My Country Is Cruel to Anyone Outside of a Car
I’m sure you’ve heard about urbanism, the social and political movement that is focussed on reducing car dependency and prioritising space for people over motor vehicles. There are plenty of campaigners and blogs out there discussing practical ways of achievement.
This blog post relates to something that happened to me yesterday, and I’m writing after I’ve cooled down from the stress and had a chance to process my feelings. However, it’s still my word salad and I can write how I want to:
It’s just past 6pm and it’s already dusk. I am cycling home on my commuter bike and I see someone riding a mobility scooter in the road at less than walking speed, and a few cars waiting in a queue behind waiting for an opportunity to overtake.
Once I catch up, I dismount and ask if everything’s okay. After all, this is a stressful situation where we’re both in the road where we really shouldn’t be, and fast-moving large metal boxes surround us. The elderly lady, her name is Helena, she says the battery has gone flat – it is beeping terribly loudly every 5 seconds.
She says she’s not normally out for so long, but got delayed due to a mixup at the bank. So I offer to push her home.
As I’m doing so, the scooter lights up, and supposedly the battery is in good nick again – three lights instead of just one. She says that’ll do. I can’t in good conscience let her continue. She asked me if it was illegal for her to use the road. I don’t answer. With the endless sprawl of parked cars taking away pavement space – just think how utterly ridiculous that is, that we allow private vehicles to be dumped on public roads – she can’t make it past on the pavements without going into the road.
There are no busses this time of day between town and her street. Her mobility scooter is her lifeline in order to participate in society. I look at the scooter. It’s falling apart. On the way home, the bolt holding the armrest to the scooter body came loose. If I hadn’t been with her, could she have picked it up herself? In the dark? On a road where hundreds of cars move by, hundreds of people in moving living rooms completed insulated from the world, all thinking “not my problem”, no time out of their busy day to stop their movement from one cage to another?
The scooter, it’s too small for her. The footrest is curved, not flat. There’s no space for her to rest her feet flat. Her legs have to swing out to the side. We try and overtake a van which has parked with two wheels over the pavement. I’m enraged by the people who sold it to her, knowing for certain it was too small, but it was the only thing within her budget. She says they were probably trying to get rid of it. It causes her pain.
There’s a hill and the battery reports itself flat again. I start pushing again. We have to go in the road again as the pavements are too narrow. I marvel at the fact that no car has yet decided to use the horn as they yearn to overtake.
We get to her home after a mile and about 45 minutes of maneouvering. The whole way she’s said sorry. I tell her, each time, that she doesn’t have to apologise to me.
I bid her farewell after opening her door for her. As I make my way home to collect my bike, I can’t stop thinking about her.
My country is cruel to anyone outside of a car.