You Don't Hear Them Coming: Stittsville's E-Scooter Problem

Ottawa wrote rules for e-scooters in 2020. Did we ever educate residents about them?

By Sheetal Narwal, Candidate for Ward 6 — Stittsville

You don't hear them.

A car announces itself. A bicycle rattles. An e-scooter gives you nothing — a silent machine well past the legal limit, and the first warning is the air moving past your shoulder.

While doorknocking, a senior resident told me about something that happened to her recently. She was walking on the sidewalk when something passed her from behind, close enough to make her stumble. She never heard it coming. She wears hearing aids. Then she apologized to me for complaining.

She shouldn't have to apologize. And she shouldn't have to wonder whether it's still safe to walk to the shops.

I hear versions of this all over the ward — on Stittsville Main, along the Trans Canada Trail where families step off the path for something moving far too fast. From parents of kids who can't be thirteen, riding without helmets, who tell me the same thing every time: I didn't know there were rules.

An officer in this city recently stopped a rider at 52 km/h. CHEO reports e-scooter injury visits rose 50 per cent in the year ending May 2025.

Now look at where Ottawa Police have run enforcement this summer. Downtown. Carlington. Findlay Creek. Riverside South.

Stittsville isn't on the list. I don't blame the officers — I blame the pattern. Ward 6 always gets its turn later. Later on Carp Road. Later on our roads. Later on this.

Yes, there are rules. Two sets. Neither is permanent.

The Province sets the floor. E-scooters aren't governed by ordinary Highway Traffic Act rules — they exist under a pilot regulation launched in 2020: minimum age 16, helmet mandatory under 18, 24 km/h cap, one rider, no towing.

Ottawa decides the rest. The pilot invited municipalities to opt in and choose where and how. Council did, enacting Electric Kick Scooter By-law No. 2020-174 in June 2020.

Every specific rule in Stittsville is a Council decision. Council banned e-scooters from sidewalks outright. Council barred them from roads posted above 50 km/h unless there's a bike lane. Council set the minimum age at 16 and made helmets mandatory under 18. Council gave the City the power to impound a scooter left on City property in breach of the rules. Council required riders to keep a safe distance from pedestrians and give way where there isn't room to pass — and required that every e-scooter carry a working bell or horn, sounded whenever it's needed to warn someone of its approach.

Read that last one again, and think about the woman at her door. The rule already exists. It has existed since 2020. So the fair question isn't why riders are breaking it — it's whether anyone has ever told them it's there. Are residents being informed? Are the families buying these devices being handed the rules along with the box? On the evidence at our doors, no.

And the by-law names its enforcers: the Chief of Police and the City's own Municipal By-Law Enforcement Officers — staff Council funds every budget.

So when you're told this is a police problem, or a Queen's Park problem, notice what's being avoided.

The part that should change how you vote

Both sets of rules expire in 2029, and Ontario still hasn't decided whether e-scooters get permanent status at all. The councillor elected this October sits for the rest of that experiment — and what Ottawa reports to the Province helps write the permanent law.

This isn't a settled file. It's a closing window, and Ward 6 has spent it as a place where nothing was signed, nothing was enforced, and nothing was counted.

The gap both sets leave wide open

The Province regulates the rider. The City regulates where the rider goes. Neither regulates the machine before it's sold.

That's how someone does 52 km/h on a device that was perfectly legal to buy, and why parents had no idea — nothing in the store told them. Every rule we have starts only once a child is already moving.

Five things I'll put on the floor

(a) A rules module written into the shared-operator agreements Council approves.

(b) A free course run through City recreation programming at Goulbourn before riding season, designed to be taken by the young rider and a parent or guardian together — because the adult buying the device needs the rules as much as the child riding it.

(c) A first-offence warning by by-law, which I will move to seek, so a fourteen-year-old's ticket clears when both of them complete the course, rather than a parent writing a cheque and nobody learning anything. A fine punishes a household. A course changes a rider.

We're not inventing this. We're behind.

The Netherlands approves e-scooters model by model — capped at the factory, tamper-proof, plated and insured. Singapore barred retailers from selling non-compliant devices in 2019. Greece is legislating compulsory insurance and a minimum age of 17, after some 400 children and teenagers were hurt in a single year.

All three reached the same conclusion: control the machine before it reaches a child, not after. Ontario hasn't. So I will move that Council formally ask Queen's Park for three things — factory speed caps, device registration, and rider insurance.

Be clear on what that is. A city cannot licence riders or write insurance law. Any candidate telling you otherwise is promising a job they haven't got. What a councillor can do is put Ottawa's name on the record, with a recorded vote — and the permanent provincial rules will be written from what cities like ours say now.

One warning from abroad. Paris banned rental e-scooters in 2023 — and France still recorded a 33 per cent rise in serious e-scooter injuries by 2025, because private devices were always the problem. Ottawa Police say our rentals are behaving. Squeezing the operators and calling it done will fail here exactly as it failed there.

And every place that got safer gave riders somewhere legal to go. You can't tell a fifteen-year-old to get off the sidewalk if the alternative is a lane of traffic on Hazeldean. Safe infrastructure isn't a separate file. It's what makes every rule above enforceable.

The standard I'm setting and Catching up is the opportunity

E-scooters technology just moved faster than the rules did, and that's a catch-up job, not a crisis.

Let's build a Stittsville where a fourteen-year-old can ride to school — same street, same afternoon, and safe.

I'm Sheetal Narwal. Ward 6, this October 26th, I would be honoured to earn your support.

Sources

Ottawa police cracking down on underage operation and misuse of e-scooters — 580 CFRA / CTV News Ottawa, August 9, 2026

City of Ottawa — Electric Kick Scooter By-law No. 2020-174 (enacted June 24, 2020; amended by By-law 2022-85, April 13, 2022) — sections 6, 7, 10, 11, 20, 22, 24A, 27

City of Ottawa — E-scooters: Personal e-scooters and Common Questions, ottawa.ca

Ontario Highway Traffic Act, O. Reg. 389/19 (Pilot Project – Electric Kick-Scooters)

Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) — e-scooter and e-bike injury data

Netherlands Vehicle Authority (RDW) — special moped type approval and licence plate requirement

Singapore Land Transport Authority — Active Mobility Act; UL2272 retail restriction (2019); device registration; footpath ban

Paris Police Prefecture — mandatory helmet and reflective gear order, August 2026

Hellenic Ministry of Transport — proposed road safety bill: minimum age 17, compulsory accident insurance, July 2026

City of Oslo — e-scooter operator regulations, including mandatory trip-data sharing and geofenced restrictions