Shopper hospitalised by speeding mobility scooter in Tesco

Bruce Storr, a lorry driver from St Budeaux in Plymouth, is nursing a broken arm, after being hit by a speeding mobility scooter inside a branch of Tesco.
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He told the Plymouth Herald: "I was at the paper stand picking up a newspaper when he came shooting out of the aisle where they keep the videos and DVDs." He added that the scooter: "Hit me on the backside. I was knocked backwards by a good five or six feet and landed on my shoulder and my head."

The Mirror reported that he was taken to hospital, where they discovered he had a chipped bone in his shoulder. Police are investigating but the driver has not been charged.

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Are scooters safe?
This incident has led to renewed calls for more restrictions on the 350,000 scooters on Britain's streets. At the moment you don't need a licence to drive them, although the slower ones cannot be driven on the road and the faster ones (with a top speed of 8mph) have to be registered. They can legally be driven up and down the aisles in the supermarket, although off the road the maxim speed they are meant to be driven at is 4 mph.

There have been a number of high profile incidents in supermarkets, which has led to arguments they ought not to be allowed inside shops. Last year a disabled woman was ordered by a court to pay compensation of £13,000 to a supermarket staff member she knocked over. In 2010 a disabled woman had to sell her home to pay £6,000 compensation and £10,000 costs after accidentally hitting a Morrisons shelf-stacker with her mobility scooter.

There are also some shocking tales of injuries on the pavement. These include a young mother in Exeter who had her back broken by a mobility scooter that crashed into the table outside a cafe where she was sitting. There was also a four-year old boy whose leg was broken when he was hit by a mobility scooter in St Ives Park. There have been calls for a change in the law to keep them off the pavements.

A recent study found that most people preferred to ride them on the road - even though it's illegal to ride slower ones off the pavement. However, here too scooter riders have suffered problems. In September a Barnsley man was taken to hospital with serious injuries after being knocked off the scooter he was riding on the road. A few days later a Gosport woman was hit by a lorry trailer outside the ferry terminal, thrown from her scooter, and hit her head on a bollard.

These scooters are a lifeline for many hundreds of thousands of people, but if they are a liability in shops, on the pavement and on the road, is there anywhere that's safe for them to be ridden?

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