Electric Scooters

I think it would be quite entertaining having a fleet of eScooters at an annual camp so you can roll around camp doing the fam-ex. :sweat_smile:

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Also, the good eScooters can go 20+MPH, which is faster than most people could ride a bike for any reasonable amount of time and be able to do stuff after.

The scooters are good and all but to use them you do need a valid driving licence, also my experience using them they are temperamental

Yeah, the hire ones here can randomly lose power for no reason, which can be a bit alarming!


You only need category Q for an escooter which you don’t need to pass a test for. But VOI makes it a rule to be 18

One of the teachers cycles to work and has had 3 near misses with escooters and been forced to crash when left the footpath right in front of him, in the last couple of months. He said they have no road awareness or skills, he wants to cut their thumbs off. He’s a serious cyclist (that or he gets lost easily) and does 40-60 miles rides home from school, when he lives 7 miles away. He tracks his routes just over 2 hours for his longer ones, leaves me impressed. He said at least people who drive have an awareness of the road and all things on it. In his opinion escooterists are chav scum and deserve meals via tubes.

Personally anyone with an escooter should pass a theory and driving test, have insurance and pay road tax, unless they are limited to 4mph. They are a bloody pest. They rank alongside the worst cyclists, by which I mean anyone on a mountain bike, in woods and the like.

But I’m pretty sure the only way to get cat Q is by doing the normal cat B driving test. I may be wrong though.

Currently that is the case. To use the trial eScooters you need to have a valid driving licence. The insurance/tax bit is paid for by the hire company.

What a lot of people who use them seem to forget is that they are driving them on their normal driving license, and all the normal rules apply. Get caught on the pavement and you’ll get done for dangerous driving. Get caught using one after three pints at the pub and you’ll get done for drink driving. Etc.

Except that there’s no such thing as Road Tax, of course.

Not that stops the anti-cycling mob from demanding they pay it.

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I used to pass a guy on the way to college (back in the day) who would unicycle to work in his suit and with briefcase and umbrella.
I think we’ve found our powerless station solution…

Although VED has been ring fenced to pay for road upkeep again since 2018.

Yep our yard at work is full of them and loads of our gang nominals have points from them.

VED has not been ring fenced for roads since 1937. I cannot find anything that says the 2018 changes changed that position.

And even if it did apply to cyclists, the sum would likely be zero, as it’s based on emissions.

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Saw a guy riding one Friday night. It was dark, he was on the road. The Scooter only had a tiny red light only a inch or so above the road surface.

Yes I think they are a bit cool and I’d give one a go, but mixed with the road or a normal pavement they are death traps IMHO.

I say tomato you say tomato.

Calling it VED was just a way to prevent people thinking the daylight robbery/scam of road tax./VED might mean that at least the money will be spent so the roads they use are kept in decent order, rather than propping up the financially incompetent parts of the public sector.

Bristol, which is one of the Voi trial city’s is going to ban them because the council have received thousands of complaints about them. So they won’t be around long enough for people to pay tax for them.

The mayor wants then to become permanent, they are incredibly popular. I’ll probably take one to work tomorrow.

It’s nothing to do with tomatoes, I prefer the term Vehicle excise duty paid into the general taxation pot, along with VAT, income tax and many others, from which the upkeep of the roads is paid. Meaning that when I cycle to work, I do so as a payer of ‘Road tax’

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That will have to change sooner rather than later especially with the pledges they are making on the Economy.

The phone snatchers love them, they have almost completely supplanted moped enabled crime. I don’t know how the trials are going out east but where I am the ones being used are all illegal and they are a menace, the cyclists hate them in the cycle lanes and the motorists hate them on the road.

I can see much saying that was the plan, but nothing to say it was ever carried out…

does that mean you also need an FMT600 sign off on them too?

joking…or am i?

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Knowing MT I wouldn’t bet against it.