Lorri Mackness, 70, faces many obstacles while navigating Auckland's CBD in an electric wheel chair.
Often the foot path is so narrow with illegally parked cars or discarded e-scooters blocking her access, she needs to use the road to get past.
But she says e-scooters are her biggest issue - she was hit by one in Aotea Square in 2021, which ended in a trip to hospital.
"I was coming down here, I wasn't going fast because it's a corner and I turned around and bang, they were going really fast and they came right bang and they got tangled up," she said.
"I remember the person going sorry, sorry, sorry as they disentangled their scooter then they jumped on and speed off."
Mackness wanted to see scooters on the road.
Lorri Mackness says e-scooters are her biggest issue when navigating Auckland CBD. Photo: RNZ
Thomas Bryan lives in Wellington, he is vision impaired and uses a cane to get around the city.
But it was no defence against poorly parked e-scooters.
"They leave them lying on the middle of the footpath... just standing upright on the footpath and I've quite often, you know, you get off a bus, you're walking and all of a sudden my cane's missed it and I get a handle bar in my chest."
Bryan said because they were so quiet, there was not enough warning e-scooters were coming.
With people riding on the footpath and Al Fresco dining in Wellington's CBD, it was a squeeze.
"There's very little space for someone to come through, say, if they're in a wheelchair or they've got a guide dog or like myself with a cane, you end up whacking people who are sitting at a table."
In Auckland Beam and Lime have a license to operate 2400 e-bikes and scooters, all up paying the council over $170,000 for a 12 or 24 month contract, renewed at the end of last year.
Operators must follow council rules and bylaws which included parking the devices correctly, riders need to submit a photo once they have parked and 20 percent of photos must be checked by operators weekly.
They must not be parked in the centre of a footpath and need to leave a clearway of at least 1.8 metres.
Veronica Lee-Thompson from Auckland Council said three council officers monitored scooter parking across the city.
"We expect a really high level of compliance, every time an inspector monitors a device a notification is automatically sent to the operator and if it's non compliant, they've got an hour to fix it."
Lee-Thompson said there were 15 designated e-scooter parking spaces in Britomart and more designated parking was on the way for Queen Street.
The council was unable to provide any information on how many e-scooter reports or infringements had been recorded but said complaints had dropped since e-scooters arrived five years ago.
E-scooters can either ride on the footpath or the road but there is no separate speed limit for the footpath.
Three years ago the Ministry of Transport proposed rule changes to make our streets more accessible.
One of the changes includes limiting the speed limit to 15km per hour on footpaths to encourage e-scooters onto the road.
Finalised rules were due last year once they had been considered by cabinet but that was yet to happen and the Ministry of Transport was unable to confirm when a decision would be made.
