So 12…can anyone give some context to this number? Are they as dangerous as using a toaster for example?
[deleted]
Sky News next bogeyman
It really is becoming the Daily Mail of broadcast TV
Well if you go from 10 people having any scooters, to 500 people having scooters, then of course you’re going to see an increase in accidents. If one year, of those 500 people, 5 have accidents, and then in the following year 10 people have accidents, does that mean that scooters have become twice as dangerous or that there are now double the number of scooters?
Granted, people definitely shouldn’t be allowed to ride with passengers and they should be fined (for endangering the passenger), but do I think scooters should be illegal? No. As a country we are so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to personal transport. 15MPH on an E-bIke? Come off it, as if I’m spending over a thousand pounds to go the same speed I would on a normal bike.
Did they say if the scooter deaths were in areas where they were conducting trials/using the trial scooters? I couldn’t see it in the article.
I don’t live in a scooter trial area but there are quite a lot that drive dangerously near me.
Edit, typo
This is utterly ridiculous reporting. 12 deaths (this is mostly people killed while riding a scooter, not people being killed by being hit by a scooter, despite the headline trying to imply the opposite) and there are calls to ban scooters? “Oh I guess a number of cyclists are getting hit and killed by cars, better ban bikes!” One of the examples in the article of how dangerous scooters are is literally someone being hit by a van. This is completely transparent and it is utterly perverse how the media in this country continue to minimise deaths caused by driving. There is one thing on the roads that overwhelmingly causes danger and pedestrian deaths and it is cars.
How about the bicycle deaths ?
Would be good to have some number to compare
The trials should continue but more enforcement is needed.
Helmets a must, one person per scooter, licence and insurance required.
And how much has e scooter usage gone up over the same period?
1,608 people were killed by cars last year.
The reason for many of these accidents is that riding them on the road is suicidal and there aren’t enough bike lanes.
If cars had this much scrutiny and standards applied over accidents then they would be banned too.
Still a small number but that does not change the fact that scooters need more regulation. I see so many people riding them like idiots or driving dangerously on roads. They might be useful and better for the environment than a car but they almost came from nowhere and no regulations or infrastructure exists to accommodate them, both of which are sorely needed. E-scooters are here to stay so we might as well do what we need to do with respect to those.
This is pretty much on par with cycling deaths as a rate, so it’s a nothingburger.
Honestly they’re ridiculous. I ride them everyday and have done for a few years, I’ve hit 7 people and 2 cars.
Far too dangerous!
The lobby is strong.
Instead of allowing them and create legislation for them, let’s just outlaw it because that always works.
From those i have seen being driven, im surprised it isn’t more like 12,000
Tax them as road users give them plates have insurance, make them accountable then..,.let them ride freely.
Whilst it’s sad that some people have died, I fail to see how this issue is any different to that of bikes. We have seen an explosion in the use of e-scooters so it’s only natural that we would see a corresponding increase in accidents. The report only really talks about collisions that involve e-scooters but doesn’t specify in how many collisions the rider was at fault. They are vulnerable road users just like pedestrians and bikers and I have no doubt that many of these incidents involved a rider being hit by a vehicle.
The police need to do a better job of recording the ownership of the scooters as well. We only have ownership recorded in a fraction of cases but where we do we see that nearly half are privately owned, so illegal to use on public land anyway.
Ultimately many of these accidents boil down to the same issue that cycling has always had, the road design is car-centric and generally unsafe for alternative modes of transportation. This results in riders having to mix in with heavy vehicle traffic or having to go on paths which mix them with pedestrians. If we make efforts to remedy this along the same lines that the Netherlands has over the past few decades we would likely see a massive reduction in both accidents and traffic.
Can all these “campaigners” for getting stuff banned please just fuck off? This country is enough of a shithole already without technophobes desperately trying to hold us back.
I think they’re great. My first time using one was to get home from A&E at an ungodly hour. It was quick and cheap, and saved me a chilly 90min walk.
Accidents happen, that’s life.
Maybe they should call for studies to improve the infrastructure (like segregated bike/scooter lanes) for scooters to be safer.
Another ludicrously disingenuous use of statistics. A sensible statistic might be “of the 8,900,500 journeys that took place in 2022 there were 8 more deaths than in the 8,400,509 journeys in 2022 when there were 4. (Numbers made up!!!)
Wouldn’t be sensationalist then though 🧐
It’s the ones on pavements that worry me. Call me an evil boomer, but the speed of them coming up behind you and you’ve got a split second to pull a child out of their path, they’re a bit of a nightmare.
Yes, there are the occasional bikes on pavements, I yell at them too.
If people want to hurl themselves under a lorry on one of these then go for it, but riding them down pavements pisses me off.
How about we shift the focus to councils investing in sustainable and safe infrastructure. All that money that was wasted during covid in many places just drilling plastic posts into the ground instead of building actual cycle paths. Or just painting lines and having cars park there rather than having safe separated paths. If there was legitimate infrastructure to encourage people to you bicycles, e-scooters or other public transport in short last-mile journeys rather than prioritising cars in towns and cities. Maybe, JUST MAYBE accidents might be reduced. Let’s invest, educate, and acknowledge that the tool is not the problem; and maybe the country just isn’t set up currently to support these new modes of transport.
E-scooters are a convenient and environmentally friendly mode of transport. Rather than pausing trials, the focus should be on how we can significantly expand cycle/scooter lanes alongside roads.
I’m surprised there aren’t more. The rental ones are full of drunk tourists usually with no helmets.
26 comments
From 4 to 12.
12 too many, but it sounds like it’s hundreds
So 12…can anyone give some context to this number? Are they as dangerous as using a toaster for example?
[deleted]
Sky News next bogeyman
It really is becoming the Daily Mail of broadcast TV
Well if you go from 10 people having any scooters, to 500 people having scooters, then of course you’re going to see an increase in accidents. If one year, of those 500 people, 5 have accidents, and then in the following year 10 people have accidents, does that mean that scooters have become twice as dangerous or that there are now double the number of scooters?
Granted, people definitely shouldn’t be allowed to ride with passengers and they should be fined (for endangering the passenger), but do I think scooters should be illegal? No. As a country we are so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to personal transport. 15MPH on an E-bIke? Come off it, as if I’m spending over a thousand pounds to go the same speed I would on a normal bike.
Did they say if the scooter deaths were in areas where they were conducting trials/using the trial scooters? I couldn’t see it in the article.
I don’t live in a scooter trial area but there are quite a lot that drive dangerously near me.
Edit, typo
This is utterly ridiculous reporting. 12 deaths (this is mostly people killed while riding a scooter, not people being killed by being hit by a scooter, despite the headline trying to imply the opposite) and there are calls to ban scooters? “Oh I guess a number of cyclists are getting hit and killed by cars, better ban bikes!” One of the examples in the article of how dangerous scooters are is literally someone being hit by a van. This is completely transparent and it is utterly perverse how the media in this country continue to minimise deaths caused by driving. There is one thing on the roads that overwhelmingly causes danger and pedestrian deaths and it is cars.
How about the bicycle deaths ?
Would be good to have some number to compare
The trials should continue but more enforcement is needed.
Helmets a must, one person per scooter, licence and insurance required.
And how much has e scooter usage gone up over the same period?
1,608 people were killed by cars last year.
The reason for many of these accidents is that riding them on the road is suicidal and there aren’t enough bike lanes.
If cars had this much scrutiny and standards applied over accidents then they would be banned too.
Still a small number but that does not change the fact that scooters need more regulation. I see so many people riding them like idiots or driving dangerously on roads. They might be useful and better for the environment than a car but they almost came from nowhere and no regulations or infrastructure exists to accommodate them, both of which are sorely needed. E-scooters are here to stay so we might as well do what we need to do with respect to those.
This is pretty much on par with cycling deaths as a rate, so it’s a nothingburger.
Honestly they’re ridiculous. I ride them everyday and have done for a few years, I’ve hit 7 people and 2 cars.
Far too dangerous!
The lobby is strong.
Instead of allowing them and create legislation for them, let’s just outlaw it because that always works.
From those i have seen being driven, im surprised it isn’t more like 12,000
Tax them as road users give them plates have insurance, make them accountable then..,.let them ride freely.
Whilst it’s sad that some people have died, I fail to see how this issue is any different to that of bikes. We have seen an explosion in the use of e-scooters so it’s only natural that we would see a corresponding increase in accidents. The report only really talks about collisions that involve e-scooters but doesn’t specify in how many collisions the rider was at fault. They are vulnerable road users just like pedestrians and bikers and I have no doubt that many of these incidents involved a rider being hit by a vehicle.
The police need to do a better job of recording the ownership of the scooters as well. We only have ownership recorded in a fraction of cases but where we do we see that nearly half are privately owned, so illegal to use on public land anyway.
Ultimately many of these accidents boil down to the same issue that cycling has always had, the road design is car-centric and generally unsafe for alternative modes of transportation. This results in riders having to mix in with heavy vehicle traffic or having to go on paths which mix them with pedestrians. If we make efforts to remedy this along the same lines that the Netherlands has over the past few decades we would likely see a massive reduction in both accidents and traffic.
Can all these “campaigners” for getting stuff banned please just fuck off? This country is enough of a shithole already without technophobes desperately trying to hold us back.
I think they’re great. My first time using one was to get home from A&E at an ungodly hour. It was quick and cheap, and saved me a chilly 90min walk.
Accidents happen, that’s life.
Maybe they should call for studies to improve the infrastructure (like segregated bike/scooter lanes) for scooters to be safer.
Another ludicrously disingenuous use of statistics. A sensible statistic might be “of the 8,900,500 journeys that took place in 2022 there were 8 more deaths than in the 8,400,509 journeys in 2022 when there were 4. (Numbers made up!!!)
Wouldn’t be sensationalist then though 🧐
It’s the ones on pavements that worry me. Call me an evil boomer, but the speed of them coming up behind you and you’ve got a split second to pull a child out of their path, they’re a bit of a nightmare.
Yes, there are the occasional bikes on pavements, I yell at them too.
If people want to hurl themselves under a lorry on one of these then go for it, but riding them down pavements pisses me off.
How about we shift the focus to councils investing in sustainable and safe infrastructure. All that money that was wasted during covid in many places just drilling plastic posts into the ground instead of building actual cycle paths. Or just painting lines and having cars park there rather than having safe separated paths. If there was legitimate infrastructure to encourage people to you bicycles, e-scooters or other public transport in short last-mile journeys rather than prioritising cars in towns and cities. Maybe, JUST MAYBE accidents might be reduced. Let’s invest, educate, and acknowledge that the tool is not the problem; and maybe the country just isn’t set up currently to support these new modes of transport.
E-scooters are a convenient and environmentally friendly mode of transport. Rather than pausing trials, the focus should be on how we can significantly expand cycle/scooter lanes alongside roads.
I’m surprised there aren’t more. The rental ones are full of drunk tourists usually with no helmets.