BURSTIt was Christmas day and Langley City resident Anita Soderquist was in her electric mobility scooter, heading for church, when she was hit by a pickup truck, narrowly escaping serious injury.
“My first thought was, I’m going to go see God,” Soderquist recalled.
“My second thought was, who’s going to look after the cat?”
She said the truck had gone through a light without seeing her in the crosswalk, and while it managed a last-second stop, it still made impact with the right side of her scooter, damaging an arm rest and knocking the steering out of alignment.
“It kind of pulls to the left.”
Soderquist told the Langley Advance Times her right arm is sore and she has trouble raising it, but her doctor expects a full recovery.
She was too rattled to get the truck licence plate, but Soderquist did talk to the truck driver, an older woman who was very upset.
“She said, you should have a flag.”
A Langley City resident was hit by a pickup truck while riding her electric scooter pic.twitter.com/gSZeW0U66j
— Langley Advance Times (@LangleyTimes) January 19, 2026
Soderquist is making arrangements for the repair of the scooter, but while that can be fixed, and she will recover physically, the experience was still traumatic.
“It scared me to the point where now, I’m very afraid to cross the road,” Soderquist said.
Soderquist said she was going public to urge drivers to be more aware of people in scooters.
I want them to know when you come to an intersection, look both ways,” Soderquist said.
“We on scooters [and] bikes, we’re aware of you, but if you don’t look both ways, you’re going to hit us, you know, and I’m 70 years old, I can’t afford to be hurt.”
She is aware of at least one other recent collision in the City where a scooter was struck by vehicle.
Under B.C.’s vulnerable road user law, enacted in 2024, people operating an electric wheelchair or mobility scooter have protection.
Drivers are required to take proper precautions around cyclists, pedestrians and other vulnerable road users on a public road, and to keep a safe distance when passing vulnerable road users.
It is an offence to fail to take proper precautions or to fail to provide the required minimum safe passing distances.
Violation tickets and fines for failing to take proper precautions with vulnerable road users are $109 and 3 driver penalty points.
Failing to maintain prescribed minimum passing distances carries a fine $368 and 3 driver penalty points, rising to a maximum $2,000 and six months of imprisonment.