An open letter organised by national shared transport charity Collaborative Mobility UK (CoMoUK) is calling for the new Labour government to ‘urgently’ legalise e-scooters, saying it is the only way to resolve the problems caused by “entirely unregulated” privately-owned e-scooters being ridden on public roads. The letter, to Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and her ministers, says e-scooters could be legalised through the creation of a new “low powered zero emission vehicle class” which could also cover other forms of transport.
This seems like a good first step.
Move them out of the “technically illegal, but lots of people use them anyway” area, and into the “legal to use, but you have to register and carry some form of insurance”.
Are you going to apply the same rules to pedal assist bikes? Or are you planning to single out e-scooters only, like tfl did for some reason?
Honestly, I might even extend it to push bikes.
And make it so inexpensive to get the insurance that there is no excuse.
It’s something that’s irking me.
I’ve been a bicyclist, car driver, drive for a living and also have a VSett that goes a steady 35mph max which means I can lane check but, because I can’t fugging insure the thing means I’m always looking over my shoulder if I need to dump some
keeneager copper.I’m starting to think of selling it so I can get a
eBikeSurron instead and blend in with the local wildlife around here.If you give people a reasonable, legal way to do things, people will generally do them.
And the odd twat doing 30mph on the pavement is much more obvious, rather than blending in with people who would otherwise be following the laws.
I think one thing that’s missing from the equation is testing and licensing to ride/drive them.
I know it’s an English forum here but you need to have a set of cojones to “drive” an escoot/EUC on our roads and I only use it to travel the short distance to work.
I’ve gone down arterial roads suited up with live Bradford traffic, and it’s not for the faint of heart lemmi tell ya :/
I wish the cycling proficiency test was a legal requirement to ride a bicycle.
There are so many people who drive dangerously and use bad cyclists as an excuse. You know the ones who decide that traffic lights don’t apply to them, and the ones that ride on the pavement at 20 mph and knock over little old ladies.
I get the feeling that in the past, the effort required to cycle self-selected people a bit.
Now with cheap assisted bikes, it’s easier than ever to become a 100KG object travelling at 20mph.
So maybe it should have more requirements, in a “greater good” kinda way.
Kinda like when drones took off (heh). The rules for how to use model aircraft needed refining, because the barrier to flying a 2KG object near an airport became much lower.