The growing use of mobility devices

The BBQ Pit
121

Scooters are not Segways.

Scooters can go up to 10 m.p.h. however it is possible to mechnically limit their potential speed via a regulator, and they are all hampered speedwise by the mass that they are carrying. The heavier the passenger and his/her belongings, the slower the scooter’s going to go.

Scylla, you’ve put forth the claim that the presence of mobility scooters is dangerous and the number of them in use any given place needs to be limited to only those who can prove a medical need. But you haven’t proven that they are being used by people who don’t have a medical need. You also haven’t shown any proof that there is any significant risk of injury from scooter accidents. You’ve given no statistics, no accounts of injuries sustained in a pedestrian-scooter accidents, nothing on point whatsoever.

Your stance:

Dangerous is unproven. Inconvenient is a matter of opinion. Provide an on-point cite for the danger as you see it, and recognize that there are plenty of people who consider the presence of mobility scooters to be no more inconvenient than the presence of baby strollers and wheelchairs, so there is no standing for you to present such a statement as fact.

Irrelevant, self-serving, not necessarily in evidence given your posturing about what conditions you consider worthy of scooter use. (In case you’re confused, it isn’t your right to judge.)

Which means that those on scooters should stay out of your personal space and you should do the same for them. Similarly, as scooter users take care to avoid driving into you (or near misses) you should take care to not walk into the path of an oncoming scooter or stop short in front of one which would greatly heighten the chances of an accident. The responsibility cuts both ways.

Until you can prove that limiting use in this manner will heighten your safety (which is the only quantifiable issue, you’re not entitled. And as for your convenience, that’s a matter of preference and you have no right to demand that your personal definition of convenience is catered to in any fashion. Deal with it.

What courtesy are you offering, exactly? You have to co-exist with people on this planet, some of whom are going to use mobility devices to get around. The only courtesy you have to offer is to appropriately recognize their existence as they also recognize yours, which isn’t anything special, it’s common and unremarkable and you needn’t act like it’s something more than that.

122

Fat slugs at Wal-Mart need those creepy things. And what’s up with the ‘greeters’ anyway? Can you be under 100 years old and get that job? I mean, without being a drooling submoron?

123

tlw:

Yes there is and I’ve addressed this.

Take a scooter and person’s combined mass and square it with the velocity. That is the energy of a collision. A human being is made out of flesh and bone, a Scooter is made out steel and ABS plastic. The human being is also smaller. The human being will have to absorb the impact of the scooter.

Let’s put it into perspective. My 3 year old daughter weighs 30 pounds. I weigh two hundred. Let’s say a scooter and occupant weighs 300 pounds, and your basic sedan type car weighs 2000 pounds.

That scooter is to my daughter as a car is to me.

We can safely assume that both vehicles are subject to the same limitations of human error, and represents the same dangers. The difference is that nobody is so stupid as to allow automobiles to drive on sidewalks.

A 5-10mph impact to me from a car is the same as a 5-10 mph impact to my daughter from a scooter.

A bay carriage and occupant on the other hand will be of somewhere around 50 pounds mass or less and limited to a 3 mph pace.

Clearly they are not equivalent.

The danger is inherent in the physics of the situation on a basic level.

It isn’t my right to judge? Well gee, I’ve only pointed that out myself about a dozen times in this very thread. Aren’t you observant? Or haven’t you noticed that that’s why I’ve argued for a Doctor to make the judgement?

Do you recommend that I walk backwards or that I grow eyes in the back of my head?

Proof: More scooters = more risk. Less scooters=less.

Exactly.

124

YOU are the one objecting…to increased use of mobility devices. YOU are the one judging those that you saw in the park that “Looked Healthy” or however you put it.

I am not objecting to limiting “rentals” to those with legitimate medical needs. I am objecting to the implausibility of enforcing that, when the legitimate use of handicapped acessible parking can’t even be controlled. Let’s say that the Anti-Scylla comes from BizarroWorld and steals my handicap hang-tag. (Using handicap plates on the car is just begging some miscreant to follow you home, as is driving with the tag hanging on the mirror.) The Anti-Scylla then proceeds to park in handicap spaces. If you can’t control the middle-aged guy who has a tag of his Mom’s (for when he takes her to the doctor) from using it at the supermarket, how will you control further abuses to the system? Will the “card issuing authority” still be the DMV, with the proper paperwork from the doctor? You’re building another layer of bureaucracy, another mountain of paperwork.

Of all the things this country needs, another layer of bureaucracy is NOT one of them.

And don’t question my mental abilities, Scylla. I’m not the one that can’t conceive of a person with a NON-visible handicap. Nor am I the one with the difficulty dealing with the concept of (very)temporary disability. Most of us realize that the medical system is overloaded as it exists, and making doctors be Hall Monitors won’t help. Maybe YOUR union insurance would pay for an appointment to go get a temporary disabled-person permission slip, but most insurance won’t. Medicare sure as HELL won’t.

125

OK, 30,000 scooters in the Magic Kingdom is certainly an exaggeration. But at some point scooters do impact the capacity of the park. It isn’t one scooter but its certainly is reached by 30,000. So what number of scooters could the Magic Kingdom handle? 100? 1000? 5000? Don’t know. It would depend on a couple of things - weather, park attendence (scooters would be less problematic on a day with low attendence), the mean driving ability of the scooter users, the number of strollers in the park.

Is their a danger that Disney will reach the point where there are too many scooters? Perhaps. I do know that their use has been climbing in the parks - it is now recommended by self styled Disney experts (see www.wdwig.com, or the disability boards at www.disboards.com) that if you need a EVC, you rent one offsite and have it delivered, as Disney runs out of them fairly early in the day - especially at busy times of the year. (I’ve been researching a Disney trip involving my mother in law, who may need mobility assistance - she’s in pretty darn good shape, but does have some degenerative disc problems in her back, and she is over 70 - so like others posting to this thread, may or may not need mobility assistance.) It is also true that this issue has been reported to have gotten worse - Disney runs out of scooters faster now than they used to - or at least that is the perception of people who have rented them over a number of years at Disney - it ain’t the sort of thing you can google up stats for. I can’t guess what people will or will not do en masse - I would have never guessed we’d have sat through an entire season of “Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire,” - nor that such a thing would ever make the cover of People - so I’m not willing to go out on a limb and say “casual” usage of scooters will or will not increase, nor at what rate. (I’m going to use “casual” to mean used by someone who could walk without much difficultly or pain, but prefers the scooter as opposed to someone who requires the scooter to compensate for a physical limitation.)

At what rate are scooters used casually? I don’t know. Last I checked, this thread was in the Pit, and not Great Debates, where you could rant illogically about something without needing to do statistical research. To a certain extent, scooters are a real pain in the butt for the person using them. Its hard (and sometimes impossible) to move them on and off public transportation. Its difficult to fit into aisles or between the racks in a lot of stores. They apparently aren’t the world’s most manuveurable things. You are fairly low to the ground sitting in them, which makes it hard to see over and around people. I’m pretty sure that the majority of people who use them are using them because they need to. But I’m also pretty sure that there is some portion of the population using them casually (I’m a cynic on the power of laziness and the appeal of riding rather than walking) - as well as a portion using them irresponsibly (whether casually or not )- i.e. not driving carefully. Do we get to gripe if its .01%? Do we have to wait until we can prove its 5% of the scooter using population? Or do we need a clear majority - does Scylla have to prove that 51% of ECV users don’t need them in order to have a gripe. Can we combine our gripe into “casual” users along with “irresponsible” users - maybe reach the gripe threshhold that way? Maybe we need to throw in a rant about bikers and rollerbladers who use the bike/pedistrian path in the park without paying attention, and those darn people in the shopping mall who bang your ankles with the backs of their strollers. Expand the gripe a little to the fact that Hershey park and Disney (Wal-Mart, the zoo, where ever) weren’t designed for scooters in the first place.

Maybe the problem is imaginary. Maybe every single human being who uses a scooter has a valid medical reason to use one and every single time a person feels like an ECV has been handled unsafely, its actually the pedistrians fault. Maybe there has been no increase in the number of ECVs in public in the past ten years. Maybe you guys are right and Scylla should be burned at the stake for his insensitive generalizations about every ECV user on the face of the Earth.

I think Scylla has a point. It isn’t an “end of the world, what a tragedy, there ought to be a law” point (and I’m not big on the idea of making it so you need a permit to drive an ECV - though I would support a private enterprise from requiring some sort of perscription). I wouldn’t suggest we march on Washington or anything. But his point is at least as sharp as a worn Crayola.

126

**

It seems like it works pretty good to me. There are generally handicapped spaces available at most malls and department stores.

Surely you would agree that the situation is a lot better than it would be without them, wouldn’t you?

The system is a vast improvement over just trusting people to leave spaces free at the front, wouldn’t you agree?

Simply because it is absolutely not perfect is no excuse not to implement a vast improvement.

Nor am I. I question your mental abilities specifically because you are making these stupid and insupportable accusations. Stop with the stupid accusations and I will presume intelligence.

127

http://www.sli.unimelb.edu.au/zerger/lectures/451-335/projects/fuller/gis.htm

According to that cite in the city of Whitehorse your likelihood per mile travelled of being in an accident is 40% greater on a scooter than in a car. In fact the only vehicle more likely to be in a crash is a motorcycle.

128

Upon further review that cite also concludes that the vehicle type is the least important factor for determining accident likelihood.

In other words, we can assume that the automobile accident statistics will be directly applicable.

The most dangerous place for pedestrians is where automobiles and pedestrians travel along the same space, i.e. crosswalks.

From this we can assume the danger of being struck by a mobility device on a suface that is shared by both these devices and pedestrians is roughly equivalent (all other things being equal,) to being struck on by a car on a crosswalk, or in a parking lot.

I expect Hershey park to be safer than a giant crosswalk or a mall parking lot.

129

My three year old daughter playing in Hershey Park is facing the same danger as if she were playing in traffic. In fact, she is Her danger increases with the number of scooters just as it would with the increase of traffic if she were playing in a parking lot or a street.

Since they are equivalent, and in fact more likely to be involved in an accident per mile travelled than a car, not having at least the same controls as we have in place for cars is insanely irresponsible.

Guess what the largest determining factor is on accident likelihood?

Age.

Who uses these scooters a lot again?

130

good night.

131

Scylla,

You seem to pick the most interesting things in my posts to get worked up about.

And you take such odd views of what i’ve said that I don’t quite understand HOW you do it.

Do you really think that there IS NOT widespread abuse of the handicapped parking available? There is.

But I think i’ll take a clue from some others here.

Of course, Scylla. Whatever. MMMMH HHHHHM, yep, OK you nailed it, uh huh. You betcha.

Have a nice day, y’hear??

<click>

132

If the City of Whitehorse was referring to mobility scooters in that study as opposed to the two-wheeled, low-powered, motorcycle-analogue variety sold by Honda and other companies, I’ll eat my hat.

133

No Babes. You need to read the post, Hon.

I am saying that there is abuse, but the system is much better than no system.

We have no system with disability scooters. Considerable improvement is both feasible and desirable.

134

Maybe. It doesn’t really matter. The dynamics of crash likelihood are spelled out.

The two most important factors are conditions and the age of the driver.

The conditions in an environment such as an amusement park or mall populated by heavy pedestrian traffic are going to score very poorly.

The type of vehicle is the least important factor to determining collision likelihood.

The parking lot analogy holds. That’s the environment we are creating when we allow heavy and unrestricted scooter traffic to mingle with pedestrians.

135

Actually, take it from an insurer – the three most important risk factors in Motor Third Party Liability (as opposed to Motor Property Damage) are:

  • The density of the traffic where the car is driven
  • The ability of the driver
  • The speed at which the vehicle is usually driven and its general level of performance.

These are nigh on impossible to measure, so we are left with the following common proxies:

  • The use to which the vehicle is put
  • The occupation of the driver
  • Sex of main driver
  • Age of driver
  • Make and model of vehicle
  • The extent of any modification to the engine or body.

(Before anybody gets huffy, the reasons that these proxies work are non-trivial and don’t necessarily have the immediate causal link that you might assume.)

But all this is somewhat irrelevant and off the point, don’t you think?

The point is whether undoubtedly dangerous actions should be sanctioned where those dangerous actions are unnecessary.

For all the incredibly reasonable points raised by wring et al, I kinda feel that they don’t really get at this core issue. I have sympathy for the feelings involved – really I do – but the fact remains that driving a vehicle around an amusement park has a potential for disaster. It would appear that in certain circumstances this potential may be easily avoidable. As such, I don’t think that requesting that those who seek to undertake this dangerous act require some form of licence is unreasonable. Especially if that licence is as straightforward as simply getting a doctor’s sign-off.

To me, Scylla has really gone out of his way from word one to avoid the implication that he Knows Who the Culprites Are. Quite the reverse: he is actually quite happy to abide by a doctor’s decision even where he wouldn’t agree with it if he had full possession of the facts.

I think that Scylla has really tried with this topic. He’s accepted that noone should have to justify to him their use of fairground rides or buggy use. He’s accepted that there are reasons that may not be immediately obvious why someone might need a buggy. He’s just made the not unreasonable leap that where you have human nature and free buggies juxtaposed, you’re going to get abuse of the system - abuse he feels is a dangerous unnecessity.

Evaluate the claim on those merits. Even if you on balance disagree, you should still admit that the claim has some validity.

pan

136

How peculiar. My last post didn’t actually bump the thread, nor was I registered as the last poster (despite multiple refreshings since the posting, the last poster is still Scylla). Hopefully this post will rectify matters and ensure that my magnus opus obtains the attention it so clearly needs er… deserves.

pan

137

all due respect and all kabbes you’re missing quite a bit.

your data re: accidents etc. are car related. Scylla and you are both attempting to relate accidents re: autos and streets and use it as a predictor for scooters and outdoor theme parks.

I submit to you that’s not a good match, that better data exists - ie this isn’t a ‘new’ thing they’ve just discovered, carts have been around for years. And, if the risk is as real as Scylla claims, there should be hard data for us to see re: cart use in theme parks causing real injuries to people. then we could assess the relative risk of same.

He attempts to use descriptions of other types of carts to bolster his argument. I’d agree, for example that if people were using a Humvee as transport around theme parks, that’d be risky. But I shouldn’t be able to use that example to demonstrate that there’s a risk from the carts that are actually in use.

Your list of variables for example - the part does in fact (mostly) control the type and speed of the vehicles. Each one, for instance has different relative stopping distances. and the park also has complete control over the speed of the vehicles. they can be set to only go as fast as the normal human walks, ambling along. This would drastically reduce any potential for accidents. for all we know, the parks may already be doing this, which would explain the lack of existing data.

and again the accidents are the issue. He’s claiming sufficient risk to his family that would warrent anyone else’s actions. and to warrent regulating other peoples activities, intrusions into their personal lives, financial costs, there needs to be some measurable level of risk. Not ‘it could happen’ but 'it does happen, and frequently enough that we need to regulate it for everyone. For example, if over the course of a year, over all of the theme parks in the US, there’s one accident between a scooter and a pedestrian, does that come up to the level of ‘problem that must be regulated’? I’d suggest that no, it wouldn’t (you’re the actuary, you understand these things, right? ) and that’s what I’ve been pointing out to him and he simply repeats his mantra of ‘big thing going fast, little person not noticing, big thing would hurt little person’. Nobody is denying that.

What I am and have been saying is that he’s failed over and over to demonstrate that such events happen at all, let alone happen to the degree that would warrent an intrusion on hundreds of other people, causing financial damage to them etc. I submit that there is no evidence to support that thesis presented to date. Not just ‘insufficient’. but none.
so, no, his arguement does not have substance.

He may as well (as I’ve mentioned several times) be talking about doing vaccination screenings, SARS screenings, TB screenings etc to everyone prior to admission.

The SARS example is a good one. Are we globally all taking precautions for public gatherings? no, only in areas where there’s a demonstrated level of risk. And in this case, he’s failed to demonstrate an actual level of risk.

138

Wring:

To my abilities to find them, nobody appears to be actually tracking statistics on accidents caused by disability carts.

This does not mean that the risk is “nil” as you would like say.

I find it unbelievable that you are unwilling to acknowledge the hazard these things represent.

That hazard inherent in the basic physics of the situation, and for all your complaining about lack of evidence, I have not seen you address that logic.

The Crash likelihood index that I linked to provides you with a primer on what factors lead to accidents with people in motorized vehicles.

If one rationally examines the data and formula, no other reasonable conclusion can be drawn that these things represent more of a crash likelihood than a car.

Here’s all the reasons.

  1. You are mixing pedestrians and vehicles together. We do this already. These places are called intersections and parking lots. They are statistically likely places for accidents.

  2. Pedestrians move erratically and unpredictably. Combined reaction times and scooter stopping times do not allow for safe navigation of pedestrians.

  3. Crowded “traffic” is an indicator for accidents.

  4. Scooters provide a low profile of visibility to their drivers compared with the height of pedestrians. Poor visibility is an indicator of accident likelihood.

  5. Time and experience with a vehicle is also an indicator of accident potential. A rented scooter is by definition a vehicle that the driver is unfamiliar with.

  6. Age of driver is a factor. These vehicles are often operated by the elderly.

  7. General environment. Pedestrian footpaths are generally not designed with vehicles in mind.

Wring, these statistics and this formula applies to cars, buses, taxis, motorcycles, etc etc. The Crash Likelihood index is designed to be a tool used to evaluate the likelihood of an accident with a motorized vehicle.

Scooters are motorized vehicles. The statistics and risk factors apply.

139

Kabbes:

Thank you very much for understanding where I’m coming from. Will you marry me?

140

and all of your points, counter points fall by the wayside with the one sentence “I am unable to locate any data”. Can’t you see that perhaps the reason for the lack of data is the lack of events? we have data (generally speaking) of how many people get shot, die of heart attacks, die of bee stings, die in car accidents. We don’t have any data on how many people die from drowning in jello, die from inhaling pine trees. NOt that those are impossible, just that they’re rare enough to not track.

I understand where you’re coming from. But you’ve not got any evidence to back you up.
Remember way back when we argued about hunting??? One of my arguements then was that the hunter did not have the right to raise my risk of injury at all, especially for something that wasn’t a ‘necessity’ for them. (sound familier to you, eh? the principal should, it’s the same thing you’re arguing here - that w/o a valid reason to raise my risk you shouldn’t be able to).

My arguement was rejected the by the hunters, indicating that the ‘level of risk’ wasn’t substantial enough to warrent you changing your actions.

the major difference between the two positions, and what I’ve been trying to hammer home to you is that, at least in the hunter stance, there was real world data on events where innocent bystanders did in fact get hurt and die by hunters actions. Every year. the data is available. cause it happens every year. Yes, not frequently (which was their arguement then), but it happens.

you’re wanting other people, who already have problems to face, to face yet another hurdle in their day to day existence (not simply leasure, for the grocery store example), costing them $$, because of a possible risk, that you foresee might happen, but there’s no record shown that it actually does.

and I’m saying that’s unreasonable.

again - it’s absolutely possible for your daughter to contract TB from passer bys at that same theme park. Yet you’re not insisting that all entrants submit proof of TB screening. Why not? it could happen ya know.