Bird became the first electric scooter service to launch in the UK today, after finding a legal loophole in an 1835 law that has so far blocked the popular scooters from Britain’s streets. The launch is part of a pilot at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which will start with scooters being restricted to a 1 mile stretch of private footpath used by commuters to Stratford’s Here East tech hub.
“Technology always comes ahead of legislation,” Richard Corbett, head of Bird UK told Forbes. “What we can do is we can ride on private land. Effectively this means that we can launch in locations such as airports, universities, business campuses and parks with the landowner’s permission.”
Oddly enough, I think these are a good idea, unlike, say “Segway” – but, as the article says, a serious & very careful re-write of our legislation would be needed to facilitate their wider application.
NOTE: Scooters behave like bicycles & are longitudonally stable, whereas Segways are transversely stable. If you are used to a bicycle ( or a scooter) then getting on to a Segway is extremely disorienting, as the movements necessary for a rider to achieve stabiity are diametrically opposed.
As someone who has been riding a bicycle for over 60 years, I lasted all of 4 seconds on a Segway, as my trained-reactions simply “flipped” …..
I’d like to hope that any decisions to legalise-or-not novel forms of transport (such as scooters or Segways) are made by properly weighing up their advantages and disadvantages – for the whole population – rather than based on how easily-or-not they can be be adopted by particular subsets of the population with particular life-experiences. I doubt if I would last long on a Segway but many people (in Tallin, for instance) seem to manage perfectly well.