To think the Escooter company/companies should bear some responsibility?

[Keyansier]

For contributing to towns looking so tatty lately? I can't be the only person who has noticed absolutely loads of Escooters just randomly dumped in the streets. I know that's the point of them and they eventually get picked up but there's loads of them and it makes us look like a third world country or the wild wild west or something. AIBU to think they should have to pay some sort of compensation to someone (perhaps local councils) for us public to have to put up with having to look at it? I'm not sure if it's one company or multiple but it/all should bear responsibility.

In Birmingham you can leave them anywhere as long as it's not blocking a public footpath and it's easily accessible from the road as they send vans round to collect them up and return them to the docks.

Ahh. I see.

I shall keep an eye out for them and work out what happens round here.

Liverpool by any chance?

I was there last week and was surprised to see them abandoned in the street rather than in some kind of docking station. Apparently that's fine and all part of the scheme and they get picked up.

I did nearly trip over one which was basically chucked round a corner.

Oh I wasn't aware it was a regional thing, I assumed national. Well as you can see people who have experienced what I'm talking about do tend to agree with me.

Yes in London I gave started seeing loads just dumped on streets. Lime is the name on our ones.

And in our private car park which doesn't seem right.

Luckily i don't have a pram or wheelchair to try and get passed them.

In our town they have to be returned to. Parking area place otherwise they keep getting charged, look no worse than a bike or two left and def less problem than a car parked on a pavemebt

If that’s the worst thing littering your town, consider yourself lucky!

Goodness, I used to live in Africa, can’t say I remember e scooters littering the streets. Goats and cows maybe.

It's not the worst thing and I didn't say it was so your 'lucky' comment is irrelevant. But I didn't know it wasn't the same in all UK cities so if you haven't seen it yourself you might not be able to quite imagine how unsightly it looks. And as people have mentioned, they are trip hazards when left just anywhere on the streets.

They really do leave them anywhere!

'third world countries' what is wrong with you how snobby can you get

E-scooters are a negative thing for a lot of reasons- people riding on pavements, making stupid manoeuvres, the inevitable accidents, yet more batteries being manufactured and abandoned... they're very anti social. I didn't realise there was yet another anti-social aspect as they're not available for rent locally and hopefully never will be.

Really they should never have been manufactured in the first place- why were they ever allowed to be sold when the only legal place to ride them (apart from rental areas) is your own private land? Virtually no one in the UK has enough suitable land to make buying one worthwhile, so it should never have become an option. (PS I know they were allowed because capitalism is more important than laws or personal safety/responsibility, don't worry).

I'm in Bristol and they are everywhere, from Voi. We also had a fire in a high rise block a couple of weeks ago, thought to have started from charging the lithium battery on an e-scooter (privately owned, not from Voi). One man died and many more left homeless. So yes, they do clutter up the streets, but I can see if they are reducing car journeys that's on balance a positive. I do think the responsibility of privately owned scooters and lithium batteries really needs to be looked at before there's more tragedies.

As a mode of transport they are less problematic than cars

I agree. Last year I alighted from a train at Charlbury station and walked into the Cotswold town to catch a bus to my destination. The place was utterly bespoiled by cars cluttering up the pavements.

Much as I love a good rant against e-scooters...no. I'm in a rough bit of London and never see them dumped.

That's true but it's not a like for like comparison - cars can perform functions in relation to transport that e-scooters can't. They appear useful for short single-person journeys in urban areas in good weather when the user doesn't need to transport anything else like larger volumes of shopping etc

Keyansier, there are a lot around where I live, 'littering' the place, I guess you would say - but I don't see them as litter, i see them as an alternative mode of transport to cars, which really are a blight on our streets. Why pick on scooters, which I don't use by the way. Just walk around them.

Watchorulo, which is why they are great!

Just been to Berlin. They are EVERYWHERE there. Thousands of them. Discarded all along every road, randomly. Multiple companies. Plus eBikes. In the UK we are nowhere near that level yet. I have to say I can see the attraction when I went there....you have an app on your phone and just scan the barcode and pick up any scooter from anywhere and discard it pretty much anywhere. Many of their cycle lanes are situated so it's road, then parking, then cycle lane, then pavement, so those on scooters on the cycle lanes and it's a lot safer than here when they are either mowing down people on the pavement or dangerous on the roads. It seems to be all young people on them here still but in Berlin it was a much bigger cross section of society and they were used far more responsibly.

And yet great hunks of metal weighing a couple of tonnes, dominating and lining our streets, are acceptable ?

You’ll be shocked by the amount of space that is dedicated to storing cars…

The issues where I live weren’t that they took up too much space in an absolute sense, but that they took up the wrong space. They were left lying across pavements, leant up against shop windows, dropped in doorways, cluttering up shopping trolley bays. They were piled on top of each other and balanced precariously so they toppled into the roads and crossings. They were left all over the parks getting in the way of play equipment, damaging plants and making access harder. If they’d all been left neatly and sensibly parked there wouldn’t have been an issue. It’s not the scooters, it’s the riders!

Since the local government regulated it’s been way better. There are still a lot of scooters but you don’t find yourself tripping over them so they are much less visible (rider education was also a part of the new regulations, so you don’t notice as many people zipping places they shouldn’t as much either.

And the way it was made so much better was exactly what OP proposed at the start of the thread - the hire companies had to take responsibility for what an inconvenience they were. Once the companies were getting landed with the fines (along with the threat of losing their permit if they got too many complaints, they managed to find ways to get their clients to be more considerate.

'Damaging plants'? Pretty sure wildlife is destroyed in the construction of infrastructure for roads, cars damage a lot more

Yes I have seen then dumped and lying across paths in town centres. Also seen them careering along at high speed with people on them apparently with little road sense. A good idea not always executed in the best way.