E-Scooting your way to a $3400 fine! Kids are better off driving your car without a license

The laws in NSW are crazy, and that’s evident by the amount of fines that your kids could face if they ride one. To demonstrate how crazy – we’ve pulled together the fines that you could face and compared them to what would happen if your kids took your car to the shops.

So here’s the scenario. You’re cooking dinner, or making a birthday cake. You’ve realised you are one ingredient short, and you need it fast.

You’re a parent of two kids, one of them is 14 years old, the other is 5. The oven is on already cooking the first round, and your 14 year old volunteers to head to the shops and grab that ingredient.

Getting a 5 year old away from their toys strapped into the car and heading up with the kids is far harder than letting your teenager make the trip.

Walking there and back is risky – you need it within 10 minutes.

So, there are two options. Let your 14 year old ride the Electric Scooter, or let them drive your car.

Of course, the latter is ridiculous. They are 14, no licence, if the police found them it would be one heck of an expensive cake right?

Yes, they would be fined $587 in NSW for “Drive Unlicensed“. Pretty hefty stuff.

We know the electric scooters are not yet legal to ride in public places in NSW – but surely that’s a better option.

Oh how utterly wrong you are.

If your child rode the Scooter on the footbath on the way there, wearing their bike helmet – and they came across one heck of a grumpy police officer – hell bent on upholding the law and perhaps sending a message to these young “hoons” on Electric Scooters.

Here’s the fines your child could cop:

• Using an unregistered vehicle – $704
• Using an uninsured vehicle – $704
• Using a vehicle with tax not paid – $704
• Not wearing an approved helmet – $352 (a bicycle helmet isn’t enough, you’d need to be wearing a Motorbike helmet to avoid this fine)
• Drive unlicensed – $587
• Drive on Path – $352

That’s over $3400 in fines. Yep, those are real things, and they could be applied to your child riding a scooter.

Insanity.

The NSW Government has announced trials of Electric Scooters in a couple of select council areas this year – that needs to happen fast, it needs to happen without fuss and without over-regulation being the result.

Electric Scooters, if ridden safely and wisely on quiet roads, or footpaths while wearing a helmet can be part of a future mobility solution here in NSW, will take cars off the road and won’t be any more of a risk to people driving on the roads or walking the paths than any cyclist is today.

$2,816 more to ride your scooter than to take a car unlicensed. The definition of insanity.

You’d just order Uber Eats and brush the cooking entirely wouldn’t ya.