Electric scooters really fuck me off

As bad as the path is when they suddenly decide to cross traffic. Seen so many near misses. I love them as an alternative for people who can’t afford a car and had too far to walk anywhere (we only have two buses a day in our town)

I hate them too. There is some horrible neddy looking kid with one here who is always going past on the road really quickly. I bet his parents would be the first to radge if someone hit him in their car. I also thought they were illegal

I hate them too. Round here they're the latest favourite escape vehicle for muggers, who ride up to people on the pavement, grab their phone/bag/etc then speed off.

Electric scooters on the pavement are a symptom of our transport system not being fit for purpose. In towns and cities it's stupidly inefficient and polluting to rely on moving massive great cars around just to transport one person. They take up loads of space and create an environment where it feels really risky for kids to walk or cycle alone to school.

But we don't have proper infrastructure for more efficient ways of getting around. If you were designing a civilised system from scratch it would all be designed around protected lanes for bikes, electric bikes (including cargo bikes), e-scooters. Plus good public transport obviously. E-scooters are a pavement menace when what they could be is part of a sensible transport system that actually makes kids safer.

I can sympathise entirely. I'm deaf/hard of hearing, so along with electric cars (yes, I know they're better for the planet etc) I cannot hear them. No point in dinging your bell at me, buddy. I don't hear it.

Agree, it’s intimidating to steer them so close to people

Yanbu I used to live in Bristol and they are everywhere! Moved out of the city now and there don’t seem to be as many in the town I live in. But I hated it in particular how close they think it’s ok to go to you.

Bloody hate them, my child is blind and they scare the shit out of him.

The thing about cars is you need to pass a test to drive one legally, you need to maintain your car and insure it to cover eventualities like accidents. Motorcycles are obviously the same with the addition of a helmet. These bikes are illegal on the road and the pavement but it would be bloody difficult to stop them from a police point of view. ( because if they pursued them and they came off the police would be blamed). So how about not buying them? It places a horrible onerous on everyone else to get out their way - especially at night with no lights.

I agree op. Especially dangerous for old people walking on pavements 😞

The tone of my last post sounds a bit more off than I intended. Half the kids I knew in the 90s had been hit by a car at some point and now it's much less common (number of fatalities, for example, has halved since then). While I do think it's tragic of course for anyone killed or injured, I do also think the massive reduction is positive and we should keep making the sort of improvements we're already making to further reduce this.

I'm not 100% convinced that making children go on the road on 30mph scooters when they don't even wear helmets is going to reduce fatalities tbh. I think we need a) mandatory helmets b) some sort of age limit c) possibly some sort of licensing such as the CBT for motorcyclists before we can insist that they ride in a specific place. And to clarify this to police along with what they need to do to enforce it. But right now neither road nor pavement is the right place for them.

hate them with a passion. when i was almost 9 months pregnant an idioit on one of these came round a corner and almost smashed into my belly. if he actually had have, id have done something id probably get locked up for. they just have no care for anyone walking down a pedestrian road

They drive me nuts - like other PPs I've experienced the kids/teenagers flying down the road on them, sometimes 2 or 3 on one scooter. What blows my mind is that there's been no thought by the parents or the kids for safety - the number of times they come hurtling round a corner, with no helmets, nothing and then decide it's my fault they nearly crash into me.

There's a family on my road whose kids each have an e-scooter, I reckon the youngest must be about 6. Absolutely no road awareness, not a private road and my heart has been in my mouth more than once when I see how close these kids are coming to being seriously injured or (God forbid) killed.

5 people a day? Wow! That must have gone right down! You see a lot more of the court cases for them in the papers these days as well, which I always think is a sign something is a lot more unusual than it used to be.

I've just looked it up and despite the massive amount of cars on the road there are indeed only 4.6 fatalities per day. Compared to decades past, that just goes to show how much impact all our road safety measures are having.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain

Of course people care about these who have sadly been killed on the roads by cars it's not an either or situation.

I hate them too, they’re so dangerous. I’m also pretty sure they’re illegal unless you live in a pilot city or are on private land.

We live close to a pilot city and I’ve nearly been run over more than once. There’s no actual scooter/cycle lanes like other countries have so they’re just not safe.

They should be legalised and enforced to ride on the rode. My anger is more directed at car drivers killing 5 people a day on the roads, but no one seems to care about that.

Yes this is preposterous, they should work out how to safely legislate for them, add rules to the highway code, and let people use them safely or face confiscation. I suppose that takes time but it doesn't sound like anyone's even made a start on this issue. How many kids are going to die before it's sorted?

I remember the quad bike craze in the late 90s and the mini moto craze in the early 00s, and how ineffectively those were handled and how many kids died/ended up permanently disabled then, too.

However, these e scooters could be a really useful and safe form of transport for adults if they were properly legislated and enforced.

Our local city has a council scheme. I would love to have a go but I'm 70 and I've broken bones more than once in the last couple of years so I think it is probably wiser not to.

I agree I fucking hate them. I also really hate that it's illegal to ride your own electric scooter on roads and pavements which you'd take home with you but our city is over run with ones that can be rented. They are left everywhere, regularly thrown in the river, in front of driveways and blocking pavements!!

We live on a private road, so the children can play on them here, but I agree that something needs to be done about people riding them on the pavement.