Only you can stop menace of e-scooters

IT IS now quite clear that the Government is trying to undermine its own law against e-scooters. Why? These motorised toys are inherently unsafe for their riders and the public and have proved to be a menace everywhere they have been legalised.

Even here, where they are still rare, the deaths and the numbers of injured children continue to rise. They are not green, as their batteries are charged from power stations and they are often delivered to hiring stations in diesel vans. They do not reduce car use.

No driver will give up a car, protected against impact and weather, to ride on a tin tray through the sleet, bouncing through potholes on tiny wheels.

But plenty of young people will stop walking and cycling to use them, so wrecking their health.

Transport Minister Grant Shapps has licensed dozens of supposed experiments in which hire companies are allowed to rent out these machines, even though their use on the public highway is illegal.

This is because they simply cannot meet the minimum safety standards usually applied to motor vehicles. Many shops, in my view quite shamefully, sell them when they must know that their buyers will be riding them illegally.

Who is in charge of assessing these experiments? What tests are they using? Their main effect is to weaken the law and soften up the public for general legalisation. Only mass protest will prevent what is bound to be a disaster. Write to your MP now, while there is still time.