Ms Victoria Springthorpe:

The anti-footpath technology we are developing does not use the geofencing method. It is an industry-first integrated sensor fusion system on what we call the brain of the scooter whereby we store maps that capture the rules relating to the road. These upload in real time from a distance, not manually on the scooter, so that can dictate in real time where the footpath is and prevent that from approaching.

To go back to noise, speed and visibility, we very much agree with what Mr. Stevenson said about the noise approach. He mentioned the research being done by industry. As an industry, we need to agree what this noise is and rather than have piecemeal operators with lots of different ones, agree what the industry standard should be. We are excited for this research to happen, but bells should be compulsory on scooters as a form of alerting pepole.

I do not think anyone has touched on visibility yet. We agree there should scooters should have high visibility. Our scooters have lights on the front and rear and plenty of reflective tape. In the UK, we operate partnerships with the blind association over there. As a result of that partnership, we adapted our vehicles to have more reflective tape. We should see this mandatory visibility of the vehicle in regulations but maybe in councils. We do not think high visibility should be mandatory in legislation but we encourage riders to wear high-visibility clothing as much as possible. We have what we call a helmet selfie whereby if people take a selfie wearing a helmet or high-visibility clothing, we can give them credit off their next ride to incentivise their use. Part of it involves technological developments while part of it involves education.