‘Cars should be limited to 20mph to avoid an e-scooter ban’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
The war on car drivers goes on; no doubt it won’t take long for Sadiq Khan to join in:
In the UK, the rising tide of scooters was slowed by arcane rules that effectively banned their use on public roads. But after initial trials starting in 2020, rented e-scooters hired through smartphone apps have begun popping up in cities across the country.
A backlash has followed, with some pedestrians complaining the high-powered scooters are antisocial and clog up pavements when left lying around.
Fears have also been raised about their safety, with 12 fatalities in the year to June 2022. Last June, a 71-year-old grandmother became the first pedestrian killed by an e-scooter in the UK when she was hit by a rider.
Most deaths have been scooter users involved in road accidents, however.
An analysis by the Department for Transport found that scooter users were about three times more likely to get hurt compared to cyclists – with 13 "casualties" every million miles.
Wayne Ting, chief executive of Lime, the world’s largest e-scooter and e-bike rental company, believes it is not his transport that is to blame.
Ting, a former Uber executive and Obama adviser, says: “We know how to make riders safer and it is not by blaming modes of transport that are not creating serious accidents.
“The question is what is actually causing these accidents?”
For Ting, the answer is clear: cars. The solution? Make drivers go slower.
“We know how to improve safety, you slow down cars… in London, where they slowed the average car to 20 [miles per hour] they saw accidents go down.
“One accident is too many,” he adds, “but some people say we should ban scooters or e-bikes – imagine if a person gets hit by a car and people say we should ban walking?”..
The only road legal scooters are ones hired from an app such Lime and its rivals, including German-founded Tier and French start-up Dott. Speed limits are capped at 15.5 miles per hour.
The same is not true for most privately bought scooters, which can go much faster. Private e-scooters are still banned from public roads and pavements – although that does not stop some anti-social users clogging up walkways with scooters.
A government-backed study into e-scooters in the UK, published in December, found widespread examples of anti-social scooter use.
More than one in five scooter riders reported using them on the pavement, which is illegal, while 44pc of pedestrians reported having their path blocked by a badly parked scooter….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/26/cars-should-limited-20mph-avoid-e-scooter-ban/
In my view, e-scooters are fundamentally unsafe, both for their riders and pedestrians. They cannot be compared to bicycles, which are much easier to control, and must be pedalled (even electric ones!). I cycle hundreds of miles every year, and have never felt unsafe. I certainly would not feel the same on an e-scooter.
If it had not been for the climate agenda they never would have been allowed on the roads in the first place.
From a personal standpoint, I have frequently seen e-scooters being used in an inappropriate and unsafe way, often by clearly underage riders.
According to the Department for Transport, it is illegal to use privately-owned e-scooters on pavements, footpaths, cycle tracks and cycle lanes on roads. Riders must have a driving licence.
To be used on public roads and in public spaces lawfully, they must conform to a number of requirements, including being insured, taxed, and used with relevant safety equipment and other conditions.
However, the DfT website states that “it is likely that they (riders) will find it very difficult to comply with all of these requirements”, meaning their use on public roads would effectively be a criminal offence.
If they must be on our roads, they should be speed limited to, say, 5 mph and only allowed in cycle lanes.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
What’s wrong with an e-scooter ban?
Mr Ting will lose lots of money!!!
From Germany I can bring some good news that a battery scooter manufacturer has gone bust. And not only that, so has a cargo bicycle manufacturer. And the cherry on the cake is the demise of solar powered battery car maker Sono Motors.
I’ve always thought it odd that Segways were banned – and it seems to work – yet there is a problem with scooters.
Segways were the original, pretentious, Look At Me pieces of individual transportation tech. Those people were a menace. They were banned everywhere in short order. I agree–just ban the E-scooters and be done with it. Only aging hippies and tweens ride the things, neither of which have any notion of social mores, decorum, share-the-road ethos, etc. It’s all “This is my world and you are lucky I let you live in it.”
E scooters are a solution to a non-problem. In other words who needs them? Ting has jumped on the green lunatics bandwagon hoping to make a mint at our expense.
The Beaver: “Hey, whatcha doing, Eddy?”
Eddie: “Go play in the traffic, squirt.”
Kind of says it all, don’t ya think?
Banning e scooters? Bring it on!
The whole thought process behind absolving pedestrians/bikes/scooters of responsibility for their own safety and blaming cars/trucks regardless is insane and tending to increase risk. Creating rules to support that philosophy is also stupid. I walk a lot and the new pedestrian priority rule when a car is turning is just a nuisance causing confusion, delay, and danger all round.
It’s also been shown that scooters put people on the road who would not have been there, they do not take cars off the road – another of their supposed benefits cut down.
Ruddy idiot people now think that gives them the right to step out in front of a vehicle, another ill thought out piece of legislation.
On the other hand it maybe that is exactly what was desired by the law makers ?
Reducing both motor vehicle speeds and the population all in one.
OK. Force me to drive at 20 mph: then allow me to drive on the pavements.
Reading a book about the history of RR, claimed reason there was no mass market car production in the UK at the time was the red flag/walking pace speed limit. We’re on our way back!
Bizarrely the ebike manufacturers will not have considered that you need to have proved through training and examination the ability to reach the appropriate standard to hold a vehicle licence! I met one head on last week as he travelled anticlockwise on a roundabout oblivious to other traffic!
Having been involved in some of this lunacy during my time at the City of London, one problem that was raised was carriageway defects. The tiny scooter wheels along with their general lack of stability due to the small gyroscopic mass of the wheels made them far more likely to crash if they hit defects that would not affect other two wheelers.
The morons I worked with truly believe that car drivers will move to using the scooters even though evidence says otherwise. The main growth has come from drug dealers and muggers.
Large potholes and grooves in the road. Tiny wheels. Bad riders going too fast. What. Could possibly go wrong?
When I still lived in Chicago, IL, a few years back, the streets of the LOOP were littered with broken, inoperative, or simply abandoned E-bikes. The tourists simply drop them when they have finished with them. The City forced the E-bike companies to hire people to retrieve the remnants from the streets and sidewalks of Down Town. The only reliable cohort for these E-bikes have been drug dealers and shop lifters looking to get out of Dodge in an untraceable hurry.
A larger wheel has a greater gyroscopic inertia than a smaller wheel. Thus a standard bicycle is more stable directionally than an e-scooter with small wheels. This means that an e-scooter requires greater care and attention in use.
Another aspect concerns me – these scooters appear to have virtually no castor angle to their steering, which also means little in the way of self-centring. This must account for the very erratic way most of them travel…
Are you serious? No caster? Even shopping carts have built in caster so they track until you turn them.
Being partially disabled, I have a small folding lightweight three-wheeled electric mobility device known as a Travelscoot that weighs around 16 kg, has seven and a half inch diameter wheels with one rear wheel driven and has no caster.
It travels flat out at perhaps five to seven miles per hour and even with three wheels it behoves one to keep an eye on the terrain for potholes, ridges, small steps and the like as it can get surprisingly frisky on uneven going!
And that’s with three wheels, not two.
The rise in this plague of battery powered scooters appears to be in direct correlation with the demise of public transport.
In and around this city at least, which has two universities. A few years back young people took to cycling. A good thing because the number of infrequently used cars littering the place was a real problem to full time residents.
Little did we know we would be cursed by, mainly, young people careering around on these anti-social, lazy rider wheeled platforms.
That the mayor here endorsed from the start. Apparently it is all part of a trial.
It appears to me that they are linked in to the 15 minute ghettos that are being forced upon us. Without a doubt these are terrible terrible machines that on the whole it is only possible to rent.
If I try to see a possitive side to these lazy-by-battery wheelers, it is at least the riders aren’t walking around while staring at a mobile phone. Not wanting to be in their present environment/reality.
Both devises can inform the authorities where the user is or has been, at any given time. Once again, only in different packaging –
IT IS ALL ABOUT CONTROL AND THE LOSE OF THE INDIVIDUALS ‘ FREEDOM. How long before cameras are fitted ?
e-scooters (and bicycles) should at the very least be subject to severe penalties for riding them on pavements.
…and even bigger penalties for riding on the road.
“We know how to improve safety, you slow down cars… in London, where they slowed the average car to 20 [miles per hour] they saw accidents go down.”
Drakeford already has this set up, in his bid to bring Wales to a halt. He has also blighted stretches of the M4 with 50mph limits with average speed cameras, to “control pollution”. This is achieved by keeping more cars on the same stretch of road for longer, in a lower gear.
Ah Yes Mr Drakeford, now all major road projects are cancelled in Wales, because of environmental concerns! What tosh they have no money! If they stopped free prescriptions that might help.
Another top tip, I’ll happily drive at 20mph in built up areas but get rid of stupid humps in the carriageway and its a deal.
They have a LOT of money from road tax / VED and the taxes on petrol and diesel in addition, yet they don’t spend that money on even maintaining the roads let alone building the still missing ones.
” Drakeford already has this set up, in his bid to bring Wales to a halt. ”
As someone else has mentioned elsewhere: compare the private sector investment that has occured in Avonmouth / Severn Beach in recent years with the private sector investment that has occured on the other side of the Bristol Channel in South Wales.
The Welsh are the worst enemy of the Welsh.
Why not stop everything from moving, then there will be no accidents at all?
E-scooter riders look like a brilliant example of Evolution in Action to me!
While many people view e-scooters as a sustainable and convenient transport solution, others point out dangerous riding and safety risks, especially for pedestrians. A pre-trial government report titled ‘E-scooters: pavement nuisance or transport innovation?’ reflects this debate.
“Regulating e-scooters would help both consumers and the industry” https://thebristolcable.org/2023/02/regulating-e-scooters-help-consumers-industry/
Surely the debate has been had ?
They are dangerous and limited in their practicality.
E-scooter riders more likely than cyclists to sustain serious injuries – BBC News” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64801387.amp
Evolution in action!