I'm fine with that along with insurance and a registration scheme
Woman sues council for pothole damage to illegal e scooter.
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Soldato
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Unsure about if riders have to take insurance out etc.
The riders were also courteous with stopping at traffic lights, unlike cyclists here.
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No chance, I know at least 5 parents buying them for their kids this Christmas and adults are also buying in numbers.
They are an excellent commuting tool that more and more will take advantage of.
The only problem with this country is people just exploit them however eScooter riders will never ever be as bad as us motorists with law breaking on the roads.
Soldato
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Southampton is one of the cities that is part of the official trial for dockable public scooters. You need a driving licence to set up an account and unlock a scooter but obviously you could just set up the app on someone else's phone etc.
I think they're useful. I've taken one to work and back a few times. There is geo fencing if that is the word so you can't hoon them through the parks or outside schools. They cost enough to unlock and use that I've only seen very few out and about and none of them in the river! I guess the unlock process and apps involved means that there is accountability when you hire one.
It costs me about the same as the bus but I can leave work whenever I want and don't have to sit with other people or get shouted at by the homeless guy in the park near the bus stop.
I genuinely rarely see idiots on them whether I am driving walking or on one myself.
The private ones are a different matter with kids hooning about everywhere on them.
I think they're useful. I've taken one to work and back a few times. There is geo fencing if that is the word so you can't hoon them through the parks or outside schools. They cost enough to unlock and use that I've only seen very few out and about and none of them in the river! I guess the unlock process and apps involved means that there is accountability when you hire one.
It costs me about the same as the bus but I can leave work whenever I want and don't have to sit with other people or get shouted at by the homeless guy in the park near the bus stop.
I genuinely rarely see idiots on them whether I am driving walking or on one myself.
The private ones are a different matter with kids hooning about everywhere on them.
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Saw a couple of dockable scooter posts in Gloucester when I was there in the summer.
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Thinking of getting one for going to and from work on. Although due to the hills I have to go up it will have to be above the stupid 250W limit.
Both. It depends on how they're implemented. What's generally being demanded is unregulated and unrestricted use of them. On pavements, on roads, wherever. That's a menace to everyone. Everyone is inconvenienced, some people are injured and some people are killed. It's unreasonably dangerous and shouldn't be allowed.
Ideally they should be restricted to their own space, their own lanes on roads. But we don't have the money or space for that.
A probably viable compromise would be to allow them to be used on cycle lanes with additional regulations on them to make them no more dangerous to others than bicycles. But we don't really have a functional system of cycle lanes either.
Another option is to treat them as the powered vehicles that they are and thus make them subject to the same regulations as scooters powered by an ICE. The type of engine doesn't matter in this context. But that removes some of the potential benefits of them.
I think they're fine and should replace cycle solutions wholesale. Our prissy attitudes and regulations should change too. Let eScooters and all kinds of bikes be allowed on paths and town centres. eScooters and bikes should have a speed limit of at least 30mph to not slow down road traffic and a maximum of 5mph on paths and town centres to closely match walking speed. As a car driver is responsible for their own speed so is the eScooter and bike rider.
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Every e-scooter in existence should be placed on an island in the middle of the ocean and nuked hard.
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Think it's only in the UK there are idiots, but maybe that has something to do with the UK laws on them. They've been heavily used in Spain for past 4 years. I bought one there and found it much more useful than my fold up bike for provisioning. People seemed to use them well and the roads of course much better within the cities (worse outside).
On a visit to the UK to prepare a bike for touring France, I noticed not just how poor the roads were but how slow. This something pro cyclists have complained about for years. The make up of UK roads creates more rolling resistance thus more effort required to achieve the same speeds. Add small wheels into the mix, pot holes, and some chavs, and it's not really a pleasant experience.
5 miles per hour is a very fast walking speed.
Mobility scooters that operate on the pavement, and are regulated for safety with regards to speed are limited to a top speed of 4mph (ones designed for road use can go up to 8pmh but IIRC have to have a secondary maximum speed setting for pavements*), and you don't realise how fast 4mph is compared to the average walker until you run the scooter alongside people or are on the scooter and realising that your reasonably fit friends are lagging ever further behind.
The "average" walking speed is 2.5-4mph depending on age, fitness and if you're concentrating on making progress, most people will walk at the lower end of that unless in a hurry.
It's not a "prissy attitude to regulations" to realise that on pavements the priority is the safety and wellbeing of pedestrians, and that includes people who may be unable to move quickly, people with visual or audio impairments and people who may not be paying full attention to everything around them because for example they're not expecting some plonker to come whizzing past them at what is effectively a jog/run.
It's also not prissy to realise that most of the electric scooters available are extremely poorly suited to for example road use or higher speeds because they've not got and real safety features and their wheels are small enough to mean that you're far more likely to have an accident due to a poor surface than bikes or any legal motorised transport. Most bikers will have tales about how bad the roads are for bikes and motorbikes and how the wheel size makes a big difference in handling, and these are people who have actually had training not just bought something and gone straight onto the road.
As an aside even with 4 wheeled mobility scooters they tend to have larger wheels than many of the escooters, because once again they have to meet those prissy safety regs and the people that came up with them are very aware that the smaller the wheel the less it's able to cope with poor conditions, and even the smallest mobility scooter wheel for "outside" (pavement) use I've seen** is larger than some of the ones i've seen on escooters whizzing around (the legal escooters tend to have something akin to the tyres common on many of the smaller mobility scooters).
*Usually something along the lines of a finger operated paddle/lever on the handles for general speed from 0 to whatever, then a secondary dial or switch that controls the maximum the hand control can get to up to the legal limit for it's class (IE you set the dial at half and at maximum pull of the finger lever you go at half the speed that the scooter is hard limited to).
**Over the last 30 years I've seen loads as my mum used them, and the smallest/worst wheel I saw was about 5" on a scooter that was only really meant for inside and in shopping centres, around 8" diameter by 3" wide seems to be the most common "small" one used, whilst 10"+ are more common for road legal ones. The largest I've seen where some mountain bike tyres used on one of my mum's 3 wheelers, really easy to fix (you could buy the tubes and tyres anywhere) but also more prone to damage.
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To gain a scouts walking badge it used to be 4 miles in one hour and young legs can step along quite smartly.
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E scooters are only used by lazy/ignorant people.
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Woman injured while illegally riding an e-scooter suing for £30k compensation
A WOMAN who broke her leg when she hit a pothole while illegally riding an e-scooter is suing for £30,000 compensation. In the first case of its kind to reach court, Giovanna Drago blames the counc…
www.thesun.co.uk
As the link was missing from the OP
My take is that she will have to swear to breaking the law in order for the case to be heard, at which point she should be prosecuted for the offences she committed which at minimum riding a motor vehicle without insurance, probably no licence/ otherwise in accordance too.
So 6 points unlimited fine & possible disqualification for the no insurance & 6 points & £1000 fine for the no licence/otherwise in accordance.
I say let her make her declaration then prosecute her and impose all 12 points, 12 month ban and a fine of £30,000.
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Heh.
How about people who want to commute to work, yet don't fancy driving?
People who drive to work under 2 miles are lazy.