An 'enclosed mobility scooter' driving on the street in Hamilton, Ont. 'It’s not covered under any legislation that gives it authority to be on the road or the sidewalk,' says former Toronto traffic cop Sean Shapiro.The Globe and Mail
You might have encountered a new type of small car driving around your neighbourhood. They’re tiny – about half the size of the original Austin Mini– and typically powered by an electric motor.
I’ve seen a growing number of them of them driving on the roads and the sidewalks in my community. At first, I thought it was a fancy, imported golf cart. They also remind me of the Peel P50, a three-wheeled British microcar originally produced from 1962 to 1965. Then I noticed a store in Eastgate Square, a mall in Hamilton, selling them as “enclosed mobility scooters,” along with e-bikes, e-scooters and electric motorcycles.
They aren’t officially recognized as mobility devices by the Ontario government, which puts them in a regulatory grey area. Ontario’s Assistive Devices program (ADP), which helps people with disabilities buy specialized equipment such as wheelchairs and certain mobility scooters, doesn’t recognize them either.
“To appropriate the name of a mobility device and suggest that this is a medical device is an illegitimate and improper thing to do,” says Sean Shapiro, a retired Toronto police officer and traffic safety consultant. “If you can’t drive it down the aisle at Walmart to get your groceries, it’s not a mobility scooter. If it can’t fit through the doorway of your home, it’s not a mobility scooter.”
A tiny electric car tried to push us off the sidewalk. Should it be there?
These cars might be small, but they are about as wide as a standard sidewalk and take up much more space than a legal mobility scooter or wheelchair. Pedestrians would have to move fully off the sidewalk to make way for one. In municipalities such as Toronto, once you’re over 14, you can’t even ride a bicycle on the sidewalk because pedestrians are given priority.
A bicycle can legally be ridden on the road because it requires muscular power to operate and isn’t considered a motor vehicle. E-bikes fall under the same classification as bicycles, but can’t have a maximum assisted speed of more than 32 kilometres an hour or a motor more powerful than 500 watts. It also needs pedals and removing them makes the e-bike a motor vehicle, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation.
Most ADP-approved scooters don’t exceed 12 km/h, but these mini cars are much quicker, advertised by the retailers as being able to go up to 32 km/h, the maximum speed for an e-bike. Some can go even faster. They are usually powered by motors that exceed 500 watts, and can be easily modified to surpass 32 km/h quite easily using a third-party app as demonstrated in this Youtube video.
The last thing you want is one of these 250-kilogram vehicles flying down the sidewalk at more than 30 km/h, putting pedestrians in harm’s way. They shouldn’t be on the road either, like the one I saw on Queenston Road in Hamilton that was going about 40 km/h, with its suspension barely keeping the skinny wheels on the ground as it hopped over the poorly maintained pavement. I’ve even seen one pulling a small trailer in the parking lot of a shopping plaza.
Retailers that sell these vehicles state that it’s up to the buyers to know the laws where they plan to operate. I reached out to EZ Rides, a retailer of e-bikes and these enclosed mobility scooters, for clarification on what they tell customers who buy them, but have yet to get a response. Its website does say that no licence or insurance is required to drive one and that they can be legally driven on the sidewalk, which isn’t true.
“It’s not a bicycle and it’s not covered under any legislation that gives it authority to be on the road or the sidewalk,” Shapiro says. “And they’re being sold by retailers that couldn’t care less if you’re complying with the law once they have your money.”
They aren’t exactly cheap, either, with many selling for more than $8,000, making them more of a personal luxury conveyance than an assistive medical device. Many have heat, air conditioning, power windows and rear seats for passengers, but there are no airbags or many of the modern safety features you find in cars today.
Driving is a privilege, and an expensive one. Some legitimately need mobility devices to improve their quality of life, which is where the ADP program comes in. It’s not perfect and doesn’t approve these more luxurious covered scooters, but it’s a better option than operating an unlicensed and uninsured motor vehicle.
Shapiro says that a lack of public knowledge and training for police officers is one of the biggest issues here. Many don’t realize that the same laws that apply to regular motor vehicles also apply to these mini cars because they are motor vehicles at the end of the day.
“It’s potentially people who don’t want to pay for insurance or are disqualified from legally being able to operate a motor vehicle,” he says. “If a driver of one of these mini cars is operating one under a suspended or disqualified licence, they are still eligible for all the criminal charges for driving without a licence.”
It’s not just these mini cars, many e-scooters and even kick scooters sold at stores such as Sport Chek and Canadian Tire are capable of exceeding 32 km/h. Segway, which makes one of the most popular electric scooters on the market, sells models that can go as fast as 80 km/h. There are electric motorcycles sold as bicycles that can reach highway speeds with the flip of a switch.
“There should be regulations on being able to sell these here,” Shapiro says. “You can’t bring a switchblade into the country; why should you be allowed to bring these in?”