E-scooters: essential guidance
We have been highlighting our serious concerns about the impact e-scooters could have on the safety, confidence and independence of blind and partially sighted people.
But, with local councils now able to apply for trial rental schemes, we’ve put together important guidance, with other sight loss organisations, to limit the impact on blind and partially sighted people.
Our guidance for local councils and e-scooter companies
We have specific guidance for local councils and e-scooter rental companies because both have responsibilities to disabled pedestrians, including people with sight loss.
We believe it is essential for local authorities to set additional local rules to make e-scooters safer. These include properly consulting with local disabled people about e-scooter schemes - before trials begin - and monitoring how disabled people are affected once they are running. Our guidance also covers important rules for:
- Parking e-scooters.
- Accessible infrastructure.
- Robust enforcement of rules.
- Public awareness on driving e-scooters safely.
- E-scooter design.
- An accessible complaints process.
E-scooter companies must ensure their services do not discriminate, directly or indirectly, against disabled people. So, our guidance for e-scooter companies covers key issues they need to address, to stop their services from becoming a barrier to blind and partially sighted people making independent walking journeys.
Speaking up about e-scooters
Our call for local councils and e-scooter companies to follow our guidance is just the latest stage in what we’re doing to highlight our concerns about e-scooter trial schemes, and our attempts to make them safer where possible. This work includes:
- Our Chair Eleanor Southwood has addressed Parliament’s Transport Select Committee, highlighting e-scooters as “a real and genuine threat to the ability of blind and partially sighted people to move around independently and safely”.
- We’ve responded to consultations by the Transport Select Committee, and the Department for Transport, raising our serious concerns and recommendations regarding these e-scooter schemes.
If you are blind or partially sighted and have encountered an e-scooter in a rental trial area, we want to hear from you. It’s crucial that people’s experiences are heard, and we’re determined to keep speaking up on the impact of e-scooters.
If you need assistance to share your experience of e-scooters, you can contact the RNIB Policy and Campaigns Team at [email protected], or by calling 0207 391 2123.
