Required to Carry Valid Insurance

 

It is widely recognized that motor vehicles pose a risk to personal injury of other motorists and pedestrians. As a result, both the owner and driver of a motor vehicle are required to carry liability insurance. It is an offence to fail to carry proper insurance.

 

The same should be so for the owner and driver of an e-scooter. It is important for both to be insured, as is the case for other motor vehicles such as cars and trucks, so an injured victim can recover compensation from either or both, if injured.

 

This is especially important where, as here, it is known that e-scooters pose a real risk of personal injury. The victims of such injuries, and the taxpayers who pay for our health system, should not be left holding the bag when it comes to the consequences of the use of e-scooters.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

10. Helmets Should Be Required for All E-Scooter Drivers, No Matter What Age

 

The use of an e-scooter can result in injuries to the driver, and not just to innocent pedestrians, including head injuries. A helmet is an important safety measure to try to reduce some of the harmful impacts on the driver of a fall from the e-scooter. Yet the Ontario Government has only required 16 and 17 year olds to wear a helmet while riding an e-scooter.

 

People 18 or older are equally exposed to the risk of head injuries. This creates an undue risk of increased injuries to drivers. That is bad for the drivers themselves and for their families. It also creates an unnecessary and unfair burden for the taxpayer, who will have to cover the health and other social safety net costs of those injuries to the e-scooter drivers.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

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

 

11. Require Every E-Scooter to Make an Ongoing Loud Beeping Sound When Powered On

 

Silent electric cars now make a distinctive noise when moving. So should silent e-scooters. Because of the danger of e-scooters being ridden on sidewalks, even if forbidden, the sound must be loud enough to be easily heard at a good distance, when the e-scooter is travelling at its maximum speed. It should be loud enough to be heard over city noises, such as construction, jack hammers, leaf blowers, and loud music from restaurants. As noted above, this should not be seen as eliminating all problems that e-scooters create.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

12. Require A Municipality, Conducting an E-scooter Pilot, to Consult Directly with Vulnerable Communities Including People with Disabilities and Seniors

 

 

If an Ontario municipality is going to consider conducting an e-scooter pilot, it should be required to first consult with vulnerable members of the public, such as people with disabilities and seniors, on the impact that e-scooters would have on them. This should involve members of City Council directly in the process. It should beyond online consultations. It should take place before conducting a pilot or deciding to do so, and again after the pilot. If a pilot goes on for more than one year, this should be required each year.

 

The only Ontario city which we know to have done this in any serious and meaningful way was the City of Toronto. Under explicit directions to do this from Toronto City Council in 2020 and again in 2023, Toronto City staff undertook extensive research and consultations in this area. City staff proactively reached out to the broad disability community. Disability impacts figured prominently in its work and its report’s, and integrated it in a meaningful way in its final recommendations. No other municipal staff in any other community even reached out to the AODA Alliance in any such fashion, despite our high visibility on this issue around Ontario. A simple Google search would have demonstrated this. In the case of any other city’s staff whom we proactively reached out to, none demonstrated any real interest in this issue or in availing themselves of our repeated offers to help.

 

The City of Ottawa staff engaged in what appears to have been performative disability consultative exercises. However, they too did not take us up on our efforts to take active part in any of their consultative activities. Moreover, they in effect rejected all the warnings from Ottawa’s own Accessibility Advisory Committee against e-scooters. They even presented as an option the absurd suggestion that e-scooters have Braille information included on them, as if this would provide any meaningful protection for people with vision loss.

 

We therefore recommend that:

 

#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.

 

 

Appendix 1: 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.

 

 

Appendix 2: Open Letter to Toronto Mayor Chow and Members of Toronto City Council

 

October 25, 2023

 

Open Letter

 

Via Email

To: Mayor Olivia Chow and Members of Toronto City Council

City Hall,

100 Queen St. W.

Toronto, ON M5H 2N2

 

 

Dear Mayor and Members of Toronto City Council,

 

Re: Protecting Vulnerable People with Disabilities and Seniors in Toronto from the Dangers Posed by Electric Scooters

 

On May 5, 2021, implementing a strong recommendation from Toronto City staff, Toronto City Council unanimously voted not to allow electric scooters (e-scooters) to be ridden in public places in Toronto, whether the e-scooters are rented or privately owned. The undersigned organizations and groups call on Toronto City Council to leave that ban in place. Toronto should not conduct any sort of “pilot” with e-scooters. It should instead take all steps needed to effectively ensure that e-scooters are not ridden in public places, a ban that to date has not been effectively enforced.

 

An e-scooter is a motor vehicle that a person rides while standing up. It can be very quickly throttled up to fast 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, endanger public safety. Riders and innocent pedestrians get seriously injured or killed. E-scooters especially endanger seniors and people with disabilities, who are vulnerable to high speed of an e-scooter and unable to get themselves out of harms way. People who are blind, have low vision, or Deafblind, can’t know when silent e-scooters rocket at them at over 20 KPH, driven by unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, fun-seeking joyriders, who often are not wearing a helmet. When left strewn on sidewalks, e-scooters are dangerous tripping hazards for people who are blind or partially sighted, and accessibility barriers to a clear path for wheelchair users.

 

It does not protect the public to ban e-scooters only from sidewalks. E-scooters are frequently ridden on sidewalks in cities where they are banned from sidewalks. With its unsolved deficit, Toronto has more pressing priorities.

Claims that new technology will prevent e-scooters from ever being ridden or parked on sidewalks are unproven. Toronto should not subject people with disabilities, seniors and others to being guinea pigs in an involuntary public experiment on them, to test out those claims. Even if that technology had existed, it would NOT protect anyone from the same dangers posed by privately owned and illegally ridden e-scooters that have no such technology.

 

Toronto has more pressing budget priorities. City staff have not recommended to Toronto City Council that the ban on e-scooters be reopened or that Toronto conduct an e-scooter pilot. They did not suggest from their ongoing monitoring of this issue that new technology prevents the proven dangers that e-scooters present. In 2021, City staff submitted an excellent, detailed, thoroughly researched report to City Council that recommended against Toronto conducting an e-scooter pilot. At the June 28, 2023 Infrastructure and Environment Committee meeting, Toronto City staff did not rescind that earlier position. City staff told the Infrastructure and Environment Committee that the Toronto Medical Officer of Health has not altered their opposition to Toronto conducting an e-scooter pilot.

 

The driving reason why City Council unanimously voted against allowing e-scooters two years ago was the strong objection from the disability/seniors’ community. At meeting after meeting of committees of the Toronto City Council over the past several years where this issue has come up, all deputants from the disability and seniors’ communities have told Toronto not to lift the ban on e-scooters. Toronto’s Accessibility Advisory Committee has twice unanimously recommended against Toronto allowing e-scooters.

 

Under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Ontario Human Rights Code, Toronto is required to remove barriers impeding people with disabilities, and to prevent the creation of new disability barriers. It would knowingly create new disability barriers for Toronto to allow e-scooters, whether privately owned or rented, to be ridden in public places, whether permanently or in a pilot project.

 

We agree that it is important to reduce traffic in Toronto, and to fight against climate change. Endangering people with disabilities, seniors and others with the silent menace of e-scooters does not effectively contribute to either of these important goals. There are many other more effective ways to advance those goals, without endangering Toronto’s most vulnerable residents and visitors.

 

Signed,

 

1. Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
2. Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
3. CNIB
4. Accessibility Hamilton Alliance
5. Ontario parents of Visually Impaired Children
6. Accessible Housing Network
7. Spinal Cord Injury Ontario
8. Walk Toronto
9. Centre for Independent Living in Toronto CILT
10. Autism Ontario
11. March of Dimes Canada
12. Guide Dog Users of Canada
13. Citizens with Disabilities Ontario CWDO
14. Canadian Council of the Blind Toronto VisionariesChapter15
15. Ontario Autism Coalition
16. ARCH Disability Law Centre
17. Community Living Toronto
18. Ontario Disability Coalition
19. Balance for Blind Adults
20. Easter Seals Ontario
21. DeafBlind Ontario Services
22. Reena Foundation