Plan to regulate use of e-scooters

NEW LAWS WILL LEGALISE THEM WITH LIMITS

- By STEVEN SMITH

THE Government has committed to regulating e-scooters amid deaths and hundreds of serious injuries in crashes involving the vehicles each year. It has not made a specific announcement but a pledge to seek “legislative reform for micromobility vehicles” was included in its recent Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan for the UK.

Shared transport charity CoMoUK welcomed the “excellent news” and claimed it would “end years of confusion about the legal status” of e-scooters. Latest Department for Transport (DfT) figures show six e-scooter users were killed in crashes in England in 2023. A further 416 people were seriously injured: 343 users and 52 pedestrians.

The UK has been described as an “outlier” among developed nations in banning private e-scooters from public areas, although they are often illegally used in many urban areas. Legal trials of rental e-scooters on roads have been ongoing in towns and cities in England since 2020.