I saw that someone had recently searched for “a trailer with child seat for mobility scooter” and at first i was thinking that they might be thinking of something else, but i do think that the person who has searched for this has literally been looking for a trailer that can be attached to a mobility scooter that they could then have a child seated in to tow along with them.

If that is the case then i think this is where you need to stop and think for a moment and to remind yourself of what a mobility scooter is intended for, i think that its a bad idea to try transporting anyone other than yourself on your mobility scooter but also they are not designed to start performing allsorts of jobs.

Some are intended for more heavy duty use, whereas some are more suited to lightwieight use like taking them around the supermarket, sure you can carry some light shopping on them and there are plenty of accessories available to help you transport your crutches or walking stick and other manageable items as these are intended to assist you further if needed when not on your mobility scooter of course but trying to make a mobility scooter do a wide range of tasks that it was not built for is generally a bad idea.

Just in the same way that any other mode of transport will experience problems sooner if you use it incorrectly, so too will a mobility scooter if you expect too much from it and try to use it in a way that was not intended by the manufacturer.

You will probably be paying out more often for repairs and spare parts too and there is a greater risk of doing more serious damage to your mobility scooter and yourself if you choose to use it other than what it was built for.

If you need to transport more than a few items and yourself and possibly for a longer distance than normal then it is worth considering whether the mobility scooter is the right choice for those types of journeys and that it might be better to arrange for a vehicle to take you on your journey, this doesn’t mean that you have to be without a mobility scooter for a particular journey but its important that you have the right type of assistance for at least the part of the journey that might become difficult to manage with the use of a mobility scooter only.

While there are regular articles online and comments about some mobility scooter users not being very responsible or considerate of other people when operating one, there are less comments about people that may cause problems for mobility scooter users and are inconsiderate, maybe when a mobility scooter user is trying to pass safely.

At times a pedestrian wont attempt to move over to one side to allow a mobility scooter to pass easily and safely, this is understandable if a pedestrian is not aware of a mobility scooter approaching, for example if the mobility scooter is approaching a pedestrian from behind or if both people are approaching a corner with no way of knowing if anyone is coming around the corner in the opposite direction.

Some people will see you approaching though and make little or no attempt to make way for you, it might be true that a person who wont make any effort to let you pass safely reacts the same with all people, whether its a group of people walking together, a mother with a pushchair or someone carrying bags of shopping home from the supermarket. So i think that it shouldn’t be taken personally, there is probably no particular reason that another person will do that other than lacking general courtesy in public situations.

Theres also the possiblity of a person simply not being alert to what is going on around them, some people can be walking along thinking about something, they may have a lot on their mind and not be as aware of their surroundings as they normally would be, at least once in your life you have probably witnessed someone stepping straight out into a road and almost getting run over then suddenly seeing them kind of wake up out of the daydream that they were probably in and get sharply snapped back into the physical ,very real and at times quite dangerous world that we live in.

I think it is important to point this out that there are pedestrians that lack consideration for mobility scooter users that are using the pavement in the same sense that some mobility scooter users on the pavement lack consideration for the pedestrians.

More can be done to educate users and non users of mobility scooters on safety so that it doesn’t cause further upset and lead to more serious problems in the future, after all some of the people complaining about mobility scooter users now might need to use one themselves in the future.

Most users are using a mobility scooter because of a disability, it would be ironic if we see a future generation of mobility scooter users that included some people that end up with a disability because they were hit by a mobility scooter years before and those not needing them now but maybe in the future should be able to look towards the use of a mobility scooter as a positive thing, not as a menace of the pavements.

As some mobility scooters can be used on public roads, the class 3 type, there can be some confusion as to whether you need to display a registration (number) plate on your mobility scooter, to confirm and hopefully clear up any confusion regarding this, it is not necessary to have a registration plate displayed on a class 3 mobility scooter.

Although they are registered with the DVLA, and display a ‘nil duty’ tax disc they are not classed as a motor vehicle.

They should still be operated in a safe manner taking into account other road users for your own safety and the safety of others, but fortunately as a class 3 mobility scooter user you are exempt from certain rules in place for other vehicles using the road.

Take note that the exemption is with regards to the tax disc cost and no registration plate needed, other road rules and laws apply and should be adhered to when taking a class 3 mobility scooter onto the road.