Call for better laws after rise in e-scooter crashes

More people have been reported as badly hurt in crashes involving e-scooters and e-bikes this year, Essex Police said, as it called for better regulations.

Roads policing chief Adam Pipe from the force said, "39 people have been seriously injured as a result of either an e-scooter or e-bike collision" in the county so far, compared to 32 incidents in total last year.

"We have been promised these [regulations] consecutively by governments coming into power, but unfortunately, it keeps being kicked down the line," he said.

Up to 1.2 million people in England are estimated to own private e-scooters, which are illegal to ride on public streets.

The Department for Transport has been contacted for comment.

While speaking to BBC Essex's Ian Puckey on the breakfast show, Pipe said: "There is a lot of confusion because we see a number of our cities and towns in Greater Essex - where actually local authorities are able to have trial schemes which sends out a mixed message where parents see it as acceptable without really understanding the law.

"This whole e-scooter agenda, I put it under micro-mobility, including e-bikes - it really does need regulation changes.

"Policing at the moment is being left to try and manage the risk we're seeing day in and day out."

He said that the county has already exceeded the number of injuries it had from last year, and they "are top-end serious collisions."

"One of the big problems with e-bikes is the lack of registration", he said, adding it made it harder to identify the rider.

A British Medical Journal report found that 80% of incidents with injured children involved a privately owned e-scooter.

The study revealed the average age of those injured was 12, with the youngest aged nine, and less than 2% were wearing helmets.

Across the UK, there have been 59 e-scooter-related deaths, 10 involving under-18s.

E-scooter trials are operating legally in places such as Chelmsford and Braintree. But the renter must be at least 18 and hold a provisional or full driving licence to use them.

Harry Foskin, senior public policy manager for Voi, who runs trial rental schemes in the areas, said: "We started trials for e-scooters in 2020 - it is now 2026; trials are being extended again until 2028 - that is pretty unheard of in the UK to have trials for anything for so long.

"We feel like we've proved rental e-scooters are safe.

"It is extremely frustrating... a worry that I have is that for the government to finally regulate and take action, unfortunately, it seems like we're going to need a big incident to happen - even more than is happening currently for them to actually take action."

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