Tragedy is just waiting around the corner, ready to pounce
It is starting to feel a bit like the moment in a horror movie when the protagonists notice something is very wrong. It’s like in The Birds when the titular animals start to gather menacingly around the town of Bodega Bay. I have had that same sense of creeping dread you get while watching a slow-burn horror film in the last couple of weeks. E-scooters now seem to be everywhere you look and suddenly there is a real sense of recklessness in the air.
Take an example from this weekend. I was enjoying an early evening stroll with my partner around the park attached to St Mary’s Church, when we spotted a pack of children barrelling down Fratton Road on e-scooters, two to a vehicle, with no thought for the other, larger vehicles on the road causing cars to adjust course and leading to a cacophony of horns to blare out.
Or a week ago, when I was walking into town via Arundel Street and a group of girls on e-scooters were flying up and down the road, sometimes riding up onto the pavement.
I have even had a much closer encounter with an e-scooter myself. While walking down Fratton Road, a boy riding one of them tried to force his way through the oncoming pedestrians on the crowded pavement and he rammed into my leg – he was going at a very slow pace so it didn’t hurt, but still.
And purely based on my own anecdotal experience, none of the young people riding e-scooters seem to be wearing helmets. I know that being young comes with a sense of immortality, but I just get the sense that it is a recipe for disaster.
It almost feels like tragedy is just waiting around the corner, ready to pounce at any moment.
This all probably makes me sound like a killjoy, but I just don’t want to have to read about or report on a tragedy involving a young person on an e-scooter.
They are a lot faster than push bikes and I remember doing safety lessons for taking them out onto the street back in primary school.
Letting people just rent out e-scooters willy-nilly without having to do a training or safety course just seems a tad worrying.