Police crackdown on e-scooters ‘maniacs’ at last …

Thirty-seven of recent casualties suffered injuries that were described as ‘serious’

Road users injured in crashes with scooters include 36 cyclists and 32 in vehicles

Fourteen casualties were aged 70 and above, while 17 were over 60

UK police took 3,002 e-scooters off our pavements and roads in first six months of 2021 – more than five times as many as they ‘snatched’ last year. 

What the new breed of boy/girl racers seem to forget is that electric scooters are ‘powered transporters’, meaning they must abide by the Road Traffic Act 1988.

Riders must have a driving licence and insurance in order to use them on the road and they are banned from pavements and footpaths … instead they scoot along footpaths like over-blown children using pedestrians as skittles!

And it’s a Europe-wide problem … here Leigh takes a look at what its like to face a pavement full of motorised maniacs!

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I stopped using a scooter when I was five …I had become a big boy and I guess I wanted a three-wheeler bike, the height of prepubescent cool.

But now those tiny two wheeled children’s toys – consisting of a footboard on two wheels and a long steering handle – appear to have become very grown up indeed.

In some big boy and girl’s minds at least.

Yep, scooters are the arrogant domains of 20-30-somethings. They go with their baseball caps on backwards, flappy shorts revealing their fantasy-world leg tattoos and their big beer bellies and boobs flopping like meat on to a butcher’s block ready to be chopped.

These overgrown children whizz along the pavements at 30mph, bald heads surrounded by glorious shrouds of white fruity-smelling vape, dangly hi-fidelity ear plugs like mummy’s earrings, ski shades and muscle-bound brains.

Yes, you think you look cool don’t you on your electric scooter … well, you DON’T! You look like a big show-off child shouting ‘look at me! Look at me!’ to daddy before smashing headlong in to a lamppost or a pedestrian.

Grow up!

I was walking through the unusually blistering sun in Poprad town centre – judiciously avoiding the cycle lanes – when one of these idiots who’d be better off in a Shell suite and a Trabant headed straight for me. This was a grown 20-something on an electric scooter. 

I assume that he assumed I would get out of his way. Well, Well this big beefy buffoon had misread me completely.

I stood my ground like a lamppost and at the last second he swerved round me and rode on, scattering pedestrians like skittles as he went.

E-scooters are legal in so many parts of Europe and they will be coming a pavement near you soon. And there is a very strong chance indeed they will crash into you from behind leaving a fashionable geeky freak who can’t afford proper transport lying on top of you. And he or she will be screaming and cursing at you and photographing your agonised face so they can make an insurance claim!

Cities all over the world are licking their wounds in unicycle – sorry unison … after allowing e-scooters.

These two-wheeled terrors are the Kylie Bravesons for the fruity vape generation who are so knackered after spending all day in the gym that are too tired or too lazy to walk or cycle …

Or people, is it that they are too twatted by the twittering world of twerps that they can’t be bothered to pass a driving test?

And let’s face it, it’s not going to take the criminal fraternity long to come full cycle and realise e-scooters are ideal vehicles for bag-snatcher and the mugger. Silent and swift, they can swerve off down the nearest alleyway before you even know what has happened to you. And what about drug couriers and fast-food delivery merchants?

What is the world coming to?

Some people say that last year Singapore more or less banned e-scooters after a number of injuries and fatal accidents.

There were also fires in public housing blocks caused by faulty batteries.

Well, that makes you think doesn’t it.