This article argues that the increasing prevalence of e-scooters on UK roads is a sign of the country's declining road safety standards. It cites statistics on e-scooter accidents, mentions the dangers posed by their flammable batteries, and criticizes their reckless use by riders.
The advance of dangerous e-scooters, causing increasing misery on our streets, is a symbol of the decline of our country and its once-impressive levels of road safety . Badly-run countries have roads that are chaotic, unsupervised death traps, and cities that offer no safe places for pedestrians. Britain is fast ceasing to be a well-run nation, judged by these criteria. Among the main reasons for this decline are electric scooters and their faster, heavier big brothers, electric bicycles.
Some people will say ordinary bicycles are a menace in such places, and so they are. But this is a separate issue. Pushbikes simply do not have the lethal weight and speed of modern electric machines. Almost everyone who does not use e-machines agrees that these devices are nasty. They infest parks and pavements. They are dumped in ugly heaps – dangerous to the disabled and those with poor eyesight. They go extremely fast, often well above the supposed official limit. They are ridden in blatantly illegal ways – in university towns it is common to see two drunk students weaving homewards on scooters plainly designed for one. As my colleague Richard Marsden reported in Monday's Daily Mail, e-scooter collisions have trebled in three years, leading to deaths and serious injuries at worrying levels. Twenty-nine people died and nearly 5,000 were injured – 1,402 seriously – between 2020 and 2023, including Linda Davis, a 71-year-old grandmother, who was killed in 2022 when a 14-year-old, glued to his phone, mowed her down while riding an e-scooter. That's to say nothing of the risks posed by the flammable lithium batteries powering them – which are thought to have sparked more than 36 e-scooter fires in 2023 alone
E-Scooters Road Safety Accidents Electric Vehicles Urban Planning
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