Yes I'd much rather my 16 year old share Corydon with 2000lb SUVs, that sounds safer.
Number of pedestrian deaths caused by escooters?
Yes I'd much rather my 16 year old share Corydon with 2000lb SUVs, that sounds safer.
Number of pedestrian deaths caused by escooters?
The article doesn't mention protecting pedestrians a single time, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's the goal.
Why else would the government be mandating escooters cannot go on the sidewalk?
Ah, I gotcha.
Honestly, I think it's a reasonable call. Sidewalks are often very narrow and poorly-maintained, and keeping them to designated pathways, which are wider and designed for higher-speed bikes and the like, is a good call.
That said, there aren't nearly enough of those pathways.
I'd also rather everyone have dedicated separated infrastructure but until those dedicated lanes exist, mandating micromobility off of the sidewalks mandates mixing cars/trucks/SUVs with micromobility devices. This is strictly worse for everyone's safety, as the only injuries ever incurred for pedestrians or micromobility users are at the hands of cars/trucks/SUVs. Car + ped = dead ped. Car + micro = dead micro. This has happened 4+ times this year. Micro + micro = injured micro, and also has not yet happened. Micro + ped = injured ped+micro and has also not yet happened. This is car-brain populist legislation, because the reality is is that most of Winnipeg and Brandon don't have dedicated separate infrastructure. We're simply forcing kids to put themselves into the road to prevent accidents that simply aren't happening and aren't dangerous.
Additionally, banning sidewalks + banning >50kph roads means there are now some places where micromobility users simply cannot go legally, which is very stupid and will further shackle our cities to car normalization and dependency.
I don't have an issue with speed limits but we already had those.
...yeah, that is by far the worst part about this whole thing - we don't have anywhere that is safe and good for non-cars and/or pedestrians. We need better non-car infrastructure.
The other one that annoys me is the age restriction. We're really trying to mandate that you can't go anywhere without your parents until you're 16. Winnipeg transit is crazy unreliable and growing up I hated having to ask my parents to bring me places. I'm happy to see a speed limit and I hope they enforce helmets, but I honestly get happy seeing kids out and about doing their own things with their friends. My neighborhood has an OK amount of that but only since escooters and micromobility got popular, and I don't want to quash that.
It really annoys me that we're wasting our time legislating tight restrictions on 30lb micromobility devices that have no statistical history of being dangerous outside of the interactions they have with actually dangerous things like the personal automobile.
OK! I mostly agree, gonna be a lot safer, we see a lot (in my rural town) of very young kids flying through 4 ways with no helmets and riding on 70km roads.
The bummer is for the responsible kids as well as any other people who feel unsafe on 50km roads in the city, who have been careful around pedestrians on sidewalks.
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