A report by the Children’s Health Ireland also raised concerns about traumatic brain injuries being sustained by children using the vehicles.<\/a><\/p>\nHowever, questions have been raised about whether existing laws are being adequately enforced.<\/p>\n
Public policy adviser Ois\u00edn Coghlan has said an outright ban on e-scooters would be a “lazy admission of failure” by the Government that they have not been able to enforce the current rules.<\/p>\n
“As someone who suffered severe concussion just two years ago from being knocked off my bicycle by an SUV, I’m very conscious of the risks of and the impacts of mild or traumatic brain injury,” Ois\u00edn Coghlan said.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Brendan O\u2019Connor with Claire Brock, he said a total ban would be an “overreach” adding that it would be an admission by politicians that they are not “able to manage” their own regulations.<\/p>\n
He said it would be a disservice to the people who are “using e-scooters correctly to beat congestion, to fill in for public transport, to get to work when they need to.<\/p>\n
“I think 4% of commuters are using e-scooters as part of their journey, so are you are just punishing them because you’re basically failing to control anti-social use of e-scooters or dangerous use of e-scooters,” Mr Coghlan said.<\/p>\n
He believes there are a number of steps that could be taken to further regulate e-scooters.<\/p>\n
“Instead of going for an all-out ban, you can require licensing and registration and insurance, and you could move it from (age) 16 to 18,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You could give the guards the right to stop people to check that they have those things and you could just enforce rules,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Like cigarettes, you could ban the sale to under-18s, you could even make parents responsible for making sure that their children don’t have them.”<\/p>\n
Mr Coghlan said he believed a temporary ban could be a solution for now.<\/p>\n
“Let’s try proper regulation, stricter regulation with all the rules that should be there like motorbikes, and if that doesn’t work in two years’ time, well then let’s revisit it,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decision by two online retailers to remove from sale some e-scooters has been welcomed by a number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-557590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}