Let e-scooters on our roads? As a cyclist, I'm all for it...

Transport secretary Louise Haigh is preparing to announce a plan to legalise electric scooters on Britain’s roads, as part of her wider integrated transport strategy.

- PAUL CLEMENTS

To which I say bravo – as long as she also introduces measures to enforce existing legislation to keep these deathtraps off our pavements.

Ever since Boris Johnson permitted the first e-scooter rentals in 2020 – trials were initially restricted to three areas, Portsmouth and Southampton, Derby and Nottingham, and the west of England, before the rules seemingly went to the wall – going for a walk in any of our major towns and cities has become a life-inyour-own-hands lottery.

Just ask the 78-year-old woman knocked over by an e-scooter in Wisbech town square and left with horrific injuries. Or the family of the Nottinghamshire grandmother who died in 2022 from a head injury when a 14-year-old boy ran into her while riding his e-scooter on a pavement.

According to the Department for Transport, last year 416 people were seriously injured and 965 slightly injured in collisions involving e-scooters – most of them the riders themselves, but illegal usage means that many accidents go unreported. Since 2019, 43 people have died in e-scooter accidents.