Electric Scooter Trials and Traffic Signs (Coronavirus) Regulations and General Directions 2020

Lord Wei Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as listed in the register. I also declare that I am a fairly avid e-bike user and have tried out these scooters, albeit overseas on holiday.

My first point is one that others have already made. I welcome the Government’s use of trials to introduce this technology into the country but again I ask the Minister why we cannot have greater scrutiny, even with Covid. We need to ensure that we use the wisdom of this House and of Parliament as a whole to help make these trials work and introduce scooters to the nation in a healthier, sustainable way with less injury. As a country, we have a reputation for being an innovator and for using our expertise, including legal expertise, as a regulator. We should therefore trial these technologies in a sandbox in a way that balances the need to protect people with the need to be ahead of the game. You see that in many other sectors, so why not in this area too?

Secondly, having tried e-scooters, it is very clear to me that they are a bit more dangerous than bikes because of the way you stand on them. You are very susceptible to things such as potholes. Therefore, there is a difference. I ask the Minister what the policy is on e-bikes. I think that there is an even bigger opportunity to retrofit existing bikes with the many battery systems, whereby you essentially replace one of the bike’s wheels. Many millions of cyclists who might struggle to commute and use electronic scooters or regular bikes would benefit from that technology. I think that we should do that rather than focus on just scooters.

That said, in the interim there seems to be a real opportunity to use scooters as part of an integrated transport strategy, particularly in smaller towns and other places, as part of levelling up. Given the immaturity of the technology, I am not very much in favour of them being used in a totally deregulated way. Why can we not use them as part of an evolved transport strategy in cities and towns and ask those who lead those places to figure out on which routes there could be more trials of rented scooters? For example, Watford, which I visited recently, has a real problem in that the Tube finishes not in the middle but on the edge of the town. Could the use of scooters not be encouraged on very defined routes from the edge of that last mile to the town centre so that people could go there to shop and young people could be brought in?

Bicycle helmets are essential, as a previous speaker mentioned, and, as we have seen in these trials, we need to ID users. It seems that many of the problems have been with people who are not responsible drivers, and with some who are underage getting access to electric scooters. In the longer term, these scooters may be like drones; when the technology is ready, we can then start to bring them into wider use. As a nation, we perhaps need to encourage the manufacturers to look at the possibility of making the scooters stop when they encounter an obstacle, the ability of a person to geotag them so that they cannot go to places they should not, or the use of fingerprinting or other ID systems so that they literally cannot be used other than by the authorised user. Perhaps the way the scooter renter or user drives on pavements should affect their insurance, or their ability to use these vehicles. Ultimately, however, electric vehicles may over time become safer than existing vehicles, as in the way they allow the rider to accelerate away from red lights.

In conclusion, we must balance the risks with the potential to innovate and be ahead. I ask the Minister: what is the plan to do this in a careful and staged way?