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IN TOUCH – Lighting in the home, E-scooters part II

TX:Ìý 08.06.2021Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý SIMON HOBAN

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White

Good evening.Ìý Tonight, after a large response from you on our item about e-scooters, we speak to Europe’s biggest operator as trials begin in London this week.

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Clip

The issue of parking is a really critical one.Ìý And I think what the UK trials have shown is it’s not just the vehicle that’s being put on trial but also the operators as well.

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White

So, if they’re here to stay just how can e-scooters be made compatible with the lives of people who are blind or partially sighted?

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But first, the importance of lighting in the home is something that we’ve touched on before on the programme but not recently.Ìý So, slap on the wrist to us because it is something which if done right can be life changing for people with some useful sight.Ìý Two things have prompted us to return to it now:Ìý one, from a listener – we’ll come to that in a moment – but first, also, the go-to guide for lighting in the home of people who are blind or partially sighted was published by the Thomas Pocklington Trust in 2018 and now it’s been updated and we can get a sneak preview of the latest version before it’s being published with the man who authored it – Peter Hodgson – who joins me now.

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It’s not too big a claim is it, Peter, really, that the right lighting can make a huge difference?

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Hodgson

I think that’s right, yes, Peter.Ìý The advantage of having really good high level of lighting spread throughout the property really can make life safer and gives an ability to life independently better than they would have if they had poor levels of lighting, which is something that the Thomas Pocklington research, they did some years ago, proved.

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White

So, why the new report, what’s changed in the world of lighting over the past three years?

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Hodgson

Lighting technology, especially LED – light emitting diode – technology is developing dramatically quickly, as with all technology, and we just felt it just needed a quick review, a quick update in some areas, taking out a few of the lights which have disappeared due to energy saving requirements over the last couple of years since we last did the report.

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White

Now let’s bring in our listener, she’s Lynn Bailey from Glasgow and Lynn got in touch about finding the right lighting solutions for her mum, who is 83 and has poor sight.Ìý So, we thought we’d bring you two together.Ìý Lynn, I gather your mum preferred you to do the talking on this one?

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Bailey

Yes, yes, that’s right, yeah.

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White

So, tell us a bit about her.Ìý First of all, what kind of place does she live in and what’s her level of vision?

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Bailey

My mother has macular degeneration, which she’s had for a number of years but in the last year or so there was a sudden deterioration in her sight, so she is now severely sight impaired and in addition has Charles Bonnet syndrome.Ìý So, her low vision means it’s very important, obviously, to get suitable lighting for her around the home to replace what she currently has…

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White

And I guess we’d better just tell people, who don’t know, that Charles Bonnet syndrome is something where you actually sometimes see things that are not there and people worry about that but it’s purely – it is a visual phenomenon isn’t it?

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Bailey

Yes, yeah.

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White

So, Lynn, meet Peter.Ìý What would you like to ask him?

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Bailey

Well I was just going to say that she lives in a one bedroom flat which is within a retirement complex, so the lighting is the original lighting of about 20 years ago.Ìý So, it mainly comprises of the more traditional central ceiling lights, which are not now suitable for her current needs.Ìý And looking around, I did look at other retirement properties, and those I saw were using recessed downlighters and so that was something I was considering using because I know that that would provide some uniform lighting around the home to avoid the light and dark patches.Ìý I was really keen to find out if that’s something that you would recommend.

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White

Peter.

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Hodgson

In terms of – yes old-fashioned lighting is generally a pendant light in the middle of the room – you don’t necessarily need to replace that.Ìý One of the recommendations we’ve come up with is actually adding additional lighting in a room, so you could put standard lights or uplighters in corners of rooms, shining up on to the ceiling, and using the ceiling as reflector, so you’re spreading a good level of light evenly throughout the whole room.Ìý I don’t know if your mum’s flat’s got wall lights, I’m assuming not, but if you have got wall lights you can improve those, again lights that sort of shine up on to the ceiling, use that as a reflector, will give a greatly improved level of lighting.Ìý Make sure you don’t get glare, so some sort of diffusers on the lights, so you’re not actually seeing the light source directly, you don’t want to be looking directly at a bright source of light.Ìý Paper shades, the old-fashioned sort of Chinese lanterns are very good at that, if you have a central pendant light.Ìý And the other thing is if you can provide dimmer switches to the lighting also helps, it means you can provide probably more level of light than you need but your mum then has the ability to turn the lighting to a level that she’s happy with that works for her.Ìý

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White

I mean Lynn what are the things that your mum does find difficult with the lighting that she’s got at the moment?

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Bailey

In the kitchen, for example, she struggles to see the kitchen sink and so when she’s washing up then there’s not good lighting there and, again, I was wondering whether the recessed lighting just directly above the kitchen sink would work well.

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Hodgson

Yeah, I think some form of lighting over the sink, a spotlight, a recessed light, shining on to that area would be a really big help.Ìý In terms of sort of kitchen lighting generally, very old-fashioned sounding but linear fluorescent strip lights down the centre of the room, I think your mum’s kitchen is a galley kitchen, so it’s probably long and thin, a linear light down the middle of the ceiling is probably going to give a very good level of background lighting without causing too many shadows.Ìý And you can then add sort of LED strip lights, little fluorescent lights or even LED lights on a self-adhesive tape now, which you can just connect with a transformer into existing sockets, so you don’t need to do wiring but you can put those on the bottom of the wall cupboards, directly over the worktop.Ìý Put them at the front, so they’re not in sight but that will give a really good level of lighting on worktops as well, if you’re mum’s trying to do things like chopping food and preparing food, it really does help with that.

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Bailey

But would you actually recommend or not having the downlighters in a room, like, say, in the lounge or…

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Hodgson

The problem with recessed downlighters is that they can be very glary, you end up with a light source that’s very close to the ceiling, so if it’s not a particularly high ceiling you may end up with glare from that.Ìý The second thing is if you don’t get the right sort of light within the recessed fitting it can give a very narrow beam of light, so you end up with a patch of light on the floor and you end up with lots of patches of light and sort of dark areas between.Ìý So, you need to make sure, if you are going to go for that sort of lighting, that you have wide beam lights within them, so they give a good spread of light.Ìý I think another to thing to think about if you are going to retro-fit these types of lights, fire protection – you can’t just start cutting holes, necessarily, in the ceiling because it may breach the fire protection, so you’ve got to make sure that it’s either a fire-resistant fitting or it has some sort of fire barrier behind it.

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Bailey

Sure.Ìý And would you have any kind of way of determining how many lights would be suitable in a room, is there any kind of formula that helps to determine what would work to avoid the dark patches?

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Hodgson

The simple answer is there is no simple formula to do it, I’m afraid.Ìý Basically, the bigger the room the more lighting you’re going to need both in terms of floor area and ceiling height, both will impact on it.Ìý I think if you get a good electrician, they should be able to calculate how many lights you’ll need to give a certain lighting level, they should be able to calculate that for you and come up with the number of lights and the spread positioning of those lights to make it work.

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White

It often helps to visualise this – talk about this – in terms of particular tasks.Ìý And Lynn, I mean what about choosing clothes, does your mum find that a bit difficult with the whole matching up business?

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Bailey

Yeah definitely.Ìý I think without doubt trying to see what is in a wardrobe is difficult for her and so, her preference tends to be to have clothes sitting on the outside, so that she can see it from the natural light that comes into the room.Ìý So, I was certainly keen to see if there were a good solution to provide strong lighting in the wardrobe.

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Hodgson

And it’s something that’s often overlooked.Ìý There are some reasonably simple solutions to it.Ìý You could install, as you do under the kitchen wall cupboards, some sort of fluorescent, little fluorescent lights or LED strip lights within the wardrobe, perhaps on the shelf above the hanging rail.Ìý Again, just make sure they’re not in your mum’s line of sight directly, so she’s not getting glare from them.Ìý And if you can’t get hard-wiring to those, you can’t find somewhere of plugging those in, there are now many battery operated LED lights, you can just stick in – self-adhesive or a couple of screws will fix those in – and often those come with sensors, so they will turn on when your mum opens the wardrobe door and then turn off after a period of time.

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White

Is Lynn going to have to spend a fortune to get this kind of – what you’ve been talking about?

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Hodgson

Probably not, a lot of it is just adding – changing bulbs, lamps.Ìý If you’re not going to go to the extent of having to rewire to add wall lights and things, buying a couple of uplighters for a room would not be a huge amount of money.Ìý So, really, no, it shouldn’t be a particularly expensive thing to do.

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White

How much do your lighting needs and solutions vary with the type of sight condition that you’ve got?

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Hodgson

The research showed that for most eye conditions, better lighting is a big advantage.Ìý There will be some conditions which won’t benefit, some people do need less light, they have a condition which will require them to have lower levels of lighting but generally the higher level of lighting is something that the research showed that most people with partial sight found beneficial.

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White

Peter Hodgson, Lynn Bailey, thank you both very much indeed.

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And if you have any suggestions for good lighting or tips on how it’s worked for you do get in touch.Ìý You can email us at intouch@bbc.co.uk.

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And now to some of your emails.Ìý Last week we talked about the role of genetics for people who are blind or visually impaired.Ìý Darren Wicks emailed to say:

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Wicks – email

I was interested in your most recent programme about genetic testing and perhaps why retinitis pigmentosa sufferers should or shouldn’t be enthusiastic about getting tested.Ìý The week before your programme, I received my results from Addenbrookes in Cambridge.Ìý I have a 20-year-old son and have always been concerned about the possible impact on him and if he would have take steps if he planned to have a family of his own.Ìý My results have provided reassurance and certainty for my family because the mutation identified is not passed from father to son.Ìý There’s a bonus too – as a result of the RP mutation being identified, I was able to research it.Ìý I’m not getting ahead of myself and expecting any sort of readily available treatment soon but I can stay aware of the outcome of the clinical trials and any implications that they may have for me and others.Ìý I know some people have no interest in finding out but for my family it’s been a bit of a gamechanger.

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White

On the same subject, Brian Gaff wrote:

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Gaff – email

There was no discussion about the role of counsellors.Ìý The problem when I was 16, in 1966, was that it was the clinicians who gave the advice to not father children, as if it was really bad for society or it’s somehow your duty to not pass on the gene.Ìý I do hope that this has changed.Ìý I never did have children and I’ve missed the boat at 70 but for others, this really might be very much a current problem.Ìý Remember, at the age I was you absolutely take notice of those who are older and supposedly wiser.

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White

Well, as you can hear in Brian’s email, it is such an emotive subject but my impression, and my hope, would be that the purpose of genetic counselling would be to give people the information they need but leave the decision, about having children, to them.Ìý Well, do keep your thoughts coming in on that.Ìý And you did really want to talk about e-scooters after our item a couple of weeks ago.

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There was a lot of criticism but Jane Swain is a fan.

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Swain – email

I like e-scooters, I think they’re good for the environment.Ìý I’m partially sighted, I can see with only one eye and not brilliantly with the other, consequently, I can’t drive.Ìý Anything that makes it easier for me to get around is positive, so I welcome e-scooters.Ìý I already ride an electric bike; I also ride on the pavement when the road is busy – it’s safer for me but I do always slow down and give way to pedestrians.

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White

Well, of course, riding on the pavement is always going to be controversial – it’s not allowed, for one thing, Jane.Ìý And on the environmental benefits Tim Mallia was angered that we didn’t talk more about that aspect.

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Mallia – email

The focus on someone leaving an e-scooter on the pavement being a hazard was ludicrous.Ìý As a society we’re going to have to get used to near silent electric vehicles.Ìý Very little on Radio 4 completely incenses me, this piece did.

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White

Well Tim, perhaps you don’t have to pick your way through the increasing amounts of obstacles on our pavements with poor or no sight.Ìý As Rhiannon Valadini spelt out in our recent programme on this subject.

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Valadini

I had one particular incident where I was walking with a friend who had to bodily move me out of the way because I was going to fall over it, as I couldn’t identify where it had been left and it was just laying across the pavement in the dark.Ìý I’ve also walked into the handlebars when they’ve just been propped up against café seating areas, in the middle of pavements and a lot of the walkways in Cambridge are very narrow already without further obstacles sort of being leant against chairs or just leant up against windows where the foot bars are just left in the path.

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White

Which is exactly why we did want to return to the topic of e-scooters, not just because we had a big response to it but because the largest trial yet in any single area of the country has started in London this week.Ìý It’s thought the results of this trial, along with the others in 50 towns and cities in the UK, will be pivotal in whether the government decide to make e-scooters a permanent feature of the landscape and crucially, whether owning one privately could be made legal, which it currently isn’t.

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Well, there are three companies involved in the trials in London.Ìý One of them is Tier.Ìý Their regional manager, Fred Jones, joined me from the launch in Canary Wharf.Ìý And since we were upbraided by Tim about the environmental benefits, I began by asking Fred about that first.

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Jones

Well, I think, you know, it’s not too controversial to say that cars have a pretty negative impact on our cities and towns.Ìý Around 60% of car trips are under five kilometres and involve just one person in the car.Ìý And this is like the perfect sweet spot for people replacing those with an e-scooter, which is obviously zero emission.Ìý And so, they offer a really sustainable and environmentally friendly way of getting around.Ìý And hopefully, solving this chronic problem of congestion and pollution in our cities.

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White

But as you heard there, one of the biggest problems for people who are blind or partially sighted is that these are often left parked on the streets for people to bump into.Ìý How are you dealing with those concerns, you’re obviously aware of them?

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Jones

Absolutely.Ìý I mean the first thing to say, is these are valid concerns and they do pose a risk because of their silence.Ìý We’ve set up our UK safety board, representing the sight loss community.Ìý So, we’ve got the Thomas Pocklington Trust and London Vision and Transport for All on there and they scrutinise our approach and advise us to develop the safest possible service in the UK.

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White

And, of course, one of the points that’s often made is having some sort of audio alarm or have the scooters make a distinctive noise would be very helpful to people who are blind, as obviously they’re electric, so, they’re like silent assassins.Ìý What work are you doing on this?

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Jones

So, we were the first operator to commit to developing this solution and fitting it onto our scooters in the UK.Ìý Now when we started this bit of work and made this commitment, we asked, well what’s the right sound and how should it work and because no one’s done this before there was no standard to follow.Ìý So, over the past six months we’ve been working really closely with the Thomas Pocklington Trust and Sight Loss Councils to conduct some research to define the solution.Ìý And I’m really pleased with the progress we’ve made, we’re just a few weeks and months away from completing that work and we’re hoping to roll out this solution in the back end of this year.

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White

You say there hasn’t been much work on this but there’s been work on e-cars, haven’t there, which is exactly the same kind of problem in that they’re very quiet, couldn’t you just borrow that work, haven’t they got – come to some reasonable conclusions yet?

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Jones

Not yet.Ìý You’re right both electric buses and electric cars suffer the same challenge, so there are companies looking at that work.Ìý There’s no industry standard for micro-mobility for bikes and scooters.

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White

And, of course, the other thing is that e-scooters dumped on the pavement by people, they’re not going to be making any noise anyway, are they?

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Jones

The issue of parking is a really critical one and I think what the UK trials have shown is it’s not just the vehicle that’s being put on trial but also the operators as well.Ìý And there’s a number of operators in the UK, at the moment.Ìý At Tier we strongly advocate for mandatory parking, it’s not possible with a Tier scooter in York or London to just leave it parked anywhere – blocking the pavements, leaning up against cafes – as some of your listeners explained in their emails.Ìý With a Tier scooter you can only end the trip if it’s parked in a very specific location, often like a car parking space that’s been repurposed.Ìý And we’ve invested heavily in the technology to make sure that that’s done accurately.Ìý We’ve had over 98% parking compliance in York.Ìý We haven’t had any complaints or issues from the local visually impaired community and I’m really proud of the steps we’ve taken to show how e-scooters can be operated safely.

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White

Do you think e-scooters should be made legal for private ownership?

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Jones

One of the challenges with private scooters versus shared scooters is the lack of control in its standards.Ìý So, to give you an example of what that might be – we have our scooters, large wheels and suspension, that makes it suitable for riding on the road.Ìý Our scooters, at Tier, have indicator lights and crash helmets included in our service up in York.Ìý All these are really important to make people feel safe on our scooters and therefore ride them correctly on the road, whereas if you’re on a flimsy private scooter you might be more tempted to go on the pavements and I think that’s a dangerous thing.

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White

Fred Jones from Tier.

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Well, we’ll listen out for his scooters and when we do get those audio warnings fitted.Ìý And that’s it for this week.Ìý Do continue to send us your views on anything you hear in the programme or indeed don’t hear and think you ought to.Ìý You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk and you can leave a message on 0161 8361338 or go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch from where you can get more information or download tonight’s and many past editions of the programme.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Simon Hoban and studio managers Sharon Hughes and Phil Booth, goodbye.

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