Using an e-scooter for your commute is illegal - why are people still buying them?

Four hundred and fifty. Which raises the question – at what point does a new transport trend become a public policy failure?

The law is not especially complicated: you cannot ride private e-scooters on public roads, cycle paths or pavements. Yet, they are everywhere. They appear in city centres, on pavements, through pedestrian precincts, outside stations, in parks, and, with grim inevitability, in the path of people who expect to walk down the street without being clipped by a silent, battery-powered vehicle.

This would be absurd enough if everyone understood the rules – but they clearly do not. And why would they, when private e-scooters are being sold and advertised as just another commuter gadget? Who could resist the prospect of a neat little scooter to glide you from flat white to office desk? Just one problem – legally, it cannot.

Recent reporting found retailers advertising e-scooters for commuting despite the fact they cannot be used on public roads, cycle paths or pavements. Rather than a harmless marketing flourish, it tells consumers, in effect, “here is a vehicle for a journey you are not legally allowed to make”.

Meanwhile, councils are left dealing with the reality. In Coventry, the council has been taking action against e-bikes and e-scooters in the city centre, where officials have reported regular complaints and collisions linked to the issue. Local authorities are being asked to police the fallout from a market that has been allowed to run ahead of the law.

The serious injury issue is not just that these vehicles can hurt people, it is what happens afterwards. Unlike legal road vehicles, private e-scooters do not need to be insured. If someone is hit by, say, a car or motorcycle, there is usually an insurance route. If someone is injured by an illegally ridden private e-scooter, that protection may simply not be there. The injured pedestrian, the knocked-over pensioner, the child hit in a park, may be left with pain, loss and no clear route to redress.

Approved rental e-scooter schemes are different. They operate within a regulated framework and come with insurance, and that is a distinction that matters. But private e-scooters are not regulated commuter vehicles and they are illegal on public roads for a reason.

We cannot keep pretending this is all par for the course of urban modernity. Police are seizing e-scooters, councils are having to restrict them, yet retailers are selling them as commuter transport. And it is injured people who are often left paying the price.

Until there are proper safeguards on safety, enforcement, insurance and public education, private e-scooters should not be normalised as everyday commuting vehicles. If we cannot make them safe and accountable, they should not be on the road.

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Martin Usher is Head of Serious Injury at Lime Solicitors.

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