York paramedic banned for drink-riding e-scooter

Samuel Christopher Bradley is the third person in a week and the sixth in six weeks to be disqualified from driving any vehicle after they were caught drink riding or drug riding an e-scooter in York.

Click here to read about other e-scooter offenders up before York Magistrates Court.

“These e-scooters are not toys, they are electric motor vehicles,” district judge Adrian Lower said at York Magistrates Court.

“If an attitude has developed that they can just be ridden by people who are the worse for drink, it is an attitude that needs to be corrected.”

He told Bradley: “For whatever reason, you gave the police an absolute run-about around the centre of York to the point where you were actually laughing at the police as they tried to bring you to a halt.”

Bradley’s solicitor Emily Calman said he is now likely to face a disciplinary hearing and the loss of his job and eight-year paramedic career.

“In one foolish moment of madness, he has managed to destroy all that,” she said.

“His driving ban is going to impact greatly on the general public.”

The ambulance driver had been working across North Yorkshire during the pandemic, she said.

The district judge said anyone who worked for the NHS deserved public respect but that made Bradley’s conduct “all the more bizarre”.

“I am afraid you have brought this ban upon yourself,” he told Bradley.

Bradley, 30, of Hawthorn Street, Heworth, pleaded guilty to drink riding.

He was banned from driving for 16 months and ordered to pay a total of £580, including a £450 fine, a £45 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.

As he left court he said he agreed with the judge that e-scooters are not toys and said he “absolutely” would not repeat his offence.

He said he would not have done it had he known what he had learnt as a consequence of his arrest.

Mrs Chadwick said police on patrol spotted Bradley with a passenger on the one-man e-scooter in Parliament Street in the evening of Sunday, October 3.

The passenger had a lager can.

As they went towards him, Bradley dived down New Street.

One of the two men looked at the police and laughed, said the prosecutor.

The e-scooter turned left into Coney Street and travelled the wrong way down the one-way street.

Officers called in the city centre CCTV’s operators to track the vehicle and after further manoeuvres, the e-scooter stopped in Parliament Street in front of police officers.

“Both the rider and passenger staggered off the vehicle,” said Mrs Chadwick.

Bradley gave a breath test with a reading of 58 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath or one and a half times the legal limit.

For him, Emily Calman said; “He is a very intelligent man. He should have known better.”

The app used to hire e-scooters gives a series of warnings to would-be riders.

The passenger had hired the vehicle, so Bradley had never seen the warnings.

District judge’s warning

DRINK riding an e-scooter is the same as drink driving a car or other vehicle and “extremely dangerous”, York’s district judge Adrian Lower has warned. 

As he banned paramedic Samuel Bradley,he told him: “In the course of your work, you see other people who ride motor vehicles when they have had too much to drink and the risk they pose to other people.

“It is extremely dangerous, as you must know.”
He said e-scooters are motor vehicles, like cars and motorbikes that are used on the road. Before they can be hired, would-be riders are warned they have to have a driving licence, an insurance policy in force and they cannot be ridden after drinking. 

“I only hope that some good will come out of this,” he said at the end of the court case.

"Others may be tempted to think they can have a drink and later ride an e-scooter. But they should now know what will happen to them", he said. 

The only e-scooters that can legally be ridden on the roads are those available for hire through the Tier hire scheme as part of a Government pilot. 

E-scooters on the scheme have a notice on its handle warning against drink driving and its stem has a warning that riders must obey traffic laws.

Privately owned e-scooters cannot be ridden on the roads.