It’s unlikely that skateboarders will follow any bylaw requiring them to have helmets, lights and reflectors, say Victoria city staff, so it’s up to council to decide whether to include them.
City staff are recommending the city write to the province urging it set provincial standards requiring boarders — like cyclists — to use helmets.
And given the prospect of low compliance with a lighting or helmet bylaw provision, “as a minimum alternative, staff advocate for lighting ‘safe practices’ as a core part of any future communications strategy, and challenge stakeholders on how best to develop a light/reflector design that may appeal to users,” says a report going to councillors on Thursday.
The bylaw change would also remove the ability of bylaw officers to impound skateboards.
Coun. Jeremy Loveday, a skateboarder, said a public engagement plan to encourage skateboarders to be more visible and to use lights and reflectors at night should be sufficient.
“I’ve heard from lots of skateboarders that they won’t wear helmets and lights,” Loveday said. “It’s very difficult to put lights on a skateboard or on a human who is riding a skateboard.”
New skateboarders are most likely not going to be on the street, and it’s only the more experienced boarders “who know how to control their boards” who will be using the roads or bike lanes, he said.
Loveday doesn’t normally wear a helmet while skateboarding and didn’t wear a helmet when he last skateboarded from his home in Fernwood to downtown about a week ago.
“No, I don’t [wear a helmet],” Loveday said. “I don’t skateboard often and this time I had left my bike at city hall. When I was younger I certainly didn’t even really consider wearing a helmet, to be honest.”
Meanwhile, the prospect of allowing skateboarders on the road at night without lights and reflectors makes Coun. Geoff Young nervous.
“[The report] seems to say they aren’t going to wear lights and it’s going to be difficult to put them on, so we’ll just ignore that requirement for the moment,” Young said.
“My reaction would be if you want to say no lights, then it should be restricted to daylight hours. But once people start talking about it as a method of transportation, they don’t want to be restricted to daylight hours.”
And Victoria police believe skateboarders should be separated from pedestrians and vehicles as much as possible, suggesting they use bike lanes.
“In the downtown core, these goals would best be accomplished by a prohibition on skateboarding,” Deputy Chief Steven Ing says in a letter to council. Given council’s intention to permit skateboards on all roadways, Ing says, the department requests that “within the downtown core, skateboarding be limited to the existing dedicated bike lanes.”
Councillors unanimously decided in March to allow skateboarders to use downtown streets, provided they follow the same rules of the road as cyclists. Victoria banned skateboarders from the city core in 1991 after merchants complained they were frightening customers.
