Crackdown coming- E-bikes and scooters used in anti-social behaviour to be crushed within 48 hours

The move comes after complaints from communities impacted following the introduction of these new forms of transport.

Transcript

00:00E-bikes and e-scooters have become increasingly popular in recent times, offering a convenient

00:06and eco-friendly mode of transport. However, their rise has also brought challenges,

00:13including concerns over safety and anti-social behaviour. Earlier, I spoke to our regular

00:20politics expert, Dr Steve McCabe, to discuss the government's proposed measures to address these

00:26issues. There's no doubt that e-bikes, scooters, the electronic devices to sort of go around,

00:31they've become very, very ubiquitous, mainly amongst young people who sort of like to get

00:37about, and I fully understand that. The real difficulty is, and I understand why they don't

00:41want to go on the roads, although it's not sort of exceptional to see sort of people sort of go down

00:46the road and overtaking sort of vehicles. Quite often it's without sort of helmets, so there's a real

00:51danger to use themselves, but most particularly because of the nature of what they are, they're

00:55silent, so it's like any bike. And so if you're an old person perhaps, or even sort of able-bodied

01:00people, when you're in a pedestrianised areas or on pavements, you have to sort of be constantly

01:05aware of what's coming up behind you, because of course, if you get hit by these things, which can

01:10travel at sort of considerable speeds, they are supposed to be limited to just over 15 miles an hour,

01:14but I've seen them go a lot faster than that. And of course, if you get hit by sort of an object

01:20carrying a human being, whether it's sort of standing on the sort of the foot plate or on sort of some

01:24of them which I've seen with improvised seats, then that's going to sort of hurt a bit. And of course,

01:28that can be for some people life-changing. So there is a real problem. The difficulty is,

01:34as we sort of know, the police, they have enough on their plate. So I think a little more sort of

01:39practical policing will sort of go down a long way. There is also another sort of particular issue,

01:44the sort of the high quality ones are probably perfectly fine in many ways. But of course,

01:49those we buy on certain sort of websites, national name, no names, the batteries, which are sort of

01:54produced in somewhere in the Far East, you know, they may not be as reliable as we want them to be.

01:59And there are instances of sort of people sort of who's they store them indoors, the battery goes on

02:05fire. And of course, that can sort of lead to fatalities. There's a whole set of sort of issues

02:09around these things. Consequently, when you go on many trains, and certainly on London Underground,

02:13you're not allowed to sort of bring electronics and scooters or bikes because of the fires. So

02:18again, a lot to sort of deal with something which of course, we probably wouldn't have even sort of

02:22thought about 20, maybe even 15 years ago. But as I say, it has become a really big problem for society.