Despite never being enforced throughout the two-year pilot program, city council is considering removing the technically-required need for adults to wear helmets while riding e-scooters.
St. Albert's e-scooter program, which was made permanent last month, currently requires all users to wear helmets while riding e-scooters. On April 4, Coun. Mike Killick put forward a motion seeking to change the requirements to say that only those under the age of 18 must wear helmets while riding e-scooters.
Killick's motion will be debated and voted on either later this month or in early May.
In an interview, Killick said he wants the requirement to be changed in order to have continuity throughout the city's bylaws.
“There was absolutely no enforcement,” he said, adding “it wouldn't certainly be a priority that we would want our bylaw officers running around and saying 'oh boy, somebody has to wear a helmet on it.’”
“I think we've got much bigger concerns from residents to go and address with bylaw enforcement, so it's just really about making it consistent across all of our mobility (methods) whether it's bicycle or scooter or skate park.”
Under the city's current traffic bylaw, all St. Albertans under the age of 12 are required to wear helmets while ice-skating, riding skateboards, or roller skating. As well, all residents regardless of age are required to wear a helmet while riding bicycles.
If Killick's motion passes, those under the age of 18 will still need to wear a helmet while riding an e-scooter.
“If we can trust our residents to sign up at age 18 to go into the army, or can sign up and go to join the RCMP, or give them the privilege of voting for the next government, I think they should be smart enough to know whether they need to wear a helmet or not,” Killick said.
Chamber concerned helmet requirement prevents use
The chair of the St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce, MIke Howes, said members are concerned that the current helmet requirement could be preventing spontaneous use of the e-scooters, which is thought to be the main benefit of the program.
“We don't want to be the group that comes out and says 'hey, you shouldn't wear helmets or we want the city to take away the helmet bylaw,' because we're not sure that's the thing to do, but ... if you're going to make everybody wear a helmet, isn't that going to make it more difficult to attract riders?” Howes said.
“With tourism so big on our minds these days we want to make people that come to St. Albert be able to take a ride, and if they're coming from a municipality where they're not used to having to wear a helmet, they're not going to understand that they need to wear one here.”
“We're just questioning whether or not whether we should be sticking with that policy.”
Killick's motion was going to be discussed and debated during the April 4 council meeting, however a necessary sub-motion to waive the 21-day notice period for the helmet motion was actually defeated unanimously after other councillors convinced Killick that time was needed to address members of the public before voting on the change.
“The notice is in place to make sure we can engage stakeholders in our community and the waiver should only be used if there's something urgent happening, and requiring me to wear a helmet for the next however many weeks, there's no risk,” Coun. Natalie Joly said.
Throughout the two-year e-scooter pilot program, with 20,000 individual e-scooter rides taken in the city in 2022 alone, local peace officers didn't issue a single ticket for residents not wearing a helmet.
