E-scooters

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for giving us this excellent opportunity, and I am surprised to find that I agree with most of the views that have been put forward. In my view, the Department for Transport is treating the 31 pilot projects rather as the Prime Minister is treating the Sue Gray report—as an excuse for lack of action, while the evidence mounts and everyone can see there is a big problem.

I start from a position of positively welcoming e-scooters, as another potential alternative to cars. They are not exactly active travel because they require very little effort, but they are emission-free at the point of use. Evidence shows that they tend to be used by young people for short journeys and are often used just for fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

One problem is that the Government have set up so many very long-term pilot projects that a large number of people think that all e-scooters are now legal. Another is that there is virtually no police enforcement for illegally used e-scooters outside the pilot areas, while retailers are selling hundreds of thousands of them—mostly with no warning that they are illegal on roads and pavements. It is estimated that there are now at least 1 million privately owned e-scooters across the UK. In addition, there are 23,000 available to rent.

That is a very large experiment from which to draw conclusions, and there is now plenty of evidence of the damage that the current wild west approach is doing. Nine e-scooter riders died last year, and a study in Bristol showed that only 7% of riders were wearing helmets. Indeed, the pilot schemes do not require helmet wearing. There were 951 casualties involving e-scooters, 732 of which were the riders—one as young as four—and 253 seriously injured people.

The Government seem paralysed into inaction while the rest of the world is taking this issue on. To give a snapshot of good ideas, in Germany, for instance, you have to be insured, with an annual insurance sticker; you must have lights, brakes, reflectors and a bell; and there is a 20 kilometre per hour maximum speed. France, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Portugal and Sweden have all based their rules on those that apply to cycling. Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy and Australia all seem to have rules. There are a host of ways in which sensible regulations can be introduced and technology can come to the rescue—for example, using geo-fencing to exclude them.

Despite all that regulation, however, very serious issues remain. The impact on people with disabilities has been very well outlined. I have lost more than 70% of my hearing, and I am told that they make a swishing sound as they come along, but I cannot hear that. The hire and charging model for e-scooters is not as environmentally friendly as you might think, because the batteries have a very short lifespan, and a time-based hiring system encourages people to speed to get to the end of their journey by the end of their hire time. There is also a serious and major fire risk, which has been revealed only this week, with a house destroyed by a fire due to the combustion of an e-scooter battery. So, I ask the Minister to please address that issue if she does not do anything else.