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It's a widespread misconception (and carefully nurtured by the promotion of them) that small(er) motorised vehicles replace motorised trips by larger motorised vehicles. Instead, they complement those other forms of motorisation. I repeat my contention that the vast majority of trips they replace/change are walking trips, secondly cycle trips, and thirdly trips by public transport. The effect on private motoring will be completely negligible. As I said, I'd love to be proved wrong on that (the evidence base is obviously not huge yet), but I don't think I will be. This is not new--smaller (cheaper) motorised vehicles, whether 'small cars' or motorbikes, etc., have always increased access to motorisation, ownership, and consequently the need to travel, as everybody is then expected to easily be able to travel further than before. (In terms of land use planning, delocalisation and concentration of trip targets is always caused by motorisation becoming available. This is just another instalment in that same tradition, this time filling in more gaps, e.g. replacing the walking trip of, say, 700m, to the station, and again at the other end, e.g. getting from a Central London terminal to the office 500m away.)
The negative effect on safety of even slight motorisation (of e-bikes, not even delimited ones, just the ones that can be got up to the standard speed allowed under European legislation) is very well documented. In the Netherlands, which has seen the greatest upsurge in e-bike sales relative to the size of the market, e-bike use has been a key contributor to a considerable increase in serious injuries and fatalities. Many of these have been to elderly people, one of the key groups of adopters, but they have by no means been limited to them. Simply put, as I've said before, most people can't control a two-wheeler reliably at speeds they wouldn't be able to accelerate a non-motorised bicycle to. It takes years of practice, and a lot of riding, to be able to do that.
You may feel perfectly comfortable doing it because you've played a lot of polo and so have excellent bike control, but you're not representative of the people who mostly ride e-scooters. Perhaps compulsory polo for everyone would take care of it. :) Also, what the European hire schemes have so far shown is far from a rosy picture of the success of such schemes. There are the same stories as we've had of the private bike hire schemes of scooters being dumped everywhere. Other problems are that, so far, the scooters are basically crap quality and don't have a long life. The longest any have apparently been in use as hire vehicles is about a year. Also, they don't have exchangeable batteries, so can't be serviced on the spot but (like the e-bikes you currently see everywhere in London) have to be transported away to be recharged--it wouldn't be enough to install hire stations that automatically charge them (in fairness, they do have a large range on one charge because they're so light). Plus the other two main points I mentioned above, that they're mainly replacing trips that were previously walked or cycled, and that everywhere they have been used so far the crash record has been very poor, with a large unknown factor, as many crashes aren't recorded in official crash stats (people just crash without the involvement of another party and just go to hospital).
Anyway, there'll be a lot more evidence coming out in the next few years; as I said earlier, it may mainly be early adoption pains, although I don't think so.
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Oliver Schick
This thread is amazing. Surprised to see that people are knee jerking against these with much the same arguments as you get against bikes and increased bike infrastructure.
Loads of European cities have these as hire schemes and they are excellent. They are basically bike equivalents but just with a different appearance. Really fun and easy to ride and a great alternative to polluting hail and ride taxi apps for short journeys.
Having ridden them a few times I agree that they seem dangerous but on reflection I think they are just as inherently dangerous as cycling, just new.
They are the future and there's no reason at all that they can't coexist on the roads along with bikes and have the same status. Calling for them to be licensed and for extensive training before you go near one is equivalent to calling for all bikes to have numberplates.