It is not often these days that motorists are charged with offences that have been on the statute book over 150 years, but it happened this week in South Yorkshire.
Philip Coates, from Barnsley, was charged under the 1835 Highways Act of riding a motor vehicle on the pavement and in pleading not guilty to the offence, has opened up the possibility of a new type of vehicle being allowed on the roads of the UK. Mr Coates was riding a “Segway” and has been riding one around the streets of Barnsley since bringing it home from a family holiday in Florida.
A Segway can best be described as a motorised scooter, if you imagine the scooter to be the type you had as a child, but instead of the wheels being situated at the front and back, the wheels on the Segway are on each side of the axle. The wheels are also very big, about the size of the wheels on a moped, and in fact the Segway has been around for almost 10 years. It doesn’t come cheap though, the average price is somewhere around £5000.
The Segway is already accepted on the roads in many states of the United States of America and also quite a few countries in Western Europe, Italy and France amongst them. The many supporters in the UK have actually been hoping for someone to be prosecuted so a challenge to the charge can be made and the legal position can be ascertained, it is expected that this case will instigate such a challenge.
There are definite problems in actually getting a legal definition, as the Department of Transport have pointed out. It cannot be described as a bike because there are no pedals; it has a motor, but no seat and would definitely fall foul of many road safety regulations as it does not have lights or the capability to inform other drivers of its proposed direction through indicators. At the moment then the Segway is confined to private roads which means that owners of them will not be looking for a motor insurance quote and it will remain that way until Mr Coates has his day in court.