大象传媒

When you've had to leap out of the way a few times because some scooter's scattered a crowd of people without any consideration for anyone else, it puts you off them, but it's important to remember it's not the mobility scooters that are at fault: it's the proportion of inconsiderate mobility scooter drivers that are the problem (same problem as with the pushchair rant previously on Ouch!)

I'm not against them: they're a boon to many people. However I am against them being used by people who seem unable or unwilling to control them properly.

Are guest blog entries are edited for grammar and spelling?

Jemma,

I have to walk using crutches and a leg brace. I am paralyzed on the left side from the waist down and partially paralyzed in my right leg, so if I get knocked down I cannot get up off the ground by myself. I walk slow and I cannot jump.
So I find it amazing how many scooter drivers zoom right towards me in a store aisle as if I have the ability to jump out of their way. I feel like I must look like a bowling pin with a bullseye target painted on me, just ripe for being knocked over.

I know people need scooters but I think they should have to get some training and guidlines of how to drive them. Some of them also need to be taught that people on crutches and canes cannot move fast or jump out of the direct line of a scooter at full throttle.

joyjoykelly- you pretty much sumed up my intire post in your comment thanks i really appreshated reading other peoples opinions.

Katja- no guest posts are not really edited very much, if you have a problem with my spelling and grammer i apologise, im really not good at that so the best i can do is run it thu the spellchecker and hope for the best, my inability to spell is part of my disability.

jack P- i compleatly understnad that its down to the individual not the aid

Joyjoykelly: not just people in scooters but people in general (including people who drive cars!) I think need to learn to accept that some people can't jump out of the way quickly. And not all of them necessarily have crutches or canes.

I have a mobility problem with my right foot (basically, the tendons there healed together into a much shorter length than before the multiple times I've injured that foot and torn those tendons over the years). So I can walk, and usually walk without a cane (unless I'm having an unusually "bad food day" or something). So for most people, I don't LOOK like I have a problem. As far as I know (I haven't exactly analyzed my walk), I don't even limp as long as I'm walking at merely moderate speeds. But I still can't run or jump. So sometimes I get nervous crossing the street (unless I have a traffic light timed to give me plenty of time) because I think drivers sometimes just blithely assume pedestrians can rush to get out of the way if they really have to -- but I can't. (I live near Washington DC, by the way. Maybe things would be better in a more aggressively pedestrian-friendly city.)

So far, I haven't had problems with scooters (or the people who ride them), though I know people who use a range of seated mobility devices (for lack of a generic term to cover scooters, manual wheelchairs, and electric wheelchairs). I think temporarily able-bodied people are more likely to get in the way of wheelchair (and scooter) users than the other way around. Though I can still see where people who don't understand how to use scooters responsibly can still be highly annoying or even dangerous.

Curiously, just this morning I was almost hit by one in Tescos and very nearly shouted "LIMIT IT TO 4 MILES AN HOUR!" but the perpetrator had already zoomed off into the distance.

In the past, my mother's car was sideswiped by one on the road, and of course the driver wasn't insured...

I do think they are great. I rely on them at times, but the trouble is that anyone can hire one. Indeed, when I hired one on a day out, they said "we've got a spare, would your mum like one too so you can go round together?"

I wouldn't mind if there was a scooter equivalent of CBT where you could only hire or buy one if you had a piece of paper to show you'd passed a basic test. At least that would weed out people whose sight or perception is too poor for them to ride safely.

Now for the other side of the coin!! I use a mobility scooter as I am only able to walk very short distances. The only people that have been injured by my scooter are those for whatever reason choose to walk into me as if I am not even there. I lose count of the feet I have run over but they only have themselves to blame. I have good vision and am only 40 years old but how ever slow I go the scooter does not stop immediately, there are no brakes and shopping can be extremely frustrating when people constantly walk into you or stop right in front of you to chat. I have even been pushed over sidewards by someone who came charging through a crowd straight into me. He had the bad manners to swear very loudly at me and tell me that it was my fault!!

Jo - why doesn't your scooter have brakes? Some seem better than others for this, but some CAN stop immediately. The ones they hire out at Tate Modern are very good and will stop the second you take your hand off the lever, even on the steep downhill of their turbine hall. The only scooters I've had a big problem with are the "creepers", designed for use on golf courses more than in public places.

I do share your frustration at people who don't see you or won't move, but if you can't brake, can't you briefly throw it into reverse enough to make it halt when you need to?

Jemma, on behalf of the woman in Smiths I bumped into the other day, I apologise.
I have limited experience on scooters as I've only borrowed the Botanical Gardens ones and a shopmobility one a handful of times.
Shops are very different to gardens. Less space, more crowded, bad layout, more potential for bumps and accidents.
Once I get fatigued I know its time to stop. And sometimes you can only know that with experience, and even then be quite far from the drop off point. So the lesson is to only be out for as long as you can concentrate, and stop way before it goes.

Yep i understand that it must be verry difficult to menover a scooter around shoppers whilst trying to shop,(I would be hopeless at this!) I no that in our local woolworths store there was an issue that mobility scooters could not evan fit down the isles at one point, i think its now been sorted.

i think there needs to be a balance between 3 things.

1. people who may use mobility scooters should have some form of training evan if its only for 15 minutes or something (to insure there safty and that of others.

2. Shops need to identify and react to the need for wider isles and better layouts for everyone, having more space would benifit not just people with disabilitys but people with buggys as well.

3. i have no idea about the machanics of mobility scooters but its sounds to me that its dangerious they dont have breacks! all mobility scooters should have breaks evan if its just an emergancy instant engin cut out type thing!

I use a power chair, it is a good one! I can 360 in place and jump the gap of the NYC subways. I agree people should be trained and not just for 15 minutes. I learnt to use a manual chair in rehab and quiickly move up to a power chair. I had about 25 hours of training. Manuvering through cones, practicing on elevators and in stores, on crowded sidewalk, backing up, getting on & off buses and trains.

I been run into by another power chair, which put me in the hospital for weeks with a leg injury. But to be honest, I've been injured more often and badly by baby carriages and shopping carts.

How about when you're sitting off to the side with the power off and being crashed into by a shopping cart or pedestrian and then yells at you?

And then there are people who see you and yell and jump or who decide to speed up to jump over or cross in front of you?

I try to be aware of Blind & low vision individuals saying "power chair to your left or right" when passing head on or when lapping them.

Courtesy is important under all circumstances. Using a chair or mobility device should not abrogate common corrtesy!

Jemma, thanks for your response and explanation. I am judgmental about spelling and grammar, and am trying to work out whether this is causing me to miss valuable writing and thinking, and if I can change.

Jemma had the following suggestions:

1. people who may use mobility scooters should have some form of training evan if its only for 15 minutes or something (to insure there safty and that of others.
2. Shops need to identify and react to the need for wider isles and better layouts for everyone, having more space would benifit not just people with disabilitys but people with buggys as well.
3. i have no idea about the machanics of mobility scooters but its sounds to me that its dangerious they dont have breacks! all mobility scooters should have breaks evan if its just an emergancy instant engin cut out type thing!

In addition to these, I suggest this one:

4. Other people in the store need to share some of the responsibility as well. For example, by avoiding some of the behaviors that scooter-users here have complained about where temporarily able bodied people don't always look where they're going and then ram right into them. And they also need to understand that most aided forms of mobility (manual or electric wheelchair; scooter; walker; crutches; or even a cane) do require a "walking path" (rolling path? hobbling path?) about as wide as the width of a wheelchair-accessible door. So when they see someone in a scooter (chair, crutches, yada yada) coming, this means they have to move aside considerably more than the four inches (about 10 cm) than most temporarily able-bodied people allow when they see someone coming their way!

For those of you who like reading rants, I have now written a rant all my own, about people who fail to give people using mobility aids enough room to actually get by. This rant was partly inspired by Jemma's rant here and the subsequent dialogue we've had about it:

(Note: clicking on my name above will not take you to the the blog I'm referring to. It links to my other blog site instead.)

ANOTHER VIEW POINT
I remember my very first school with affection. While the 3Rs were paramount, we were also taught how to care for our nails and wash out hands properly, to walk on the outside of a lady on a pavement. To open doors for ladies and older persons, and to please and thank you.
Am I barmy most of you are thinking? Well of course it doesn't happen today does it?
This WAS in 1946 and onward after all.
However my 3 children now aged 46. 35 and 21 are the epitome of politeness, something I shall at be remembered for hopefully.

My point is yes I am one of those horrible mobility scooter users. However I shall not defend the idiots who abuse scooters to the detriment of the general public. Just as I would not do so for the idiots who do the same things in the more dangerous form of transport namely.. the car!

So let me give all of you an insight into riding a scooter. On a typical visit to the nearest supermarket I have to negotiate 4 traffic islands over pavements that resemble the aftermath of a volcano, or is it perhaps the site of a utility service convention, most with no drop kerbs, and where the white van driver will use me for target practice if I venture to cross anywhere, or the kiddie winks souped up minis who are oblivious to anybody except their female audience packed in like sardines.

Try pedestrian crossing signals that change from green to red when your halfway across, or a Zebra Crossing(Yes there are still some about)which may as well not be there as far as most drivers are concerned. I still consider pavements to be principally for pedestrians and therefore ALWAYS give then precedence, sometime to my detriment as the majority never acknowledge my politeness.

Finally a relaxed perusal around Morrisons. Whoops! While negotiating the ladies who spread their trolleys across the aisle while stretching for Pate' on the other side, or the shelf stacker who has parked his load in the centre of the aisle and is filling one of the only two very narrow spaces to replenish the shelves. Try waiting politely for a lady with a full trolley to pass and then having to put up with abuse from shoppers behind.

A lady once said 鈥淭hose things shouldn鈥檛 be allowed in places like this 鈥�(Supermarket) when I asked why she said that my scooter was too big, it took up too much space. I followed her and catching her up in home cooking section I pulled alongside and pointed out that taking into account her trolley and herself she was at least two foot longer, and besides I added I was far less dangerous than her and a deal more polite. She avoided me at the tills.

In conclusion may I add that while I consider shoppers far more rude and unthinking than me, they are taken for granted, but a rude and inconsiderate mobility scooter user is rare but easily singled out and I for one am embarrassed by them.

as a partially sited person I fined it infuriating that 1 of the people that uses my local pub parks his scooter right in the middle of the double doors.
normally it is not a problem but if the light is wrong then I can not c it and it has caused me to trip on 1 or to occasions. I think that part of the problem is that people just don't think about others.
the same can be said about the people that park there cars half on the pavement so they don't have to drive 2 minutes up the road and fined a proper space.

Hi.

I am a monbility scooter rider and may i say that most of your comments are talking about me and other like me as if we are inferior to you

I see both sides of the coin, I walk around my local town on 2 crustches when i am out of college and get very annopyed when people on scooters pay no attention to where they are going.

Yet when i am on mine i ride consideratley at 8mph when ity is appropriate and when it is not i ride slower. If there are people around me i patiently wait behind them (unlike bike riders) then if a gap forms i pass them safely.

What is rong with that???

I say that when abled bodies people see the driver of a mobility scooter they think that the person is incapable of slowing down, well thats not tru or the person wudnt be on the scooter.........

When people see me riding down the road they look (very horribly) then (even though i am more than happy to move out of their way) they move out of mine.

It's their choice if they move, the problem isnt that mobility scooters go too fast, it is narrow minded arseholes who have nothing good in their lives and so need to complain about mobility scooters - the scooters are not fast and they are not dangerous in the right hands - i shud know i ride one responsibly but situations arise whereby people move out of the way if they gage they are walking slower than me - when they move what am i supposed to do pass them or not pass them??

Different story for push bikes aint it???

perhaps thats cuz there riders aint disabled but they are much faster and alot more dangerous. So grow up! !