Scooters in the way: wheelchair user

Poorly parked e-scooters are preventing the disabled community from safely travelling around the city, a Dunedin man says.

Wheelchair user Piotr Mierzejewski said scooters could be parked in "peculiar places" and he was not able to move them himself.

"Not everybody can lift it up or in my case, bulldoze the [scooter] out of the way."

He said he had not pushed a scooter out of the way with his chair yet.

"I’m usually very lucky, I would have ... my wife with me or a friend and they would move it out of the way."

In the past, he had had to drive in the road to bypass fallen scooters.

There had been different responses to community concerns from different scooter companies, Mr Mierzejewski said.

Neuron Mobility had collaborated with disabled advocacy groups and "listened to us in the past, so they’ve come to the party".

"There could be others out there that haven’t approached us."

Access for All member Simon Fogarty said the community had received varying levels of support from different scooter companies.

He was speaking at a ScootSafe event at Otago Polytechnic yesterday, which was the result of a collaboration between Neuron and disability group Access for All.

The event had obstacle courses set up to show what it was like navigating the city in a wheelchair or with a vision impairment.

Working with Neuron had been "absolutely fantastic", and the company was going out of its way to help, Mr Fogarty said.

"At this point, other operators don’t seem to have cared about things thus far."

Neuron Mobility operations manager Madelynn Kite-Bell said the company had approached the disabled community before launching in Dunedin.

The company’s scooters had sensors on board to alert it if they had toppled over, and users received discounts for parking in approved places.

Operations staff were available to attend to problem parking from 5am to midnight, and "a few hour turnaround" to right fallen scooters was the target for staff, Mrs Kite-Bell said.

A Lime spokesman said the company was focused on providing clear footpaths for disabled users.

"Lime ... works closely with disability rights organisations in cities around the world, including Dunedin, to identify ways to keep scooters at the edge of footpaths and never in the path of those with wheelchairs."

It required users to take a photographs of their scooters after rides to demonstrate they were parked correctly, provided customer education and had sensors to alert it to respond to toppled scooters.

andrew.marshall@odt.co.nz