E-scooters

You can barely move for e-scooters at present.  Whether they are on your local streets being trialled by various Councils across the land or being ridden (illegally) by the growing number of private owners; whether they are heralded or lambasted on your local paper or news feed; headlining stories of environmental salvation or children mown down in the park; cluttering your legal inbox or forming webinar topics: micro-mobility is having a moment.

E-scooters are part of a growing trend towards "micro-mobility": small modes of transport designed to carry one or two people, often for the first and last mile of a journey (from the station to the office, from home to school, to the local shops, for example).  It is easy to see why: with Sustrans statistics suggesting that 20% of British journeys are under 1 mile (a roughly 5 minute cycle) and 66% under 5 miles (a 25 minute cycle) city planners and those desperate to ease congestion and meet environmental targets see this is a mode of transport with a future.  In the Netherlands where cycling is admirably integrated into society as long as a decade ago 40% of all journeys by children under 17 were cycled and 23% of journeys by the over 65s were too[1].  These are figures the UK can at present only dream of.

You can read the full post on our Civil Law Blog here.