The Active Mobility Advisory Council (AMAP) has submitted new recommendations to the Ministry of Transport today. One of the key recommendations is impose a speed limit of 10 km/h for mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs.
This does not affect Falcon Mobility's customers, as almost all of our mobility scooters and all of our motorised wheelchairs have a top speed of 6 - 8 km/h. So if you have bought your personal mobility aid (PMA) from us, you do not need to be concerned.
According to the AMAP recommendations published today, some retailers have been falsely advertising overweight e-scooters or e-scooters with seats as motorised PMAs. Some able-bodied persons have also been misusing motorised PMAs.
With e-scooter registration going to be implemented later this year, the over-riding concern is able-bodied persons flocking en-mass to buy these high speed so-called PMAs, in order to avoid registration.
Also, there were suggestions by some people to make elderly and disabled people go through some kind of doctor certification before they are allowed to use PMAs. This would have burdened our customers with a lot of unnecessary inconvenience as well as costs.
In order to avoid this, Falcon Mobility suggested (see full recommendations here) to use the speed limit of 10 km/h to differentiate e-scooters from bona-fide mobility scooters.
This will plug the loophole without affecting our elderly and handicapped customers. It was better to have this, than to have compulsory registration for elderly and disabled users.
We are very glad that AMAP took our feedback seriously in crafting these new recommendations.
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