Get out of my way!

It's funny how traveling on wheels, especially motorised wheels, gives one the illusion of owning the road ahead. It must be something hard wired into our psyches for reasons that made sense in earlier stages of human evolution. But today it seems to provoke aggression and violence, even in the most unlikely circumstances.



The latest local incident involves a mobility scooter driven by an elderly woman running over a 5 year old child in a shopping centre. Having uttered the immortal words "get out of my way", she proceeded to knock the child to the ground, run over his legs and then drag him along the ground several metres before again running over his legs and making her escape. Not a word of apology, just hit and run.

When the sort of behaviour normally associated with menopausal 4x4 drivers manifests itself in a pensioner on a mobility scooter it makes you think. The mother of the victim thought and she suggested that mobility scooters should have some sort of bar at the front which would stop the vehicle if it made contact with anything. Not a bad idea you too might think, especially with drivers who might, let's face it, conk out at any moment.



But why only for mobility scooters? Wouldn't such a device make sense on all motorised vehicles, just as a prominent emergency stop button is a standard feature of any other piece of dangerous machinery? After all road vehicles are vastly more dangerous than mobility scooters.

It would certainly shift the balance of power away from those in such vehicles towards those who are most vulnerable, pedestrians and cyclists, which is exactly what is required if we are to counter the "get out of my way" mentality.