Let e-scooters on to our roads – it’ll give cyclists like me a break from horn-tooting motorists

As the government prepares to let electric scooters be ridden on Britain’s highways, Paul Clements is all in favour – but not for the reasons you might think…

Transport secretary Louise Haigh is preparing to announce a plan to legalise electric scooters on Britain’s roads, as part of her wider integrated transport strategy. To which I say bravo – as long as she also introduces measures to enforce existing legislation to keep these deathtraps off our pavements.

Ever since Boris Johnson permitted the first e-scooter rentals in 2020 – trials were initially restricted to three areas, Portsmouth and Southampton, Derby and Nottingham, and the west of England, before the rules seemingly went to the wall – going for a walk in any of our major towns and cities has become a life-in-your-own-hands lottery.

Just ask the 78-year-old woman knocked over by an e-scooter in Wisbech town square and left with horrific injuries. Or the family of the Nottinghamshire grandmother who died in 2022 from a head injury when a 14-year-old boy ran into her while riding his e-scooter on a pavement.

According to the Department for Transport, last year 416 people were seriously injured and 965 slightly injured in collisions involving e-scooters – most of them the riders themselves, but illegal usage means that many accidents go unreported. Since 2019, 43 people have died in e-scooter accidents.

By rights, anyone found using an e-scooter that’s not part of a government rental scheme, either on a public road or pavement, is subject to a £300 fine and six points on their licence, if they have one. The maximum e-scooter speed limit is 15.5mph, but some models on sale legally can break 50mph. The latest industry estimates put e-scooter ownership at 1.2 million – and you can’t tell me they’re all being ridden slowly on private land. I’ve got eyes – and the bruises – to prove it.

Despite the UK having some of the greatest numbers of CCTV cameras per head of any country in the world, our police seem as interested in illegal e-scooter usage as they are in cyclists jumping red lights. Top marks to Derbyshire Police, who stand alone in their commitment to seizing e-scooters being illegally ridden.

Given the widespread flouting of laws and speed limits by e-scooterists – as well as the damage being caused to homes and property by exploding batteries – it’s about time the problem was taken more seriously by the government.

Of the six key pledges Labour committed itself to at the general election – bet you can’t name them all… – the most underplayed and half-formed was “a crackdown on antisocial behaviour”. If the new e-scooter regulation is an opening salvo from the transport secretary that also includes taking back control of our pavements from “cyclo-terrorists” and a zero-tolerance of train fare-dodging (which, on my commute at least, seems out of control), I’m on board.

Earlier this year, the mayor of Paris banned rental e-scooters from the city’s streets on the basis of trials that proved that people couldn’t be trusted to ride them appropriately. I’m not so prescriptive. Let them be ridden, but on the road only. The ensuing accident heatmaps will come in handy for local authorities looking for their deepest potholes.

I welcome the arrival of tens of thousands more hapless e-scooter riders onto the nation’s highways, skidding around our poorly maintained road network without helmets or due care for their personal safety. As a cyclist, it will be nice for angry motorists to have another target for their ire.

It also makes a change that e-scooter hooliganism is not just a British disease. This summer, Queen Mary of Denmark was knocked over by an electric scooter while on a royal walkabout in Greenland.

Their antics also add to the gaiety of this nation. While flicking through reels of pets doing the craziest things and clips from The Golden Girls (Facebook algorithm, you know me so well…), I’m partial to the occasional bit of dashcam footage of someone on a souped-up scooter on a dual carriageway while casually chatting on the phone, or two riding pillion, or zooming past traffic the wrong way in a road tunnel.

So, buckle up. I for one can’t wait for e-scooters to be let loose on the roads. But to be sure they keep off the pavements, might I suggest pedestrians also be allowed to carry Tasers?