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Last Wednesday, September 18, delegates to the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, held here in Vancouver, voted down a much talked-about resolution put forward by  Sidney, B.C. to regulate motorized wheelchairs, and electric mobility scooters, in the interests of public safety. This Times-Colonist post on the UBCM meeting, says the rejection came despite an impassioned speech in support of the resolution by by Sidney Mayor Larry Cross. Sidney's final resolution was, in fact, a major climb-down from their original call to license motorized wheelchairs, and electric mobility scooters across the province. Mayor Cross compared his community, with its high proportion of seniors, to a canary in a coal mine, signalling the kinds of problems other municipalities can expect.

“We’ve had a fatality in our community. We’ve had, in the last eight months, two serious rollovers — one of which resulted in a gentleman spending the summer in the hospital with a broken hip. Those accidents could have been avoided.”

The original proposal to license mobility scooters was met with charges of discrimination, and agism, but I think it was motivated by public safety concerns, and desire to get ahead of the curve,and begin laying the groundwork for regulating a future full of such mobility vehicles, exactly as happened with automobiles early in the 20th Century.

For those of you who've never visited Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, I provide a story by way of illustration. Stix told me this.

Early one morning Stix' friend, Lloyd heard noises coming from the street. He had a bike locked up down there so he got out of bed, and poked his head out the window of of his bed-sit hotel room, to have a look. He saw a guy in a motorized, electric wheelchair. The guy was beside the locked-up bike. He had a big-honkin' pair of bolt cutters. Lloyd watched as the guy used the bolt cutters to snip through the lock; heft the bike up onto his lap, and begin his motorized getaway -- whirrrr. Stix says the bike was worth $1000, so, no surprise that Lloyd, had, by this time, dashed out of his room, down the stairs and into the street, wearing only his underwear, and was chasing the guy. Sadly, the guy in the wheelchair left him in the dust!