Electric Scooters

(asked on 2nd December 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that retailers are advising their customers of the law regarding the use of private e-scooters in the UK.


Answered by
Baroness Vere of Norbiton Portrait
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 14th December 2021

The Department estimates that 750,000 private e-scooters are owned across England based on survey results from the DfT Transport Technology Tracker. The Department is running trials of rental e-scooters to assess their safety and wider impacts. Trials are live in 31 areas. The evidence gathered during the trials will inform whether e-scooters should be legalised, and how we can ensure their use is as safe as possible. Until we have that evidence we cannot commit to a legislative timetable.

There were 484 casualties in reported road accidents involving at least one e-scooter vehicle in Great Britain in 2020. Information currently held by the Department provisionally indicates that there have been 530 casualties in reported road accidents involving at least one e-scooter vehicle in Great Britain in the first six months of 2021.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy leads on ensuring responsible business practices, but Ministers from this Department wrote to retailers of e-scooters in December 2018 reminding them of their obligations. In July of this year, Rachel Maclean MP wrote again to retailers sharing with them the Department’s concerns that retailers are not providing clear, visible and consistent information, to ensure that their customers understand the law. She asked them to work with their sales and marketing teams to ensure that they are familiar with our guidance on privately owned e-scooters, to ensure that their customers are not misinformed, inadvertently or otherwise, about the law which applies to the use of e-scooters.

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