In a letter to the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, this reader explains his experience of his family riding e-scooters around the town.
I live just outside Northampton in the village of Spratton and while travelling through Northampton kept seeing these e-scooters dotted around the town.
So we had a look online and saw they were for rental.
We happened to go back into Northampton last weekend to get something to eat with the kids.
It was nice weather so I said shall we should rent a couple out and have a ride around.
So we quickly sorted the app out and grabbed a couple from the university and had them for about three hours.
Myself and a couple of my children took it in turns around that area to try them out.
While we were on them we were fully in control. We didn’t go speeding around the paths to annoy pedestrians and we were careful of roads, traffic lights, crossings, etc.
We treated them as a push bikes, with the rules of a car.
They are very easy to pick up and use.
We all said if we lived in Northampton we would rather use an e-scooter to get around rather than a bus or taxi for hygiene reasons and that they are cheaper than a bus and taxi plus it’s electronic and more environmentally friendly.
The next day after using them we made a trip to Birmingham to an e-scooter shop (Pure Electric) to buy our own family one to use to pop to the shop or pop to the next village park or post office, etc.
I can see people’s concerns with them but they don’t just do 15mph.
You have full control over the speed you can do walking speeds.
As for them being left in random places, I understand this issue fully.
Voi e-scooter rental reward you for taking them to a proper parking place. That’s what we did.
I think they need a few more of these or they need to be pushed to the side so they don’t cause a hazard to pedestrians on the paths.
It’s nice to see a more global friendly form of transportation that’s easily available in various towns and cities across the UK. I myself welcome these, as should others in the town.
They can’t be seen as dangerous.
I’ve seen pushbike users do more dangerous riding by jumping lights and going at high speeds on paths.
We can’t just single out these e-scooters because they are new.
Northampton Chronicle & Echo, Sunday, 11th October 2020