Electric scooter safety: a practical guide

Riding an electric scooter is easy, which is exactly what makes the safety advice worth reading. A vehicle you can operate competently within a minute gives you very little sense of where its limits are.

Before you set off

Ten seconds of checking prevents most of the mechanical problems that end a ride badly.

• Squeeze both brakes. They should bite well before the lever reaches the grip.
• Look at the tyres. Flat, split or badly worn tyres change how the scooter handles far more than they would on a bicycle.
• Push down on the handlebar stem. Any movement or play means the vehicle is not fit to ride.
• Check the lights, particularly if it is getting dark.
• Glance at the deck and the folding mechanism for cracks.

If any of that is wrong, report the vehicle in the app rather than riding it. Reporting takes a moment and takes the scooter out of service for the next person too.

Wear a helmet

This is the least interesting advice on the page and the most important. Scooter injuries are disproportionately head injuries, because there is nothing between you and the ground and the fall happens forwards. Nothing about the convenience of a scooter changes the physics of that.

Small wheels and the surface

The single biggest difference between a scooter and a bicycle is wheel size. A small wheel drops into things a larger wheel rolls over. The obstacles that matter most:

• Kerbs: never take one at an angle. Approach square on and slowly, or step off.
• Drain covers and expansion joints: a slot the width of your wheel will stop it dead.
• Loose sand and gravel: common at the edges of roads and in construction areas, and it takes the front wheel out sideways.
• Wet paint and metal plates: far more slippery than the surface around them.
• Standing water: it hides everything underneath it.

The general rule: brake before the obstacle, not on it, and keep the handlebars straight while you cross it.

Riding with traffic

You are smaller and quieter than everything else on the road, which means the safe assumption is that you have not been seen.

• Ride predictably in a straight line. Weaving between parked cars removes you from mirrors.
• Stay out of the door zone beside parked cars.
• Never pass a large vehicle on the inside at a junction.
• Make eye contact with drivers at junctions before you commit.
• Signal with your hand early, and only when you can safely ride one-handed.

Around people on foot

Pedestrians have right of way in shared space, and they cannot hear you coming. Slow to walking pace around groups, give a wide berth to children and anyone with reduced mobility, and get off and push where it is crowded. A scooter service survives in a city on the goodwill of people who are not using it.

One rider, both hands

The vehicle is designed and braked for one person; a second rider changes the balance and the stopping distance at the same time. And set your route before you start, because a scooter gives you almost no margin to recover from a moment spent looking at a phone.

Parking properly

Park upright, inside a permitted area, and clear of doorways, ramps, tactile paving and crossings. The test is simple and it is not about tidiness: someone using a wheelchair or pushing a pram should never have to go into the road because of where you left a scooter.

If something goes wrong

Deal with anyone injured first and contact the emergency services if needed. Move the scooter out of the carriageway if it is safe to do so. Then report it through the app, so the vehicle is taken off the street and inspected before anyone else unlocks it.