You are reading a single comment by @TheorySwine and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@TheorySwine
Years back my not quite as frail as she is now gran fancied a mobility scooter to help bring her sherry bounty back from Oddbins.
My mum and I went along with her to a mobility scooter showroom - a place until that point I'd never considered existed. Go faster stripes, spoilers, automatic/manual gearboxes...all motorised aids to pensionable stupor stood with their baskets begging to be stuffed with bottles. Quickly I became bored, as surly old enough to know betters do. To entertain myself while my family talked shop with the rep with pound signs in her eyes I took to sitting on a few fine examples to pretend I was leader of an outlaw blue-rinse brigade.
I quickly realised, unlike a car showroom, all these scooters were already turned on - no key required. Picking a hefty example I began inching it forward and backward a few inches, instead of just remaining stationary. As I gained confidence I pulled on the accelerator lever with a bit more vigour - backwards, forwards...except quicker, but always returning to the spot where the vehicle rested.
Until I yanked that lever too hard and it became stuck in the GO position. These things show a quick pair of heels when pushed. Immediately I tried to release the lever but it had wedged against the steering bars, meaning I was stuck in very quickly forwards in a tiny showroom. Within seconds I was hurtling towards my family stood talking with the sales rep, me still steering this scooter but not in control of it. Wisely I veered away from them as they dived out of the way, my screams making it clear I was trying to safely stop this very heavy machine but, like a captain of a ship, was not about to leap clear of it myself. Wherever it went, so did I.
I was heading for the only other couple shopping there - a very elderly woman and her son. It was too late for them to take evasive action - this poor woman brought the vehicle to a stop by me colliding with her leg at full pelt. She fell to the ground. The sales rep rushed over and turned off the ignition that had escaped my panicked attention and freed the lever. The old woman groaned but could not stand up, while her son quite rightly looked ready to throttle me. My family were aghast, for I had shamed them. Turns out this innocent woman, looking for a vehicle much like my gran, had been released from hospital that very day following treatment to the very leg I'd bashed with a scooter I shouldn't have been dicking about on.
Along came the ambulance to ferry her off again to the ward from which she's just been released, her son ever closer to violence towards me than ever. The sales rep saw nothing but a negligence/insurance claim. I saw nothing but another example of being responsible for the worst imaginable happening.