Dealing With Mobility Scooter Rage

Mobility scooter rage, like road rage, can be an unpleasant fact of life. There are, however, coping strategies to help you deal with any such instances, although mobility scooter rage is a relatively rare event.

Should you be on the receiving end of such abuse it is important to try and decelerate the situation to stop it accelerating to something more hostile, such as a physical attack. Tempting as it may be to get involved in an argument over who is right and who is wrong, this rarely resolves the situation at the time of the incident and can often just make things a lot worse.

If, when driving your mobility scooter, you should accidentally come into contact with a person on the pavement the best course of action is to apologise profusely, presuming that the other person has not been injured, before continuing on your way. You may feel that the other person was partly to blame, by maybe stepping out in front of you without looking or by taking up an unreasonable amount of pavement space, but you need to remember that they may also feel that you are to blame and getting into an argument over who is to blame will solve nothing.

Some people can be impatient and want to walk as fast as possible to reach their destination. Should you be driving your mobility scooter along a narrow pavement, making it difficult for a walker in a hurry to overtake you, it may be an idea to stop for just a few seconds to allow the person to walk around you. This will probably help avoid the possibility of someone subjecting you to scooter rage and also reduce the stress on you from being tail gated by a walker in a hurry.

Most people are understanding and would never subject a mobility scooter user to any kind of rage, whether they are in a hurry or not.

Crossing Roads

Crossing a main road, at people operated traffic lights, using a mobility scooter normally presents no problems. There can, however, be a huge variation in the time that the green man appears, allowing people to cross the road safely. In some instances this can be for just a few seconds, meaning that even an able bodied person would have to rush to cross the road before the red man appears.

Should you be caught midway on the road crossing as the light for the green man goes out and the red man appears, it is important to remain calm and make your way to the pavement as quickly and, more importantly, as safely as possible. It would be extremely rare for a motorist to blow their horn or set off when you were on the crossing, even if the traffic light relating to them had turned green. If you are subject to horn blowing it is best to just ignore it and not let it panic you into making a mistake or hurrying across the road in an unsafe manner.

You should also be mindful that as a pavement is a duel use area, for use by both walkers and mobility scooter users, it is important not to travel too fast. Although most mobility scooters only have a top speed of around 6mph, if you knock someone at this speed it could be painful for the walker, or even cause a broken limb if the person happens to be elderly. The overuse of mobility scooter horns can also be a catalyst for mobile scooter rage, so think before using it.