The Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands is calling on the Government to ban any private e-scooter sales until they have been made legal to ride on roads.
The Daily Mail reports Simon Foster has written to the Transport Secretary warning of additional deaths and injuries if a “crackdown” isn’t introduced.
In his letter, seen by the Mail, he brands the contraptions ‘a menace’ and says they are increasingly becoming a drain on police resources.
Privately-owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on the roads.
Mr Foster said West Midlands Police force has alone recorded more than 400 incidents in recent years.
Many of these involved what the paper calls young thugs riding dangerously, such as on the pavement, or using e-scooters while they commit crimes.
Privately-owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on the roads but the Mail points out they are being sold in “record numbers”.
Meanwhile Peter Hitchens, columnist for the Mail’s sister paper the Mail on Sunday wrote in his latest column, wrote:
“In Portsmouth, more than 100 accidents have been recorded since March, with more than 13 deemed to be ‘serious’, requiring hospital treatment.
“In Canterbury, the local Police and Crime Commissioner, Matthew Scott, says: ‘E-scooters are an absolute menace and should be banned outright – no more trials, no legalisation of privately owned ones. People are already being killed and seriously injured using them. I’ve spoken to doctors who are seeing the impact on their wards. The Government needs to take action before people buy more of these e-scooters for Christmas.’
“But in both cities, rather than the machines being banned, ‘experiments’ have been extended, apparently on the say-so of the Transport Department. Is this supposed trial, in fact, a softening-up exercise to get us ready for full legalisation? It looks increasingly like it.”
Mr Hitchens adds to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety research which suggests in the first ten months of this year there have been nine deaths involving e-scooters and 300 casualties.
(Picture – Metropolitan Police)
