E-scooter deaths have doubled since police stopped seizing them on the roads, a coroner has warned after a 14-year-old rider died in a collision with a minibus.
Fatima Abukar was riding a battery powered e-scooter in East Ham, London, when she lost control while alongside a minibus and fell under its wheels.
And...her parents? Shouldn't they have come in for some stick too?
In a report calling for action to prevent future deaths, Graeme Irvine, senior coroner in east London, said there was a direct correlation between the rise in deaths and Scotland Yard’s decision last November to no longer routinely seize e-scooters being ridden illegally on public roads.
Are we really losing any potential brain surgeons?
Britain’s biggest force announced officers will only confiscate them from repeat offenders or when ‘necessary to keep the public safe’.
I'm not sure how you can have 'repeat offenders' if you don't enforce the law in the first place...
Who bought this e-scooter, and allowed the child to ride it? It certainly wasn't the Police. The parents should take some responsibility for the death of their child, and the coroner should have acknowledged that.
ReplyDeleteWhere I live, an elderly lady was knocked down, in a pedestrian area, by some teenage idiot on an e-scooter and when a man complained and tried to hold on to the scooter till the Police arrived, he was assaulted by the rider and an adult who was riding alongside him on another one of these devices.
They should be registered, insured (not certain about being taxed), the user he at least 16 years old, and have to pass a test to use them.
Penseivat
Well, quite! The checkout operatot has to press a button to verify I'm of an age to buy alcohol, yet there's no checks on these?
DeleteJH: There's the question of the demographic too.
ReplyDeleteIndeed! Though round here it's 50/50 ...
Deleteto prevent future deaths. Eh?
ReplyDeleteGiving up on resurrection then?
Or even the Time Machine?