On-pavement motor-bikes and child-driven e-scooters are risking lives with impunity…

A few years back, at a junction close to where I live, a neighbour while driving out of the street was struct by a motorbike, driving at speed up the main-road, probably on the pavement. It was dark. The motor-bike was without lights so it was unseen and the rider without helmet, was catapulted with his bike over the bonnet of the car and badly injured. Tragically he died a few days later in hospital.

The police interviewed my neighbour who was obviously distraught. The evidence was clear from the start they were not at fault and had no chance to avoid the collision. Nonetheless the biker’s friends, with support of his family, erected a shrine not on the spot where he died but where the motorbike had struct and dented the street sign and across from my neighbour’s house. This became a meeting point for fellow bikers who revved engines and spun wheels nightly in a sinister show of harassment. This continued for two years.

A growing menace

Motorbikes and e-bikes now frequently are driven at speed on main roads and pavements. Riders, mostly young and male, wear facemasks but not helmets. It seems the risk of injury is too great so they cannot be pursed by police. Some may be doing this for fun but there is also a role for these bikes in the illegal drug trade. They are drug mules moving gear across the city.

BBC has been highlighting this problem recently. The cost to insurance companies is estimated to be £110 million a year E-bike injury payouts top £110m and push up insurance premiums – BBC News and Emergency Departments are treating significant injuries. E-scooters: More than 120 children in Belfast injured in last year – BBC News

It is hard to appreciate that every e-scooter driving on the roads or pavement are doing so illegally. Many motorbikes too are not registered for road use, are not insured and riders are doing so illegally as they don’t wear helmets. So why am I getting exercised by this petty law breaking? Why don’t I, like the rest of the population, just accept it and mind my own business. I suppose I’ve got some skin in the game and was very lucky I too didn’t have a fatality on my conscience.

My e-scooter incident.

At an empty junction where there is a mural of a distinctly angry tiger, at 5 p.m. on a week day, I stopped on red. When the lights changed I proceeded straight ahead and then, from my right, a blur of a boy on a e-scooter. We both braked hard just before we collided, he got thrown off the e-scooter by the momentum, as if caught by a violent breeze that discarded him and his e-scooter against the left side kerb.

I got out and was joined by a woman to assist the boy who kept apologising for not stopping as blood oozed down onto his T Shirt from a cut above his right ear. A trainee nurse and her boyfriend joined and she did an assessment. I rang for an ambulance and the call handler took over my phone to assess the patient. She also asked me to scan the scene to ensure it was safe for an ambulance crew. The scan showed a gathering crowd of young men in dark track suits and a middle-aged man with a iPhone who had just arrived. He instructed the youths, who were observing not assisting, to get rid of the e-scooter. This I caught on camera.

The middle-aged man knew the eleven-year-old-boy and was contacting his father. The handler on the emergency call had all she needed and told me the police were on their way. I could hear, in the distance, their reassuring siren coming towards us as the crowd got bigger still.

I was returning home from my business after calling in to give an Indian employee a lift home. She arrived in N. Ireland on a valid visa nine months ago having got married. Her husband works in the care sector and she is studying part-time for a post-graduate degree at UU. She was finding the racist disturbance of the last days deeply frightening so I agreed to get her home early. Thankfully she was not in the car but delivered home when this incident occurred.

The police arrived and one officer took me aside while the other spoke with the injured child. As I recounted what happened, I explained the middle-aged man had instructed the e-scooter be taken way. At this time he was walking around my car giving particular attention to the dashboard. Moving back towards the crowd he asked if the vehicle had dashcam. I confirmed it didn’t and he stated that in that case he was now a witness and saw me break a red-light at speed as I crossed the junction. You can tell your lie I said but I will challenge you. I was a witness he goaded. The police officer handed me a card with incident details and told me to get into my car and leave the scene. They would await the ambulance.

I followed up with the police the next day and was told the child was fine, was released from hospital after an assessment that showed no issues. They would be in touch if anything else happened but have not, to date, contacted. My car was repaired and covered by my insurance but my solicitor assures me a personal injury claim will eventually come.