CITY POLICE CONFISCATE 100 ELECTRIC SCOOTERS
POLICE in Bristol are currently holding around 100 electric scooters confiscated from people riding them illegally on public roads or pavements, the Post can reveal.
But the man in charge of road policing in the city says he is a fan of the concept of e-scooters, and supports a pilot scheme which would see people being allowed to ride them legally around Bristol.
That trial, being set up by the Metro Mayor at the West of England Combined Authority, is expected to be launched this week, and will see e-scooters permitted on the region’s roads legally for the first time.
But thousands of people have begun riding them around Bristol and the region in the past year or so, and the coronavirus lockdown saw a huge boom in sales, the opening of two specific stores in the centre of Bristol that sell them, and they are now a common sight on the roads of the city.
But riding them in a public place – a road, pavement or cycle path – is illegal, and police have been confiscating them under a developing unofficial policy initiated by the man in charge of the traffic management unit at Avon and Somerset police, Richard McKiernan.
That policy has been designed to be ‘proportional’, with police officers not tending to pursue riders just for riding them, unless they are posing a danger to others, and also to advise people first with informal or formal warnings, before they are confiscated.
Mr McKiernan said he thought e-scooters could become a positive change to the way people get around the city, and help reduce
congestion, traffic pollution and improve air quality.
But he said they needed to be regulated – and at the moment, the scooters were not.
“These scooters are a new phenomenon and they are legal in much of the continent. They are part of the Government drive for active travel and coming out of lockdown, this could be a good way of reducing the number of cars on the road.
“This is just part of reducing the reliance on vehicles.
“People, having seen them around on the continent, think they are good way of getting about – and they are – but it’s not really stressed that they are not legal. People see them as toys, and certainly usage of them is increasing dramatically at the moment,” he said
That dramatic increase has proved something of a headache for the police - who are faced with what is essentially widespread and open law-breaking by thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens,
often without any idea they are breaking the law.
Mr McKiernan’s road policing unit has opted not to be heavyhanded with the e-scooter explosion.
He said: “The use of them is increasing and we have had quite a few letters from councillors and members of the public saying ‘what are we doing about them?’
“We balance our available resources to the priorities we have, as we do with all policing.
“So sometimes you can stop someone riding one, and have a word, or issue a warning, but there is no force policy saying ‘you will do that’.
“It has to be proportionate and balanced, and there will be instances where we will have to drive past someone on one, because our officers are on their way to something more important.
“But overall, we have taken on board the ethos of the way we’ve policed the coronavirus lockdown regulations, we start with the three ‘E’s - engage, explain and educate, before moving to the fourth, which is enforcement.
“We’ll record the fact they’ve been spoken to, and take people’s details, because these offences can impact on your driving licence. I don’t think people realise that,” he added.
The sheer scale of the e-scooter explosion in Bristol is difficult to measure. The machines are so new the police force doesn’t have a dedicated section on their systems to register them, if someone is spoken to, given a ticket or has them confiscated - sometimes it is recorded as a toy, other times as a vehicle.
But one measure of the scale of the issue is from the number that are currently being held in a Bristol police station storage facility, pending being destroyed for being vehicles found on the road without insurance.
The number being stored by police is thought to be only a small proportion of those that police have dealt with.
The exact number isn’t officially recorded, but Mr McKiernan estimated it ‘pushing up towards 100’.
They will be destroyed, in the same way as many cars that are seized for having no insurance are crushed.
He said: “We could put them up for sale - the police holds regular sales of property that has been seized that is appropriate to be sold – and we thought long and hard about that, but the reality is that they are not legal to ride, so what if someone bought it and then went out and crashed it and injured a pedestrian.
“The question would be ‘where did they get that e-scooter from?’ and imagine if it was from a police sale.”