Push for Federal Government to crack down on e-scooters following spate of incidents involving riders

The Federal Government is being urged to step in to block high-powered e-scooters being imported into Australia after a spate of incidents involving riders. Monash University Professor in Transport Engineering Geoff Rose said while we needed to improve the “State’s urban transport system”, authorities must ensure we didn’t do it at the “expense of pedestrian deaths” after 51-year-old Thanh Phan died in hospital following a serious crash in Perth’s CBD last Saturday. Professor Rose said the alleged events of the incident highlighted “action is needed”. “The settings aren’t right, the regulations aren’t right — we need to see some changes,” he said on Saturday. “We can’t allow the status quo to continue.” Inner-city Perth councils have suspended their e-scooter programs after Mr Phan’s death. The City of Perth paused its program on Thursday, with the neighbouring City of Vincent following suit on Friday. But with retailers expecting a rise in people looking to buy their own private e-scooters in the wake of the suspensions, Professor Rose said the Federal Government needed to ensure more high-powered scooters didn’t end up in the hands of irresponsible riders. “The Federal Government does need to step up, they’ve got responsibility under the National Road Safety Strategy,” he said. “We talk about eliminating deaths and serious injuries, and the Commonwealth just can’t step away from this and say, ‘really it’s a State issue’. “Governments need to work together on this. We need a set of regulations that reduce the risks, not only to users, but also non-users, to pedestrians and people on regular bikes. “It be should be viewed as a privilege to have access to a motorised device — not a right, but a privilege — and with privileges come responsibilities. And we need to look more comprehensively about how we communicate that to users and how we can withdraw those privileges when people behave in a way that doesn’t show respect for other members of the community.” At the start of an enforcement blitz on e-scooters in Perth on Friday, Police Minister Reece Whitby said he would speak with other police ministers to raise the importation issue with the Commonwealth. Professor Rose said people were still buying illegal scooters from retailers by saying they would only be used on private property. “We do have limits on what you can use on public roads, and it’s a combination of loose control of imports and retailers that are very happy to sell non-compliant vehicles, because that’s profit-maximising for them,” he said. “Nobody I know who rides a motorcycle would say it’s fine for them to ride it on a footpath at 80km/h, but some people (on) these private e-scooters feel entitled.” Perth retailer John Schelfhout, who has been selling e-bikes for more than a decade, revealed he had recently stopped selling e-scooters amid safety concerns. “(We) only just stopped selling them recently, but I didn’t want to sell them at all, so we didn’t do it for long,” he said. “It wasn’t worth it and wasn’t a good idea. To me they cause a lot of problems and are harder to service than bikes. If they’re going to be out there, they must be policed.” Mr Schelfout, who owns the business eBikers in Hamilton Hill, said most private e-scooters “go faster than 25km/h”. Professor Rose said it was his understanding that police around the country were struggling to effectively detect which e-scooters had motors which breached State laws. “In most States, the regulations are framed around the power of the scooter, and no police can test that at the side of the road,” he said. “We do know that we can enforce speed , police do it every day for motor vehicles with mobile speed collection equipment, radar guns and the like. The same radar guns could be used to help enforce speed on bicycle paths and footpaths.” WA Police held a blitz on e-scooter riders in the Perth CBD and Northbridge across Friday and Saturday nights, but were tight-lipped on Saturday about the number of infringements given to riders. E-scooters were being ridden without helmets and above the speed limit on shared paths in Scarborough on Saturday. The Sunday Times visited the popular waterfront and in less than two hours saw half a dozen riders — on both private and hire e-scooters — flouting the law. This included a mother and her son riding on the same private e-scooter without helmets. And when The Sunday Times rode a Beam hire scooter down a hill, a maximum speed of 28km/h was reached despite the devices maximum supposed to only reach 25km/h. This included on a shared path with a speed limit of 20km/h and on a public road with a speed limit of 50km/h near West Coast Highway. In the two hours The Sunday Times was at Scarborough Beach on Saturday, no police officers were observed in the area. The City of Stirling this week said it was not planning to suspend its e-scooter trial. “The City takes community safety very seriously and a range of controls have been implemented to increase safety for riders, pedestrians and all road and pathway users,” a council spokeswoman said. “Given the high usage of e-scooters in the City of Stirling and the proportionally low number of incidents, the City is not currently considering suspending e-scooter hire, however we will continue to monitor incidents and feedback to determine whether additional controls are needed.” At Scarborough, three young men rode without helmets on the shared path in front of Scarborough restaurants, before joking to The Sunday Times it was “safe”. And the mother who was photographed riding with her infant child on the same scooter said she was only riding “for a little bit and (then) going home” despite being observed riding in the area 20 minutes before. The devices slowed to a maximum speed of 15km/h in most areas around Scarborough, with Beam’s geofencing technology automatically slowing them down. Despite this, several locals told The Sunday Times they were still concerned about the safety of pedestrians and e-scooters riders.