E-scooters: Deaths and Serious Injuries

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Anthony Browne)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I do not think it will be my last debate, because I have a speech to make tomorrow, but we are all awaiting an announcement. I am glad that it is delayed, because I know we have the nation’s undivided attention here.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on bringing this important debate to Parliament, on his incredibly impassioned speech— whether or not it was his last—and on his campaigning on road safety over many years. I know that as president of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety he has done a lot of work advocating for reform. I have met representatives of the council and gone through their proposals.

I want to say from the outset that e-scooters are revolutionary—there is no doubt about it. Many people like them, as we heard from the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke), and I myself have ridden them. On the one hand, it is important to get the regulation right, and safety must be at the heart of that; there is absolutely no doubt about that, and I think there is full agreement here. On the other hand, we do not want to legislate in a way that means we get it completely wrong and end up making things worse.

I agree with the sentiment expressed by the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) that these are not harmless toys. They are serious pieces of equipment and it is important we have the right standards around them.

I have a prepared speech, but let me go through the various points raised and the comments on them. First, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) mentioned the statistics on deaths. In 2022, there were 12 deaths from e-scooters; 11 were the riders themselves, and two of those were within the trial. So far, four people in total have been killed on the trial scooters. Clearly, with the non-trial scooters there is a far higher incidence of deaths.

The latest figures that I have seen on accidents are from 2022. There were a total of 1,492 accidents, of which 12 resulted in death and 440 were serious accidents. Each of those deaths is absolutely tragic, and serious accidents can be life-changing, so it is important to make sure we get the legislation right. Pretty much every speaker has said that we need to legislate, and I agree. Unfortunately we do not have parliamentary time, particularly if the speculation is right, but the Government have said that we need to legislate. We have been trying to make sure we have the right legislation, because it really is not clear exactly what the right legislation is.

One Member said that we should learn lessons from other countries. We have been looking at what other countries have done. Many have legislated, but they have all done very different things with different rules. Do they require helmets or not? Do they require insurance or not? Should an ID licence plate be required or not? Should people require a licence to be able to ride e-scooters? Should they be allowed on pavements? I think the answer to that one is an absolutely clear no. What should the minimum age be? Should there be a minimum age? Six countries in Europe that we looked at have no minimum age. In various countries, the minimum age is set at 10, 12, 14 or 16. We wanted to use the trials to collect evidence and make sure that we understand how e-scooters are being used, how people are riding them, what the patterns of behaviour are, what works and what does not work. That is why we have been collecting data from the various trials: so that we can learn how they are used in the UK, but also learn lessons from other countries.

It is important that we take the public with us on this journey. This is a new technology, and people need to know that they are being kept safe despite the pace and scale of these changes. We need only look across the channel to see the impacts if we get this wrong and the potential benefits are outweighed by the very real and understandable concerns. I am sure that the hon. Member for Huddersfield knows what happened in Paris: rental e-scooters were banned following the so-called blitzscaling, where streets were overwhelmed by these new-fangled forms of transport and the public became very strongly opposed to them. Other countries such as Lithuania and Belgium have gradually introduced tighter restrictions, having started out with a more deregulated regime.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am listening with great interest. The Minister is obviously very knowledgeable about this area, but I beg him to rapidly assess the best course of action. Beside me I have my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood), who is a great friend—I recently campaigned in his by-election—and I will be on him as well.

The worst thing that can happen to you as a human being is to get a knock on the door with the news that your mum, your dad, your daughter or your son has been killed in a road accident. It is all avoidable—I am sure the Minister agrees. This should give us the passion to make sure that, even if we have to feed it all into AI, we come up with something quick. Let’s do it!

[Anthony Browne]

Clearly I agree. All road deaths are absolutely tragic, but that is why it is so important that we get it right. I will come to some of the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but these scooters are completely illegal at the moment. Anything we do to regulate them or legislate on them would be legalising something that is currently illegal; presumably that would make them more widely used. That is why it is important that we learn about their safety features, the way they are used, what the age limit should be and whether we should legally require helmets, licences or whatever else. Other countries, as I say, started out with more liberal regimes. Lithuania and Belgium tightened them. I think it would damage public confidence if we started out with a regime that was unregulated, and then ended up having to ratchet it up because safety had not been protected. That is why we really need to get it absolutely right.

In our first evaluation, the trial data showed that the accident rate is higher than bicycles, but we do not know whether that is just because this is a new technology that people are getting used to. Some 72% of e-scooter accidents happen during someone’s first five rides. That suggests a learning curve: once people have used them for a while, they are less likely to have an accident. One point of reassurance is that 82% of accidents did not involve other vehicles or other pedestrians: it was simply the riders hitting something themselves, although obviously that could also be serious.

The hon. Member for Huddersfield mentioned the research that he has done. I commend him on his research into Toys “R” Us; I am rather alarmed by what he said, and will follow it up with officials. All retailers have to meet the product safety standards, and everything that is sold has to meet the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008. All retailers are required to tell people buying e-scooters that they cannot use them on public land, roads or pavements. We do monitor that: last year the market surveillance unit took up 24 different online retailers that it found not to be complying with that law. Some of them had to go through the Advertising Standards Authority, but all those that we found not to be complying with the law are now doing so. The year before, there was one that did not comply with the law, even when we told it that it needed to; that case is now in the courts. We have taken legal action against those retailers that are not abiding by the law, but I will ask my officials to look at the case of Toys “R” Us, which the hon. Member mentioned. That absolutely should not be happening.

The hon. Member mentioned that the police should be enforcing the law. E-scooters are illegal at the moment —the private ones, not the trial ones, obviously. It is up to the police to decide what to enforce and what not to enforce. In my constituency, I have tried to encourage the police to enforce parking regulations; I am in one of the few areas of the country where there is not civil enforcement. The police quite rightly make the point that it is up to them to decide what their operational priorities are, but I urge them to enforce this. I get frustrated when I see people on private e-scooters riding around. It is clearly illegal and I point that out to them, but I think there probably does need to be more enforcement. That is the case whether or not e-scooters are legalised through some form of regulation.

The point about fires that the shadow Minister mentioned has been a cause for concern; the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire and I have met the fire safety people about it. As the shadow Minister mentioned, most fires are caused by people using wrong batteries or wrong connectors. It is a product standards issue, and we are ensuring that there is enforcement. We have issued guidance to retailers and to the wider public on how to reduce the risk of fires.

The shadow Minister also mentioned pavement parking for people with sight loss, which is a real issue. One thing that we have been learning through the trials is how to get people to park in safe places, for example by having parking bays. The benefit of the 22 trials is that different areas have tried out different things, and we have seen what works and what does not. There has been dramatic progress on that, and we now know far better how to stop people leaving their e-scooters on the pavements and causing hazards. I should say that that is only really relevant for rental scooters, because no one is going to leave a private scooter out on the payment; it is a valuable thing, so people will take it home. But that is an example of how we have been learning through the trials.

The hon. Member for Bradford South mentioned the regulation of e-scooters to prevent dangerous riding. I should point out that e-scooters are classified as motor vehicles and are, at present, covered by exactly the same offences as cars. Things like death by dangerous driving are already covered for e-scooters.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister is being very kind on this auspicious occasion. Could he say something about the insurance of e-scooters? People are going to get killed and their lives are going to be destroyed. What about the insurance aspect?

[Anthony Browne]

The hon. Member makes a very valid point. If we do legislate, one thing we would want to look at is whether we should require insurance or not. Of the 22 countries that we have looked at that have legislated on this issue, 18 do not require insurance and four do. We do not require insurance for pedal bikes; if we did so for e-scooters, there would be a question about why we do not require them for pedal bikes. There is a range of issues there, as well as the safety side.

Finally—I am conscious of time—the shadow Minister asked about the recommendations that PACTS made on data gathering. Basically, we are abiding by all the regulations, and officials met PACTS just last month. We are improving police data collection. We are improving the trial data collection and are about to launch a second evaluation of the data from the e-scooter trials. It is incredibly important that we get the best information from those trials.

I thank the hon. Member for Huddersfield again for securing this important debate. I agree that we need legislation, but it has to be based on evidence. I understand that during my speech a general election has been called on 4 July. If that is true, I can guarantee that we will not get any legislation in before the general election. Whoever wins the general election will have to do the legislating, but they will have the support of the officials at the Department for Transport and will get all the information that I have about the need for legislation. Again, thank you for bringing forward this debate. It has been very instructive; a lot of valid points have been made, and we will take them away.