My guest appearance on CBC’s Cross Country Checkup

Written By Jamie Stuckless

On July 20th, the question Canadians were invited to discuss on CBC’s Cross Country Checkup was related to e-scooters: are they revolutionizing your daily commute, or are they an accident waiting to happen? I was invited to be one of their expert guests.

Asked by host Ian Hanomansing where municipalities should allow e-scooters, I spoke about the need to provide facilities like bike lanes and multi-use paths for riders. Several callers before me spoke about their experiences with e-scooters on sidewalks, and I emphasized that sidewalks are not built to accommodate e-scooters.

The safety of people walking and using mobility devices is the priority on sidewalks. However, we also need to stop asking e-scooter riders to make the choice between sharing a road lane with huge motor vehicles going 40 or 50km/h (twice the legal maximum speed of an e-scooter!), or hopping up on the sidewalk where they may feel safer.

We know from surveys that e-scooter riders prefer to ride in bike lanes and cycle tracks, and research shows that when bike infrastructure is provided, sidewalk cycling is reduced.

Yes, we need education on where to ride e-scooters, but real behaviour change also comes from providing designated spaces to ride that are separate from people walking and driving.

You can listen to the full episode online. My clip is around the 51:10 minute mark.

New numbers on e-scooter injuries

The show’s focus on e-scooters was due to recent data showing e-scooter injuries on the rise across Canada since their introduction a few years ago.

Another guest on the show was Dr. Raghu Venugopal, an emergency physician at 3 Toronto area hospitals. They spoke about the injuries that doctors across the country are seeing from e-scooters, including head injuries, spine fractures, face injuries, rib fractures, broken arms, soft tissue injuries, and more. They also spoke about the demographics and factors most involved in e-scooter collisions, which are young males, intoxication, not wearing a helmet, riding late at night, and speed.

Dr. Venugopal emphasized that they were not against micromobility, but that e-scooter need more regulations and control. The doctor also highlighted that in terms of the numbers, cars remain the major danger on our roads.

The top 3 pieces of advice offered by Dr. Venugopal on behalf of hospitals are:

  1. Wear a helmet

  2. Never ride while intoxicated

  3. All vehicles need to reduce speeds, and e-scooters should not travel above 24km/h.

Additional advice included ensuring that no one under 16 years of age rides an e-scooter, securing cargo if you are carrying any, and staying off your phone.

You can listen to the full clip from Dr. Venugopal starting around the 33:35 minute mark.

Other thoughts on the topic

I was only on the show for a few minutes, but if we had more time to cover the topic, here are a few other things I would have mentioned.

Minimum rider age

I am troubled by the number of children being injured while riding e-scooters. In Ontario, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, no one under 16 years is permitted to ride an e-scooter. In other communities like Calgary and Edmonton, the minimum age is even higher at 18 years of age. These are not toys for children. Unfortunately, there seems to be little to no information available about this at the point of sale, and people can simply purchase an e-scooter online or at a store regardless of rider age. This needs to change.

First time rider safety

Inexperience on an e-scooter is an important factor in e-scooter injuries, with about 1/3 of injuries happening on a rider’s first trip. It’s strange to me that learning to ride a bike is often treated as such a significant moment, and important safety step, but with e-scooters, we just expect that people can hop on and go for a whole journey their first time? There’s a learning curve to riding an e-scooter, and people should take time to practice and learn the rules. Some shared systems (e.g., Hamilton) even have a first time rider mode, where the e-scooter is capped at a lower speed when it’s a riders first time.

Inconsistency and communication

E-scooters are essentially being tested on a city-by-city basis, and the rules differ from one place to another. Not only that, but they can be permitted in one city (e.g., Mississauga and Hamilton) and prohibited altogether in the neighbouring community (e.g., Toronto and Burlington). This is making it hard to have any kind of cohesive educational messaging about where and how to ride, or coordination across vendors to share the rules of the road. The point of many of these pilots is to test if and how e-scooters fit into our transportation mix, but I hope one of the lessons we take away is how confusing it is for everyone when the rules are different in each community and no one takes responsibility for overseeing the sale of transportation devices.

Why people are riding e-scooters

I don’t want to lose sight of why we have seen such growth in e-scooter ridership since they started being introduced 5 years ago: people like riding them and find them useful. While we don’t have comprehensive ridership data, the North American Bikeshare and Scootershare Association (NABSA) reports that in 2023 there were 5.9 million e-scooter trips in Canada. This is an 85% increase from the previous year, which saw 3.2 million e-scooter trips. These stats only include trips made using shared rental systems, and do not capture the many trips made on personally owned devices. Some of the main reasons people are riding include connecting to transit, replacing car trips, travelling outside of transit operating hours, enjoyment, and cost savings.

Riding advice

Much of the advice I would give about riding an e-scooter lines up with the advice given by Dr. Venugopal during the show, but here are the points I jotted down in my interview notes in case I needed them:

  • Only ride an e-scooter if you are over 16 years old.

  • Be familiar with the rules and where you can ride.

  • Never ride an e-scooter with a passenger.

  • Take it slow, you don’t have to go max speed, and are prohibited from travelling faster than 24km/h (or 25km/h depending on the province).

  • Slow down around other people, give lots of space when passing people on a trail, and ring your bell.

  • Start by practicing somewhere away from cars and pedestrians so you can familiarize yourself with the e-scooter.

  • Wear a helmet. In some cases, it’s required by law, but it’s always encouraged, especially when trying something new.

  • Pay attention to where you are going and the road surfacing. Things like potholes, curbs, and sewer grates can be harder to ride on with the smaller e-scooter wheels.

References

For more information, check out these source documents:

Jamie Stuckless
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