Am I too old to ride an e-scooter? I hope not. I’ve been keen to have a go on one for a while, but with no shared scheme near me, it’s not been that easy. Fortunately, the good people at Eskuta sent me a KS-450 test out, much to the embarrassment of my teenage daughter. I have to say I love it.
Currently in the UK more men ride e-scooters than women. A gender study by shared micromobility operator Dott and Steer found that only 29% of their ridership numbers in the UK were women. But surely a new zero-carbon mode of mobility that’s quicker than walking, cheaper than a car and possibly easier than cycling needs be celebrated and embraced by women just as much as men.
When I asked my female friends what they thought about e-scooters, the responses were 90% negative: ‘dangerous’, ‘reckless’, ‘I confiscate at least one a week as school’. Not one of them took the question to mean: Would you try one yourself?
My teenage daughter was equally cynical. ‘They look dangerous,’ she tells me. ‘I would just laugh if I saw a girl my age riding one.’
Image is everything to a teenage girl, but surely this new mode of mobility has so much potential for her age group as they move forward into young adulthood in a world that desperately needs to…
