The Llewellyn Incident, or how I got in the middle of the hire e-scooter ban.
Six e-scooters with helmets on the footpath waiting to be hired.
In early August 2024 I started crossing Elizabeth Street at the Bourke Street mall when an E-scooter hit me. The person on the E-scooter, I think it was a male – said “Sorry” on the way through. He didn’t stop. He scraped my face and shoulder. I held on to my white cane tight. My first thought was: it finally happened, “one of these dickheads has hit me.” The second thought was “it could have been so much worse.” I was in shock and felt completely gross, but I didn’t need medical attention.
I got home and started working:
I reported it to the police – because I didn’t need a doctor, they said what happened did not warrant any action from them.
I reported it to both E-scooter hire companies Lime and Neuron. Both had a startlingly well-oiled process to investigate what happened and assess injuries.
I did an outraged post on LinkedIn. It ended with the following words, “We should follow the example set by Paris and get rid of e-scooters!”
I’m not a big poster on LinkedIn, but this one took off. I’d been worried about such a definite position on banning E-scooters, but frankly, I was totally over it. Walking around the city had felt increasingly unsafe with E-scooters on footpaths and running red lights and just left all over the place. Not fun for me - a vision-impaired pedestrian, and not fun for lots of other people too. Somehow, I did also feel like a bit of a killjoy.
But such was the problem that unknown to me E-scooters had begun to feature in the 2024 City of Melbourne elections. I ended up speaking to the mayor and a councillor about the problem. Within days, the Mayor, Nick Reece, had successfully put a motion to end the E-scooter hire scheme in the municipality. And while I spoke at the council meeting that night in support of the motion – passionately I would say – I was completely stunned to get this result.
In the aftermath, I posted about how unusual it was in the world of disability advocacy to get change so quickly from simply speaking up.
Never read the comments section. It was a total novelty to have anyone commenting on one of my posts that I didn’t know personally. One such person opined that “The Llewellyn Incident didn’t even involve a hire E-scooter.” Being blind, how would I know? At that stage why would I care? Having 1,800 less E-scooters in the city was a good enough outcome for me. In fact, a life-changing outcome. The city is so much more pleasant to be in now. And the number of people who have commented on the vast improvement in safety and amenity grows all the time. So, thank you Nick Reece and Davydd Griffiths for taking a stand and putting the vote, somewhat controversially. And well done on your re-election!
I understand why people don’t speak up. Someone messaged me on social media that they had a problem with what I had done as it would impact negatively on people with disability – or in other words make people hate us.
But nothing ever changed in the world without people being prepared to complain, to speak up, and to tell their story. Just Like Shane Hryhorec who has made change in the City of Yarra on E-scooter rules.
So the lesson, I’m happy to be the Llewellyn Incident if it improves safety and amenity not just for me but for lots of others too.