Time has come to put infantile playthings back in the cupboard

MY experiences as a retired firefighter/erstwhile cycling proficiency instructor in several schools and currently a volunteer at an educational safety centre lead me to believe that my comments regarding your report: ‘E-scooter rider in life-threatening state after crash’ (October 28) might prove helpful.

It sadly informed us that a young woman riding an e-scooter was involved in a collision with a car at Temple Gate and suffered a head injury and is now in Southmead Hospital.

Surely both Bristol City Council and the Avon & Somerset Police (A & SP) should accept responsibility for the increasing incidences and threat to human lives that these preposterous death traps represent on our busy roads.

Bristol City Council at the very least should forthwith make it a compulsory legal requirement that lawful riders have to wear a suitable crash helmet. The A & SP should also as a matter of urgency start prosecuting the illegal e-scooter riders who flout the law with impunity. They might also like to enforce the law that it is illegal to ride e-scooters on pavements.

It really does beggar belief that the legal requirement to wear a crash helmet on motorised scooters / motorcycles which was enacted on the June 1, 1973, has not been extended to the current riders of these ludicrous contraptions!

The knowledge on staying safe on our roads has led me to believe that the riders of all these e-scooters are essentially playing Russian roulette which is: “the practice of loading a bullet into one chamber of a revolver, spinning the cylinder, and then pulling the trigger while pointing the gun at one’s own head.” Bristol City Council are, it appears, quite happy to load the gun!

Furthermore perhaps we should take some heed of the axiom: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man [woman] I put away childish things.”

Surely the time has come to put all these dangerous infantile playthings back in the toy cupboard!

R L Smith

Knowle