They looked no more than 10 years old. I was at the corner of Dufferin and Eglinton doing some shopping when I noticed two little kids, one skinny and bushy-haired, the other a little bigger and chubbier, moving fast through that busy intersection.
They were zipping past pedestrians at the crosswalk and on the sidewalk on their e-scooters.
I must be getting old. I didn’t see the fun in what the kids were doing, I just saw the danger.
Fellow adults were stepping out of their way for fear of getting nicked. The kids didn’t slow down.
They made their way down Dufferin south of Eglinton on the sidewalk. Once they passed Hunter Street, I could see them weaving on and off the curb, moving from the sidewalk back onto Dufferin Street.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen children on e-scooters in the area. I’d seen them in the Rawlinson school yard and in the middle of Oakwood Village. They were always doing the same things: zipping and weaving through pedestrians and traffic, moving with confidence and without helmets.
City Hall’s message on this is a bit confusing: “Just because they’re everywhere, doesn’t mean they’re legal.” Huh? If they’re not legal, then why are they everywhere?
The mixed signal comes from the province and the City having different views on e-scooters. The province is more lenient. The City is not. But on the question of children using e-scooters, both levels of government agree:
Children 15 and under are prohibited from using e-scooters.
And there’s a reason for that clarity. This summer in the city, a 12-year-old was involved in an e-scooter crash that left him in critical condition. Across the country, 10 children have died in e-scooter incidents, six of those deaths in Ontario. There have been 57 severe injuries and 12 admissions to the ICU.
Now, I’m not going to pretend this is only happening now. When I was 10, they banned lawn darts. Heavy, metal-tipped projectiles that stayed on the market until enough kids were maimed or killed.
So, watching these boys treat e-scooters like toys gave me a strange sense of déjà vu.
We demand that government make changes, but in this case they have. Now it’s up to those parents who survived flying lawn darts to keep their kids from flying off the curb.
