Every road user has a nemesis. Ask a driver about cyclists, and you may hear stories about red lights, lycra and a strange reluctance to use the cycle lane. On the other side of the fence, ask a cyclist about drivers, and brace yourself for close passes, opening car doors and the eternal myth of “road tax”.
It’s a quarrel as British as “milk or water first in tea” (water is the only acceptable answer), and about as old as the internet’s running joke that certain German saloons are sold without indicators.
Recently, however, a new contender may have arrived that both camps can agree to dislike. A YouGov survey of 5,166 British adults, carried out on 23 July 2026, found that 66% think it should not be legal to ride e-scooters on roads. Just 19% think it should.
Is a common enemy finally bringing peace to Britain’s roads? Or is something more complicated going on? Private plate specialists Regtransfers take a closer look at the new rivalry brewing on British Roads.
A Tale As Old As Time
The feud between cyclists and drivers is older than you might think. In the 1890s, speeding “scorchers” on bicycles were the menace of the day, drawing complaints from pedestrians and horse riders alike. Ironically, cyclists were among the first to lobby for smoother, better-maintained roads, long before cars were common.
Then there’s “road tax”, the trump card of many a roadside argument. The dedicated Road Fund was scrapped in 1937, and Vehicle Excise Duty has gone into general taxation ever since. In other words, nobody pays for the roads directly, but the myth refuses to die.
The polling has always made for entertaining reading. A 2012 YouGov poll found Britons rated both groups almost exactly as badly: 63% said motorists were generally inconsiderate, compared with 62% for cyclists. A later YouGov survey for The Sunday Times found that answers split sharply depending on whether respondents saw themselves as cyclists or drivers.
The flashpoints keep coming. The 2022 Highway Code update introduced a “hierarchy of road users”, giving cyclists priority in some situations and sparking furious debate. More recently, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 created a new offence of causing death by dangerous cycling, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Many drivers called it overdue, while cycling groups warned it must not put people off riding.
The arrival of e-scooters
Two in three Britons oppose road-legal e-scooters, and that majority must include plenty of drivers and cyclists. The YouGov poll doesn’t split answers by how people travel, though, so we can’t say for certain that the two tribes have “shaken hands” on this. What we can say is that e-scooters give both sides something new to grumble about.
For drivers, it’s the scooter that appears from nowhere, weaving between lanes with no lights, no number plate and no insurance. For cyclists, it’s the rider who zips past in the cycle lane at speed, or the rental scooter dumped across the bike path.
The legal picture doesn’t help. Privately owned e-scooters are classed as motor vehicles and remain illegal on public roads, pavements and cycle lanes. The only legal way to ride in public is through a government-approved rental trial. Yet estimates suggest there are more than one million private e-scooters in the UK.
That gap shows up in the collision data. The Department for Transport estimates that in 2023, 949 of the 1,299 e-scooters involved in reported collisions were private, illegal machines rather than rentals.
On the case for e-scooters
Before the pitchforks come out, the 19% of those who think e-scooters should be legal do have a case worth hearing. Rental trials have run in England since July 2020 and have now been extended to May 2028. The first national evaluation recorded 14.5 million rental trips by the end of 2021.
Crucially for drivers, some of those trips took cars off the road. By December 2021, around 21% of rental journeys replaced a private car or taxi trip, and that share grew as the trials matured. Many were short first or last-mile hops to a bus or train station. Fewer cars means less congestion and more parking spaces, which is hard for any motorist to argue with.
There’s also a fairness point. The evaluation found that people on lower incomes and from ethnic minority groups were more likely to use rental e-scooters regularly, giving them a cheap option where other transport was limited.
The government appears to be coming round, too. In February 2026, Transport Minister Heidi Alexander told the BBC that the “genie is out of the bottle”, signalling plans to legalise private e-scooters with proper safety rules. Supporters argue that regulation, rather than prohibition, is the best way to tackle the illegal machines already on our streets.
The case against e-scooters
As you’d expect, the 66% against e-scooters have their evidence too. The latest Department for Transport figures show 1,477 casualties in collisions involving e-scooters in Great Britain in 2025, up from 1,390 in 2024. Ten people were killed, all of them e-scooter riders, compared with six the year before.
Riders bear the brunt, but they’re not the only ones hurt. In 2025, 235 pedestrians and 47 cyclists were injured in e-scooter collisions, compared with just 15 car occupants. So if cyclists seem more wary of e-scooters than drivers do, the numbers suggest they may have good reason.
The environmental case is also less clear-cut than it first appears. Transport for London data from its rental trial found that 93.5% of trips would otherwise have been made on foot, by bike or by public transport. Only 6.5% replaced a car or taxi.
Then there’s the question of manners. In the national evaluation, just 31% of people felt e-scooter riders were respectful of pedestrians. And because private e-scooters can’t be insured, injuries they cause to others typically fall to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau, according to law firm DAC Beachcroft.
Conclusion
So, have e-scooters finally ended the age-old war? Perhaps. A shared grievance has a way of bringing old rivals together, and two thirds of the country does seem to be on the same page.
There’s another way to read it. A century ago, it was the cyclist who was the reckless newcomer, and the motorist after that. Every new arrival on Britain’s roads has been treated as the menace of its age, before eventually being folded into the rules.
With legalisation now on the government’s agenda, e-scooters may be about to follow the same path. Whether that turns them into accepted road users, or simply a third front in the battle for road space, is anyone’s guess.
Where do you stand: common enemy, or just the latest new kid on the block?
