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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

They are illegal to use on the street and the pavement/sidewalk at the moment - you can legally use one on private land (with permission etc).

However this is likely to change very soon since COVID-19 - there is "urgent legislation" on e-scooter rental trials going on: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/legalising-renta...

Infuriatingly, privately owned e-scooters will remain illegal even if rental fleets are legal. I do not understand why it would be legal to drive a rented e-scooter, but illegal to drive a privately owned e-scooter :-/

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It is infuriating!, and I do hope is only for the duration of these 'trials' to help manage them.

But the Government's hand is being partly forced here. Despite the current legal situation many many people have e-scooters and use the on the streets.

They are widely sold, even on the high street by major chains like Halford's etc, and the current restrictions are widely ignored or not seen as a priority by all parties, as it is quite rightly seen as hopelessly out of date by everyone expect perhaps the Department for Transport.

Being actively confiscated in Gloucestershire. Overt Police social media warning people not to use them.

I believe they have changed the rules to be more permissive in a number of counties in the UK as way of a pilot:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/16/electric-sc...

> But the scooters, which are already in widespread, if unlawful, use across the UK, will initially only be allowed in four “future transport zones”: Portsmouth and Southampton; the West of England Combined Authority (WECA); Derby and Nottingham; and the West Midlands.

Maximum speed of 12.5 mph, that's not great. Why do they not simply let electric scooters be treated the same as bikes?

The law is out of date. e-bikes are just cycles under the road transport act, electric scooters are 'mechanically propelled vehicles' - i.e. just like cars and trucks.

In theory a scooter would be legal on roads if you could convince the DfT you met the safety regs, had a type certificate, license plate, VIN etc - it would still be illegal to use on a bike lane and I don't know that anyone has managed to do this!

Or 15.5 potentially. I believe that the popular Xiaomi m365 does 15.5mph

I agree it is not super-fast, but for use in urban environments 15mph would be pretty usable I reckon. My pre-lockdown commute in london on the tube would take about 35 minutes door to door. Walking it is 4.2 miles, cycling 4.9 miles. lets call it 5 miles for sake of argument.

So for a 12.5mph scooter it would be 24 minutes. For a 15.5mph scooter it would be 20 minutes.

That is pretty good I reckon - it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the tube station, so to be half-way/almost half-way to work before I would have even got to the station would be pretty decent I think.

Only thing is, this all makes sense when it is glorious sunshine and warm outside. It might be less appealing in December :-)

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