In theory, we should welcome the government’s plan to legalise all e-scooters on the roads, because they can be an anti-social menace on our streets, clogging up pavements and weaving dangerously in and out of traffic – and making them legal would at least allow for more regulation.
It is unclear exactly how many e-scooters are not in the Transport for London (TfL) trial and so are being used illegally, although one study said there were nearly a million in the UK. E-scooters are also being used in crimes like robberies and assaults – 574 between July 2020 and April 2021, and have been linked to dangerous incidents like road traffic collisions and battery fires.
It is to be hoped that legalising e-scooters will help police and local authorities keep track of e-scooters and so prevent these crimes. It remains to be seen whether it will actually help in practice, and the government needs to set out more guidance on how councils like Southwark can monitor e-scooters being used in the borough. But whether or not we like e-scooters, they are clearly here to stay and so need to be properly regulated.