Mansfield: Town's mobility scooter users urged to slow down

Mobility scooters should not travel any faster than four mph on the pavement, according to the Highway Code

A mobility scooter user in a Nottinghamshire town has urged his fellow users to watch their speed.

Peter Henson said he was seeing more and more of the vehicles being driven recklessly in Mansfield and was worried about public safety.

He has asked Nottinghamshire County Council to put up speed limit signs and do more to make sure they are being observed.

The authority said it relied on users to drive appropriately to conditions.

The Highway Code states that when travelling on the pavement mobility scooters should not go any faster than four miles per hour.

However, some vehicles have the potential to go at twice that speed.

Mr Henson told BBC Radio Nottingham: "I'm telling folks every day. It's not on.

"I shout to somebody 'oi you're going too fast, it's only four mph' but then they're gone.

"Why wait until somebody gets injured?"

Mr Henson has asked for speed limit signs for mobility scooter riders to be put up in Mansfield

Mr Henson says he has contacted Nottinghamshire County Council with his concerns and urged them to put up speed limit signage in the town centre.

"Even if we do get some signs up, we still need somebody to enforce the law against them going too fast," he said.

"I'm worried about the Mansfield public, their safety."

Paul Wilson, who manages a mobility scooter shop in the town, said he had also seen lots of people breaking the speed limit.

"I always advise people that in the town centre you should put it down to low and don't go above four miles per hour for obvious reasons," he said.

Mr Henson said scooter riders were putting pedestrians in danger in Mansfield

Neil Greig, from road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, said the UK was known as "the mobility scooter capital of Europe" with more of them being used on our streets then anywhere else.

He said: "Compared to other issues on road safety it's not causing so many deaths and injuries but certainly if you've got a lot of these in one concentrated area I can see that as a pedestrian, you might feel quite threatened."

Duncan Guest, an associate professor in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, has run a study on mobility scooter safety and said pedestrians also needed greater awareness.

"Scooters are electric - they either go or they don't, you're sat really low so you have a low visibility, they're not particularly agile so you can't get out of the way quickly," he said.

"Pedestrians don't really know how to anticipate what scooter users are going to do."

Mansfield District Council said it had no powers to enforce a speed limit for mobility scooters.

It said any signage for speed limits was the responsibility of the county council.

A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire County Council said: "As with all speed limits, we rely on road users - including those using mobility scooters, to drive appropriately to conditions, adhering to the speed limit for their vehicle on a particular road or footway, and showing respect to other road users.

"Enforcement for inappropriate use would rest with the police."