Teens illegally riding e-scooters on the pavement got ‘instant karma’ when they hurtled around a corner into a painful head-on crash – with each other. Richard Garbas was driving down an A road in Luton, Bedfordshire, when he spotted two boys on electric scooters without helmets on.
The 44-year-old’s dashcam footage shows one cruising down the pavement and one quickly turning the street corner before they collide in wince-inducing face-to-face crash. They’re both thrown to the floor as Richard and wife Anthea Garbas, 47, can be heard gasping and shouting ‘wow’ from their car.
The dad-of-two decided not to check on the pair because ‘sod them – it’s their fault’ but says he did see them get up and shake hands as if to share the blame. Richard admits ‘a side of him hoped they hit each other’ and that he found the clip funny at the time because of their ‘idiotic’ riding.
He hopes they’ve learned a lesson from the painful incident and wants to share the clip to help parents understand the dangers of the popular new transport mode. The property maintenance worker fell off a legally rented e-scooter in Oxford during 2023 and hasn’t been on one since.
Richard says he’s sharing it to help parents understand how dangerous electric scooters can be. E-scooters are currently only legal to ride on public land in Government-sanctioned trial areas but Luton isn’t one of them.
Richard, from Luton, Bedfordshire, said: “It was idiotic driving. I found it funny at the time. We saw the guy in the grey tracksuit coming towards us and as we got closer to the junction we saw this lad coming down the road. We both thought ‘oh my god’.
“As they come around there’s a side of you that hopes they miss each other and then there’s a side of you that hopes they hit each other. When you can get them to go 15mph, the speed of the two hitting each other is a 30mph crash. It’s like driving into a wall.
“Anthea did ask if we should go and check on them but I think my response was ‘no, sod them. It’s their fault for doing it’. In hindsight, maybe I should have checked on them but hopefully they got up, learned from it and weren’t too badly injured.
“As we drove past I was looking in my mirror and I could see them get up and shake hands. They were going too fast for the situation because when you’re going up to a corner you should be a little cautious of what’s coming up.
“This is more a message to parents. Do they know what their kids are doing and do they know how dangerous [electric scooters] can be? Young kids just think the world is a free place, which is amazing, but at the same time they need to be aware.”
The most recent Government statistics say there were 1,292 collisions involving e-scooters in 2023. Richard says he’s been in an electric scooter crash himself after using one to get home from a night out in 2023.
He says the wheel got lodged down a hole as he rode through a park, throwing off the device and cutting his face. The dad got treatment from an ambulance worker the following day and has been keen to warn his kids Henry, 12 and Elliot, 10, against using them since.
His post has more than 1,600 reactions and 300 comments on Facebook. One commented: “That could have easily been a child in a buggy.”
A second agreed and said: “Yep or a small child walking, our an elderly person, could have easily been a fatal impact.”
A third said: “But it wasn’t, so it’s funny!” A fifth said: “Serves them right, that’s why we all have lessons and take a test… numpties.”
One even said: “Shouldn’t be using a scooter on the footpath, and the other idiot who was originally on the road didn’t have a crash helmet on. Shame they didn’t seem to be seriously injured.”
