Sir, – We are consultants in emergency medicine at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and deal with the fallout of e-scooter collisions on a near-daily basis. We wanted to restate our concerns and unequivocally endorse the growing calls for these vehicles to be banned.Over a recent two-year period we saw 380 e-scooter-related presentations at this hospital. Eleven of those patients had bleeding on the brain, two of them needing emergency neurosurgery. Close to one in 12 had not been riding the scooter – they were pedestrians who had been struck by one. The single death in our series fell into that same group. None of this is unique to the Mater. Temple Street has reported a 50 per cent rise in children admitted with traumatic brain injury from e-scooters in the past year, and helmet use among the injured is falling almost everywhere it has been measured.We are not naive about the convenience these vehicles offer, or about the fact that most people who own one will never come near an emergency department. But the injuries we are describing are not rare misadventures. They are the predictable outcome of putting fast, heavy, largely unregulated machines on to footpaths and roads with no licensing, no insurance and, in practice, very little enforcement.Legislation on its own won’t fix that. Gardaí will still need the powers and resources to act on it. But as the clinicians left to pick up the pieces, we think the case Grace Lynch’s family has made, and that the Taoiseach and Garda Commissioner now appear to accept, is the right one. – Yours, etc,Dr FRAN O’KEEFFE,Dr LUKE PHILIPS,Dr GER O’CONNOR,Dr ADRIAN MOUGHTY,Dr SHANE BRODERICK,Dr RACHEL GILMORE.Sir, – When cars first arrived the driver was required to have a person walk in front of the vehicle waving a red flag warning pedestrians and cyclists of the impending danger.While cars and commercial vehicles can still pose a danger, ongoing technical advancement and regulations have paid dividends.An Garda Síochána have the powers to seize any vehicle for a myriad of reasons.The current issues deriving from the improper use of electric scooters and off-road motorbikes should be taken seriously, however a ban is not necessarily the answer.There should be regulations covering the technical features (speed capacity, lighting, brakes, etc), control of sale (through registered importers and retailers), an age-qualifying operating licence, similar to a driving licence, which would be issued only after passing a test.The machine should be registered with clear, prominent markings, insurance, mandatory wearing of safety gear (helmet, gloves and joint protection), and clarity as to where the machines can be used.Legislators should recognise that new modes of transport will continue to be invented and introduced while at the same time encouraging and facilitating safe use.E-scooters are used by large numbers of responsible commuters; how would they be affected should a ban be enforced? – Yours, etc,BRIAN MURPHY, Templeogue,Dublin.Sir, – WYSAITI (What You See Is All There Is) is a term coined by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow and may help explain the current fad for banning. In terms of e-scooters the medics see accidents and injuries while an Garda see criminality and both understandably call for a ban. However, such perspectives can hardly be the full story. E-scooters have legitimate uses and benefits that need to be taken into consideration before any decision is made. Similarly with smartphone use and, more recently, the sale of disposable barbecues where a ban would prevent some individuals having a barbecues in their back garden while their neighbour, with a top of the range system, fires up without a care. Only considering adverse effects and outcomes of any product or activity is wrong and inevitably leads to a “just ban it” approach. – Yours, etc,Dr DAVID JOYCE,Malahide,Co Dublin.