Scooters And One Wheels

I am terrified of being mowed down by an e-scooter

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Am I the only person who’s more and more afraid that this swarm of e-scooters will cut us all down on London’s sidewalks?

The other day, walking home from the Acton Town subway, I was almost knocked to the ground by a teenage boy on an e-scooter. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and bombed the sidewalk at about 50 km / h. Later I saw a woman on the street who was standing in front of her on the street with her daughter, who could not be more than six years old. Neither of them wore helmets. Everywhere I go, sidewalks are now danger zones with e-scooters moving at high speed like Exocet missiles. I’m afraid one of my children will hit me.

A year-long trial began on June 7, allowing Londoners over the age of 18 to rent e-scooters and ride the city’s streets and bike lanes at a top speed of 12.5 mph. The attempt is part of Transport for London’s goal to make the city more sustainable. The London E-Scooter Test takes place in Canary Wharf, the City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, Ealing, Richmond as well as Hammersmith and Fulham. In this study, private e-scooters are still banned.

Well that all sounds good. But the truth is, as anyone can see with their eyes, private scooters are everywhere. In the past week alone, police confiscated 25 such scooters on an “Enforcement Day” in the West End. Friends tell me about their teenage kids who took their scooters to mechanics to feed so they could go much faster. Others report that e-scooters have been used to escape crime scenes and steal phones.

Conservative peer Lord Blencathra has called the vehicles “silent killing machines” and stressed the need for stricter restrictions and enforcement, while the Met Police Chief Simon Ovens has called them “death traps”.

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A recent study from the United States found that 45 percent of e-scooter accidents resulted in head injuries, many of them with traumatic brain injuries. Many of these could have been prevented or reduced if an appropriate helmet had been worn (the study found very few drivers wore it) and the accident rate with e-scooters was 14.3 per 100,000 trips, potentially reducing the risk of injury to drivers Sixteen times more cars than motorists and nine times more often than cyclists. Most of the accidents were related to alcohol.

It doesn’t take a lot of common sense to see this situation get out of hand. Something has to be done.

What do you think of e-scooters? Let us know in the comments below.

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