Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com

• CONSIDERING modes of transport of the future, the scooter is faster, easier, no more expensive to run, and often small enough to take into the building with you, rather than lock it up outside.

You don’t arrive needing a shower or having sucked in huge lungfuls of diesel fumes, as you would if you’d ridden a bike (yes, you’ll breathe in some fumes but not so many).

However the scooter isn’t without its problems.

We were supposed to get more exercise. Good luck with that. It’s electric, and the power has to come from somewhere, so they aren’t as green as you think. The manufacture of the batteries alone is enough to give environmentalists nightmares.

Almost all scooters are made in China so they are absolutely not locally-sourced. They will require servicing, which will be both expensive and hard to find.

They will often need new wheels on the awful roads, probably every five to six months. Those tiny wheels are deadly if they hit potholes, vastly more dangerous than a bicycle wheel.

If you slam on the brakes you’ve effectively lost control, no guessing where you’ll end up. Look for the death toll on London roads to increase dramatically.

And these devices have their technical problems. Chargers catching fire, for example, or brakes locking up without a lever being pulled.

T KYLE
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