Licensed to ride?

BY MAIKE VAN DER HEIDE

Mobility scooters provide transport for many Marlburians. But for some drivers getting round town can be a nightmare. And with scooters getting more powerful, should drivers be licensed?

Joyce Brown had to hand in her car licence in May because glaucoma has led to her eyesight deteriorating.

Now, instead of her white car, a shiny blue mobility scooter with an orange flag sits in her garage at Redwood Retirement Village.

Ninety-one-year-old Mrs Brown had no problems behind the wheel of a car, but she is terrified of the scooter. She worries it will tip over on an uneven kerb and until now has dared to do only a quick trip around the block.

One day, she hopes, she will be able to take it to the shops.

Sherryl Bourke, an Age Concern volunteer and committee member, began using her husband's scooter after he died in 2006.

Like Mrs Brown, she feared the scooter, but now she could not do without it. She scooters into town at least once a week for her voluntary work and shopping, for which she would otherwise have to take a taxi. Even with a half-price taxi voucher through the Marlborough District Council's Total Mobility Scheme, the cost could become a stretch.

Both women have bright orange flags attached to their scooters that poke above the traffic. They are well aware how vulnerable they are.

Mrs Bourke has to cross busy Nelson St to get into town, which can be a nail-biting experience.

On good days, truck and car drivers alike sometimes stop for her, "which I don't expect them to" and grin when she waves her thanks.

The Marlborough District Council's Access and Mobility forum group chair and deputy mayor Jenny Andrews says it is these good old-fashioned manners that help mobility scooter riders, pedestrians and traffic co-exist happily.

She takes her hat off to scooter riders, most of whom are skilled and considerate, she says.

"One of the scariest things I've done in my life is riding one of those scooters along Redwood St ... these people face that every day. You were low to the ground ... you had to trust that [drivers] could see you ... you're just very vulnerable. If you're disabled you can't just get off."

Mrs Andrews has campaigned for years to get better access for wheelchair and scooter users in Marlborough.

She reckons Blenheim has one of the highest, if not the highest, percentages of scooters per head of population.

"They're absolutely amazing Where would people be if they did not have them? My mother-in-law is 89 and it's her independence."

Blenheim scooter riders are pretty well catered for when it comes to access in buildings, but a common complaint is that high fences outside houses make it hard to see cars coming out of driveways. This, particularly when the cars are reversing, creates a real hazard, and scooter riders have been injured or killed in this way.

In 2008, 89-year-old Isabella Wilson McKenzie, of Stoke, died after being hit by a car reversing from a driveway.

According to Tasman district road policing manager Hugh Flower it was Nelson's first fatal crash involving a mobility scooter.

In the last five years, 12 people have died nationwide and more than 100 have been injured – 19 seriously – in accidents involving mobility scooters.

Marlborough has not escaped the statistics.

In 2007, Beth Morrison, of Blenheim, drove her scooter into a temporary wire fence at the A and P Showgrounds. The top of the wire caught Mrs Morrison under the neck. She later died of her injuries .

In 2006, Elva Ellison, of Invercargill, was run over by a mobility scooter in Picton and badly injured her ankle, which needed surgery and a metal plate and screws.

The 89-year-old rider was discharged without conviction in court but ordered to pay $2000 reparation to Mrs Ellison after pleading guilty to careless use of a vehicle causing injury.

Constable Michelle Stagg, of Blenheim, says that case was the only crash involving a mobility scooter that she could remember going to court.

Marlborough police do not receive many complaints about the scooters, Ms Stagg says.

In a town with so many scooters, there are bound to be accidents. In February this year, a 57-year-old woman who crashed her mobility scooter into a parked car in Blenheim suffered injuries to her neck and abdominal area.

In March 2008, a 61-year-old woman was treated for facial injuries at Wairau Hospital's emergency department after an accident on her motorised scooter in Blenheim.

Earlier this year, coroner Richard McElrea called for all mobility scooters to have visibility flags as a sequel to a 77-year-old Christchurch woman being hit by a car as she crossed a Riccarton road in October 2008.

Legally, mobility scooter riders have few rules to abide by. While they can be held accountable if they injure someone, they do not have a speed limit and they do not need a licence. Land Transport New Zealand encourages riders to use the footpaths but at a speed not dangers to others.

Last week TV3 reported that the AA was calling for mandatory training for scooter drivers after a spike in accident rates.

But AA national manager for driver training Karen Dickson says the AA cannot make such calls and was instead pushing for more driver education.

With more people using mobility scooters, accident rates will probably increase, Ms Dickson says.

"Driver education should be available to everyone and we would like to see more people take up that offer. We would strongly say that the more education put into it the better."

Mrs Andrews says a compulsory licence would come with a cost attached that may put riders off. How often would they need to be tested? What courses would they do? How much would this cost? "There's a lot of strings attached."

Yet scooters are getting bigger and some are getting faster, and Road Safety Marlborough, through Marlborough Roads, no longer offers the group training courses that they did a few years ago because funding from the New Zealand Transport Association (NZTA) has not been available.

Marlborough District Council road safety co-ordinator Robyn Blackburn, who has taken over the road safety role from Marlborough Roads, says the NZTA does not consider scooter training a priority because of the low accident rate. So if Marlborough was to get any road safety funding at all for the next two years, she had to apply for programmes the NZTA considered important.

They included motorcycle safety, reducing drugged and drunk drivers, cycle safety and the number of speeding motorists.

Mrs Blackburn says she considers mobility scooter training important and she hopes to apply for extra funding in future to relaunch the courses.

Age Concern Marlborough field officer Helen North says training, even compulsory training, is advisable, although she does not know who would be responsible for compulsory training.

"There should be guidelines and an assessment of people's ability to use them safely. Sort of like a driver's licence so people are aware of the safety issues," Mrs North says.

But at the same time, pedestrians need to be aware of scooters. "Consideration and courtesy goes a long way."

But more and more Marlborough people need scooters and scooters are getting faster.

"I was on one yesterday that did 17 kilometres an hour," cycle shop Avanti Plus owner Bill Mitchell says.

What were once slow-moving little rideable chairs are now swish, zippy machines, complete with add-ons such as baskets, tandem chairs and even trailers. Most do about 12kmh.

Mr Mitchell has been selling them for 27 years and has seen improvements in seat comforts, full suspension added and even scooters that slow down on corners.

There may be good new safety features, but he reckons a training course wouldn't go amiss.

"They wouldn't need to get a licence, but just to go through a course would be quite good.

"There are women who have never driven a car, never had a licence. There are those sorts of people who are just totally scared when they hop on.

"I think like everything there's a couple of naughty ones, but overall they're pretty good.

"There's more bad drivers than bad scooter owners."

Steve Cartwright, of Nelson mobility scooter supplier Moov'n On, sells about 30 scooters a year to Marlborough.

"There's a huge amount of users in Marlborough; it's probably more than Nelson to be honest," Mr Cartwright says.

Although scooters are getting faster, 90 per cent still go about 12kmh, he says.

Requests from customers have included bags, walker holders and trailers to use in the garden or at the shops. An outstanding request came from a Havelock man who wanted a trailer to cart concrete up and down his pathway to the foreshore. Sadly, the scooter did not have enough grunt.

Despite improvements and increase in size, price has decreased dramatically.

The average cost for a new scooter is $3000 to $5500, whereas many years ago they cost $7000 to $8000.

Mr Cartwright sells about 20 different models. When delivering a scooter, he spends time with the customer teaching him or her to ride it safely and properly. Users can apply for training courses funded by Marlborough Roads.

But Mr Cartwright doesn't think further courses should be compulsory because there are not many accidents involving scooters, and those that do happen are often not the fault of the scooter rider.

If a customer has particular trouble with a scooter, Mr Cartwright encourages them to talk to family about getting help, or being accompanied on at least their first few journeys.

"Most people are in their 80s when they buy one and they've been driving for 60 years, but suddenly they're not allowed to drive. And now they're told they can't do this or that ... the last straw is that you're so bad you need to do a scooter course before you can drive it."

However, he thinks there should be annual compulsory checks on the scooter itself, like a warrant of fitness on a car.

"[There's] a lot of old scooters around, some of them shouldn't really be used. Some of them aren't safe."

People have come to him complaining of flat tyres when the whole tyre has worn away and some old scooters don't stop as fast as modern ones when the rider takes the hands off the controls.

"An annual service and check-over would help things."

But what about those who use scooters?

Mrs Brown thinks compulsory training would probably benefit many and give people like her more confidence.

For a long time she was too afraid to scooter through central Blenheim and even now, years later, she is aware of who is around her on the footpath and what the next move might be.

But she takes it all in her stride because the independence it gives her means she can continue to enjoy life as she wants to. "I just could not do without it."

- The Marlborough Express