Are Electric Scooters Road Legal or Not!?

[Pete the Elaner]

16 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Presumably there will be no requirement for a license.

i would think going by what I have heard that they will most likely come under the same rules as ebikes. As is the current case in some other countries.

Put it this way. If you need a license for an escooter what about a license for driving a disability scooter. Now they can be a real menace.

Going OT. In line road use roller skates never caught on in the UK but have a niche market in France and Germany. They can be not much slower than an ebike on power. I have come across them several kms. away from any habitation in France and in Germany have known a marathon to include a section to cater for them. I have even seen then in use by shelf stackers in super markets. No power so no legality issue.

Bernard

 

In order to use the hire scheme ones in Milton Keynes, you need to scan your driving licence with the app before you can start using it.

[Pete the Elaner]

13 hours ago, jbqfc said:

cycling home tonight i came across a queue of cars i passed them to find an electric scooter going down the middle of the road not letting them pass 

i cannot see the point of them i can cycle faster than they can go 

 

John 

 

They make a lot more sense in Milton Keynes because of the town's network of Redways. E-scooters & cycles are allowed on these.

 

So should they be made legal in MK only? That seems a bit unfair & also difficult to implement.

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

In order to use the hire scheme ones in Milton Keynes, you need to scan your driving licence with the app before you can start using it.

My impression is that is only because it’s both a good way to prevent kids going crazy with them and a ready form of identity so that they scooter company can chase you up if you loose one, rather than a ‘driving qualification’. Discriminates against perfectly sensible non-drivers, of course.

[Nearholmer]

If I’d seen this when the thread started, all would have been simpler: on one of our parish notice-boards, put there by the PCSO who acts as “bobby”.

 

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Dagworth]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

My impression is that is only because it’s both a good way to prevent kids going crazy with them and a ready form of identity so that they scooter company can chase you up if you loose one, rather than a ‘driving qualification’. Discriminates against perfectly sensible non-drivers, of course.

A provisional license is sufficient, it's for insurance, and also you can gain points on your license if you misbehave on an eScooter. We have them here in Cheltenham too, although we have a notoriously awful road system and no cycle paths. You can only end your hire of one at designated drop-off points, I've not seen any points anywhere near where I live (which is fairly close to the town centre rather than on the outskirts) so they are of no use at all to me. Better for making sure the scooters remain in use but actually sod all use for getting anywhere useful.

[melmerby]

There has been some problems with hired scooter riders (unspecified in the news reports) in the West Midlands trial areas with Coventry currently suspended.

 

How's this for blatant illegal advertising:

Advertised for use on public roads with this getout "They remain controversial in the UK (as of July 2020) due to not being legal to ride on public roads (unless hired). However, as with the vast majority of police forces, West Midlands police have not recorded taking any action against e-scooter riders"

https://www.scootered.co.uk/blog/buy-electric-scooter-birmingham.html

[tr7v8]

These electric scooters are as common as flies on a cow pat in Europe, especially Paris. I was over there on business last year & they were completely lethal. Pavements, roads wherever & at around 30MPH plus. Completely silent so you didn't know they were there.  Also although they had lights, they are pretty puny so invisible at night.

[Pete the Elaner]

I could easily have wiped out 2 of them tonight.

I was driving on a dual carriageway with a car loitering ahead of me in the right hand lane. He/she stopped at a roundabout for seemingly no reason at all.

I nearly nipped past, but saw something which made me brake. I later saw what it was: 2 girls on E-scooters.

They do have lights, but not very bright so not easily seen in the dark. They are definitely harder to see than a moderately lit bike & for some reason I do not understand, it seems to be trendy to wear dark clothing on the road these days

For those who are not aware, they are only allowed on redways (MK's version of paths) & roads on which the limit is 30mph. Of the 4 roads serving this roundabout, 1 is 30mph, the other 3 are 70. They went past the 30mph exit, so must have entered & exited on 70mph roads.

I would not be surprised if they spend tonight in hospital.

 

During a hospital visit last year, I spoke to somebody who fell off one the first time he used one. When being treated, the staff told him they attend to an E-scooter related injury almost every day. He also pointed out that the wheels are so small that they are easily de-stabilised by a pothole.

They should be quite useful but I am not sure I want to try one out.

[rocor]

On 08/10/2020 at 12:48, Nearholmer said:

If I’d seen this when the thread started, all would have been simpler: on one of our parish notice-boards, put there by the PCSO who acts as “bobby”.

 

 

 

So the trick is, for anyone owning a private E-Scooter, is to paint it in the colours of the local E-Scooter company. 

[phil-b259]

13 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

So the trick is, for anyone owning a private E-Scooter, is to paint it in the colours of the local E-Scooter company. 

 

Yes and No.

 

Please remember what was said up thread - e-scouters require licencing by the DVLA if used on public roads.

 

Thus an e-scouter must have some sort of registration plate that can be checked against the DVLA database.

 

So if an e-scouter is observed to be doing something it shouldn't by the Police then the user can be stopped and it quickly be established its not a hired e-scouter.

 

Granted if the user is behaving as per the law and the e-scouter looks like a hired one then its quite possible the Police may not bother investigating further.

[Michael Hodgson]

14 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Granted if the user is behaving as per the law and the e-scouter looks like a hired one then its quite possible the Police may not bother investigating further.

 

... until you get knocked off your illegal scooter by a lycra-clad lout riding a push-bike recklessly on the footpath or the wrong way down a one-way street.  Also uninsured untaxed vehicles with no registration number.  The old bill ignore many offences on the public highway until there's an accident, when they come to shoot the survivors.

To be fair, they haven't the resources to do much more.

[rocor]

16 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

 

Please remember what was said up thread - e-scouters require licencing by the DVLA if used on public roads.

 

 

 

I am thinking that this could be the thin end of a wedge.

 

1)   E-Scooters require licencing.

 

2)   Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycles do not require licencing (on the road these appear to be a more practical vehicle than the scooters).

 

3)   Pedal Cycles do not require licencing.

 

Being as the civil authorities tend always towards ever further regulation, how long before categories 2 and 3 above, also will require licencing. 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

7 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

. until you get knocked off your illegal scooter by a lycra-clad lout riding a push-bike recklessly on the footpath or the wrong way down a one-way street.  Also uninsured untaxed vehicles with no registration number. 

As a pretty keen cyclist, I don’t think I’d mind having to pay insurance against causing injury to a pedestrian (in fact, thinking about it, I already do, through a cycling club membership fee, and possibly through the third party injury element of home insurance too) because it would be a piddlingly small premium, because instances of cyclists injuring pedestrians are extremely rare. 

 

Lots of wannabe Clarksons trot out this ‘cyclists should be insured and pay road tax’ line, probably out of genuine ignorance of what the facts are around pedestrians being killed or injured by cyclists, when the real problem, cyclists riding on pavements, wouldn’t be covered by insurance anyway, because it’s illegal.

 

A more proportionate and effective way to deal with a problem that exists in a few urban areas is to crack-down on it by enforcement of the law.
 

 

 

[phil-b259]

17 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

I am thinking that this could be the thin end of a wedge.

 

1)   E-Scooters require licencing.

 

2)   Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycles do not require licencing (on the road these appear to be a more practical vehicle than the scooters).

 

3)   Pedal Cycles do not require licencing.

 

Being as the civil authorities tend always towards ever further regulation, how long before categories 2 and 3 above, also will require licencing. 

 

 

 

Electrically assisted cycles have some pretty strict limits - the MAXIMUM speed they can obtain is 15.5mph! This is deliberate as a 'average cyclist (i.e. not a wanabe Tour de France contender) will typically ride around that speed on level ground

 

After that the electric motor MUST STOP assisting and you are reliant on human muscle power alone. Consequently there is effectively no difference with regular cycles.

 

E-Scouters can be ridden up to 30mph (and many actually can go faster in the right conditions). Mechanically propelled scooters by contrast will struggle to run at even 15mph as the act of propelling one along is not as efficient / easy as bicycle riding. This means the danger posed to others (and users) of electric scooters substantially more and that is what has driven the need to have some form of licencing regime not as a way of making money.

 

Granted if the bicycle was invented now then its quite possible that some form of tax / licencing would be introduced - but you could say the same of horse riding, herding animals or basically any activity on the public road that does not involve you walking!

[rocor]

There appears to be a whole load of electrically assisted devices destined for the pavements.

 

Roller blades.

Roller skates.

Skate boards.

 

and shoes...

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

I got badly caught by two guys on e-bikes last summer.

 

Was cycling on a country road, and two guys emerge from a turning ahead of me, both on sturdy bikes, both older guys, and a bit stout, pedalling steadily along, clearly not working hard.
 

I’m no super-speeder, but in a few minutes I’d caught up with them, and decided to pass them on the next suitable stretch, which I did.

 

One steep and twisty up-hill bit later, and I look round ready to take a turning, and realise that they are right on my tail. How the dickens did two stout chaps on heavy bikes do that? thinks I.

 

Anyway, a few miles later was the forest cafe that we were all evidently heading for, at which point I realised that they were both riding hefty e-bikes. Their wives were waiting for them and it emerged that they’d toted the bikes there in their cars, and done a <10 mile circuit. For “exercise” ..... which it clearly hadn’t been in any meaningful sense.

 

I did feel slightly diddled!

[Butler Henderson]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

As a pretty keen cyclist, I don’t think I’d mind having to pay insurance against causing injury to a pedestrian (in fact, thinking about it, I already do, through a cycling club membership fee, and possibly through the third party injury element of home insurance too) because it would be a piddlingly small premium, because instances of cyclists injuring pedestrians are extremely rare. 

Indeed, its more likely to be the cyclist who is going to come off worse in any contact incident - try cycling on a national cycle route through a tourist area at peak visitor times; no matter how many times a bell is rung pedestrians are so engrossed in conversation they do not hear it and conversely those who see a cyclist often look as if the devil is riding the bike; then there are those who look straight at the bike and act like a cat assuming you are going to stop and unnecessarily  jump to one side when you cycle carefully past them. British Cycling include £15million third party cover in most if not all of their membership packages.

 

Edited January 30, 2021 by Butler Henderson

[Hal Nail]

Shared paths work infinitely better with a line down the middle - its not foolproof because you will always get peolple who ignore it, but it does help the issue of people panicking over which way to go.

 

I think pedestrians often dont hear the bikes coming from behind until they hear a sound very close at the last second and instinctively flinch away from the noise, which usually means leaping straight into its path. Thay happens less when there is a line.
 

In terms of e scooters, for me the big difference between them and bikes is that while they are both dangerous on pavements, scooters are also a monumental menace on the roads. They accelerate and can go far too fast to be safe and are nippy and unpredictable compared to a bike, let alone a car, so very unpleasant to be around.

 

I would welcome mandatory proficiency for cycles - it would benefit other cyclists just as much as anyone else. I'd probably ban scooters but with better speed limits and similar training they might have a role.

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

The biggest problem on shared paths IMO is pedestrians with ear-phones in. Its got even worse with so much WFH over the past year, because so many people WFTPWWTDAWE (work from the park while walking the dog and wearing earphones). Totally engrossed in discussion of weekly widget-sales statistics, deaf to the world, with a dog on a fifty metre long lead made from super-thin, high tensile strength invisicord.

 

Anyway, all's good really; so far I have neither run over a poodle, or got knocked off my bike due to the invisicord.

[Reorte]

Every time someone comes up with a way of getting around using a car for those journeys that are a bit short to justify that but a bit long to get a little tedious to walk there seems to be a lot of pressure to get it banned. If bikes were just invented today they'd probably be banned in short order.

 

[Ron Ron Ron]

9 hours ago, Reorte said:

Every time someone comes up with a way of getting around using a car for those journeys that are a bit short to justify that but a bit long to get a little tedious to walk there seems to be a lot of pressure to get it banned. If bikes were just invented today they'd probably be banned in short order.

 

 

Joking aside, I strongly suspect you're right. Bikes wouldn't be allowed on the public highway if they had just been invented.

 

 

.

[Nearholmer]

Public highways were fine places for thousands of years (Dick Turpin and his mates aside) - the trouble started when that Daimler bloke invented a viable, small internal-combustion engine.

[Pete the Elaner]

10 hours ago, Reorte said:

Every time someone comes up with a way of getting around using a car for those journeys that are a bit short to justify that but a bit long to get a little tedious to walk there seems to be a lot of pressure to get it banned. If bikes were just invented today they'd probably be banned in short order.

 

 

It is the riders which can be a problem, but a minority of them.

& a minority of car drivers are equally a problem.

[Pete the Elaner]

On 30/01/2021 at 18:23, Nearholmer said:

I got badly caught by two guys on e-bikes last summer.

 

Was cycling on a country road, and two guys emerge from a turning ahead of me, both on sturdy bikes, both older guys, and a bit stout, pedalling steadily along, clearly not working hard.
 

I’m no super-speeder, but in a few minutes I’d caught up with them, and decided to pass them on the next suitable stretch, which I did.

 

One steep and twisty up-hill bit later, and I look round ready to take a turning, and realise that they are right on my tail. How the dickens did two stout chaps on heavy bikes do that? thinks I.

 

Anyway, a few miles later was the forest cafe that we were all evidently heading for, at which point I realised that they were both riding hefty e-bikes. Their wives were waiting for them and it emerged that they’d toted the bikes there in their cars, and done a <10 mile circuit. For “exercise” ..... which it clearly hadn’t been in any meaningful sense.

 

I did feel slightly diddled!

 

I have had a couple of amusing e-bike incidents.

While riding with Corley's a couple of years ago, one of the others who I had ridden with several times before remarked that I was wheezing uphill (I didn't think so). I didn't realise he was on a e-bike. I had ridden with him before & knew he was not slow so didn't understand why he was on one anyway. Cheeky !

 

A couple of years earlier, I was out riding with Pink's; another local shop you may know of. One of them was on an e-bike & was one of the slower ones, which was not a problem but he was relying on his battery a bit.

He struggled somewhat towards the end of the ride after his battery had gone flat. The rest of us found it quite amusing.

[Kickstart]

2 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

Joking aside, I strongly suspect you're right. Bikes wouldn't be allowed on the public highway if they had just been invented.

 

 

.

Probably applies to horse riding, motorcycles, cars, buses, lorries, etc

 

All the best

 

Katy