E-scooter trial scheme launches in London in June

1

View
comments

A trial of rental electric scooters will be launched in London on June 7, Transport for London (TfL) has confirmed, despite safety concerns. 

TfL and London Councils, which represents the city’s local authorities, have selected operators Dott, Lime and Tier to carry out the 12-month pilot scheme.

This is despite Lime e-scooters being temporarily taken off the streets in Auckland, New Zealand, because of a problem with the front wheel causing accidents. 

It will be the first time e-scooters will legally be allowed on the capital’s roads, although private e-scooters continue to be illegal in public areas in the UK. 

London’s scheme will initially be restricted to six boroughs and areas – Canary Wharf, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Richmond, City of London and Kensington and Chelsea – although users will also be allowed to ride through Tower Hamlets.

The trial will use geo-fencing technology in a bid to stop e-scooters being used outside the set boundaries. 

The government hopes e-scooters will offer Londoners an accessible and environmentally-friendly method of travel, without emitting greenhouse gases like petrol and diesel vehicles.  

But evidence is mounting over their safety record, with critics suggesting they make it easier for criminals to whip people’s phones from their hands on the street and make a fast getaway. 

And in July 2019, TV presenter and YouTube influencer Emily Hartridge was killed while riding her e-scooter in Battersea, London.

Scroll down for video 

Under the trial, e-scooters will only be permitted on London’s roads and cycle paths – not on footways – and riders will be required to take an online safety course before their first hire. 

Similar trials have been held in urban areas across Britain since July last year. 

‘The rental e-scooter trial has the potential to support our city-wide response to the coronavirus pandemic and boost London’s green recovery,’ said Mayor Philip Glanville, chair of London Councils’ Transport and Environment Committee. 

‘It will be important to see how this new service impacts London’s existing transport network and carbon emissions and how inclusive it is of the travel needs of all Londoners – especially those on lower incomes.’ 

Unregulated privately-owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on public roads and have not been designed for safe use on the capital’s streets, Glanville stressed.  

To assuage safety concerns, TfL said the safety standards during the London scheme ‘will go further than those set out at a national level’. 

For example, e-scooters will have a maximum speed of 12.5 miles per hour as part of the trial, which is below the 15.5 miles per hour limit set by the Department for Transport.

As well as this, rear lights will have to always be on throughout a rental, and an audible warning system will be available to the rider without having to adjust their grip on the handlebar.

Prices have not been announced, but rides in other cities typically cost £1 to unlock an e-scooter plus a fee of 14p-20p per minute.

The three operators – Dott, Lime and Tier – will be obliged to ensure that their rental prices ‘take into account the needs of people on lower incomes’ and offer discounts ‘to certain groups where appropriate’, including key workers. 

E-scooters aren’t without their safety concerns – police data released last month showed they’ve been used in hundreds of offences, including assaults, burglaries and anti-social behaviour.

On April 17, a three-year-old boy suffered serious injuries when he was hit from behind by an e-scooter while walking on a pavement with his grandmother in Feltham, west London.

Charity Guide Dogs has called for the sale of e-scooters to be banned, describing their use as ‘a serious safety issue for many people with sight loss’.  

Sarah Leadbetter, a campaigner at the National Federation of the Blind, has also said e-scooters made walking down the street ‘a terrifying ordeal’ for the visually impaired.

‘Rentable e-scooters are taking people away from being active and using public transport, while creating chaos and unsafe situations for pedestrians,’ she said.

​One of the firms involved in the UK government’s upcoming trial, Lime, had its e-scooters temporarily removed from Auckland’s streets in February 2019.

Stuff NZ reported that this was due to a firmware problem, which caused the wheels to lock up, ‘sending people flying over the handlebars’. 

At the time, Craig Hobbs, Auckland Council’s director for regulatory services, said Lime ‘didn’t come up to the standard’ required for e-scooter operators. 

MailOnline has contacted Lime for comment.  

In July 2020 the UK government introduced legislation trialling the use of e-scooters, through local authorities, for a period of 12 months via approved rental companies. 

Elsewhere, private use remains illegal and they cannot be used in public spaces. 

For the trial, users must be over 16, have a driving licence and the scooters must be limited to a top speed of 15.5 miles per hour.  

But there have since been reports of riders ditching their helmets, riding on pavements and collisions, or near-collisions, with pedestrians.  

E-scooters are now used in more than 100 cities worldwide, but many have suffered serious injuries while using them and others have died. 

In the UK, three people are now known to have died using them, while in America the number of e-scooter accidents that leave people needing hospital treatment has risen by more than 222 per cent in four years.  

Emily Hartridge is believed to be the first person to die in the UK in an accident involving an e-scooter. 

She was later ruled to be riding too fast with an under-inflated tyre when she was tragically killed in a crash with a lorry.  

In January 2020, a man on an e-scooter was spotted speeding along a busy dual carriageway and weaving through traffic at 50 miles per hour.

The shocking video footage even showed him doing wheelies and standing on one leg as he approached a roundabout during rush hour on the A972 Kingsway dual carriageway to the north of Dundee in Scotland.