As Paris acts, why do we STILL have to live in fear of the e-scooter menace?

ITHINK that I shall meet my fate somewhere upon a London street, splatted on a pavement or a pedestrian crossing by an electric bike or an electric scooter. I used to think I would probably be killed while riding my bicycle, and it is still a risk, but you can take precautions against that. It is far harder to guard against this silent speedy danger.

I experience or witness more and more near misses involving these horrible vehicles. Recently I was walking through the City of London and instinct caused me to jump aside before a hundredweight of e-bike, doing about 30mph, came tearing by from behind, zig-zagging on the pavement.

There were no police officers to be seen, as usual.

If you try to lift an e-bike from the heaps in which they often lie, you will find them enormously heavy. The e-scooters, which are lighter, can weave into any corner and are the ideal getaway vehicle for the mugger or the fleeing pickpocket.

Up till now, Britain took the view that vehicles with engines could only be used by people with licences, and would carry proper number plates and be strictly regulated. Suddenly, these things appeared and that wise rule was dropped. Why? Perhaps we actually have a secret Cabinet Committee devoted to getting us into the Third World.

I made a fuss when they first appeared. I tried to get the attention of MPs, but, as usual, they were not interested. It looked as if someone had lobbied the Transport Department, and the supposed ‘experiments’ with e-vehicles were bound to be pronounced a success. Politicians rode them. Actors rode them in major BBC dramas. A weird, unsafe, abnormal and widely unwanted form of transport was quickly made normal by spin.

I was sneered at on social media. ‘Isn’t there anything more important for you to write about?’, people said, as if I did not also write all the time about education, the police, Ukraine, the Covid panic and who knows what else.

PR bilge was spread about how they would get people out of cars. Who would swap the warmth and comfort of a car for a batterypowered tin tray bouncing and leaping among the potholes on tiny wheels, unprotected from collisions, wind or rain? Roughly nobody. But such things do appeal to those who have lost driving licences or never had them, people high on drink or drugs, and people too lazy to walk half a mile.

Surely it is important that we can walk freely in our cities and suburbs without the risk of being crunched from behind by a druggedup lout. Don’t make me laugh by telling me these things are restricted to safe speed limits. Everyone knows how to tweak them.

Even the legal speeds are fast enough to be dangerous, as dozens of people all over the world with broken bones of various kinds can attest. That is why, a week ago, many people in Paris voted for a partial ban on e-scooters, which have spread fear there for quite a while now.

I doubt this will have much effect, alas, and, here, as usual, we shall have many years to regret another stupid, irreversible mistake.

WIDELY UNWANTED: An e-scooter amid pedestrians in Paris, where last week people voted for a partial ban on them I’VE never liked the intervention of police and prosecuting authorities in politics. It looks to me like the Third World in action. Would these cases have been brought at all if the people involved were not prominent? The Trump case, the SNP case, the previous SNP case involving Alex Salmond, whatever it is, would surely put any wise person off having anything to do with politics. In fact, this already seems to have happened, and look who suffers.