‘Injuries to pedestrians from e-scooters have increased fourfold in two years’

• IT is troubling to learn that injuries to pedestrians from e-scooters have increased fourfold in two years, from 57 in 2020 to 223 in 2021.

Furthermore last year there were a total of over a thousand casualties from e-scootering. Whose idea was it to introduce e-scooters onto our pavements and roads? What were their motives?

Not only do these machines increase anxiety among pedestrians, the most vulnerable of road users, but they can also kill or harm animals.

Across the country the Department for Transport states that men are twice as likely as women to suffer e-scooter-related wounds, with riders sometimes drunk or on drugs. According to another report, the ensuing injuries cost the NHS around £1,000 per patient.

Other reports reveal that you have a 90 per cent chance of death should an e-scooter collide with you and you hit your head.

You can be propelled by up to 11 feet by one, while a child could be thrown as far as 21 feet, some six times their body length.

ANTONY PORTER, W9