City to ban e-scooters before end of trial over safety fears

'I decided to truncate it before someone was seriously hurt.'

E-scooters are set to be banned from a county where they were being trialled.

The rental scheme was launched in Canterbury, Kent, in November 2020 and was due to last until 2024.

However, the scheme is being wound down within the next couple of months over safety concerns.

Councillor David Brazier said: ‘As we were nearing the end of the trial, I decided to truncate it before someone was seriously hurt.’

Sarah Carter, 80, was ‘seriously injured’ after an e-scooter collided with her on a pavement in Station Road West.

The retired university librarian suffered a broken wrist, cracked jaw and cheekbones after the suspected hit-and-run crash.

She said: ‘Another elderly person could have quite easily been even more seriously injured or even killed.’

Mr Brazier told councillors at a cross-party committee e-scooter riders have been barrelling down roads not given the green light by the council.

‘I tended to favour the trial going on, but it was quite obvious now accidents could have been worse than they were,’ he added.

In Canterbury, e-scooters can only be used in a select patch of the city that includes the city centre, the University of Kent and local hospitals.

But Mr Brazier said the area will be shrunk down to just a single approved route by November.

He said: ‘The agreement reached by officers was the area of operation should immediately be limited to the corridor between the university and the city centre.’

Canterbury’s pilot scheme was one of 30 trials across the UK by the Department of Transport to get people out of cars and make travel greener.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, transport officials twice extended the trial with local authorities being able to stretch it once more in November 2022.

All pilots will come to an end in May 2024 and the government will decide whether or not to approve e-scooters for use on public highways.

In 2021 there were 1,359 casualties in collisions involving e-scooters, compared to 484 in 2020, according to the Department of Transport.

To combat this in Canterbury, Bird capped the maximum speed of riders to 12mph (less than the government’s recommended 15.5mph).

The company also introduced ‘Birdwatchers’ to patrol the city for pavement riding and handed out swift bans for riders who broke the law.

For now, e-scooters can only be used on England’s roads if they are part of the national rental scheme.

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