Setting aside medical movement aids for a moment, I am reminded of places where people commonly ride various kinds of scooters on sidewalks. There is a particular feeling of unfairness when you are pitted against essentially a small vehicle zipping past you with little warning, easily going double your speed without any physical effort from the rider. I remember seeing people in Seoul, especially older people, being startled by and occasionally having to almost jump out of the way of this sort of traffic having the right of way. I won’t lie, I like that riding those things is illegal where I am now.

Let’s talk about medical movement aids, though.

The analogy gets interesting here. Unlike the various scooters, these aids are normally restricted to average walking speed, though I imagine “jailbreaking” them is probably a thing, too.

On flip side, I know for a fact that there are places where perfectly able people are known to ride purported medial movement aids (just for the kicks or in protest). Is this a bad thing? Who is to say whether one is disabled or not anyway? If one is physically able but buys this machine, should one have the freedom to drive around on the sidewalk? Why don’t we just do it by default? What about a flipped world where everybody drives a movement aid everywhere and only special people (Olympian athletes, weirdos, etc.) ever walk?

Which is partially how we found ourselves in the midst of an obesity epidemic.