This follows an announcement by a local council that it would be reviewing the safety of e-scooters - a move that is being welcomed by members of the public who have experienced their dangers first-hand.
Herald readers have been quick to back news that the Auckland Council is seeking urgent advice on the safety and rules of the increasingly popular scooters after one of its own, councillor Christine Fletcher, was almost hit by one today.
In a meeting this morning, she told her colleagues she had come "within an inch'' of being taken out by one while at a pedestrian crossing.
Hers is a similar tale to those shared by readers.
An Auckland woman said her family considered themselves lucky and would not be using the scooters again after an accident involving her 8-year-old son over the weekend.
She, her husband and two children were down at the Viaduct when her son asked to have a go on the e-scooter his father had rented.
"We checked he could brake and stop and start, but when we let him go he just took off.
"He was having a brilliant time until [a toddler] on a normal scooter crossed in front of his path and my son was going too fast to stop properly."
The youngster lost control and fell off the e-scooter; badly bruising a knee and hitting his head so hard that it left a long dent in his helmet, made by a sharp corner of the wharf barrier.
"It would have cracked his head open if he hadn't been wearing a helmet. Five days later, I still have thoughts on what could have happened.''
Another woman said: "I was crossing a footpath on Symonds St when a student sped past me - so close that I felt the wind whip up around me, and abruptly stopped me in my tracks.
"I'm pregnant and had he been any closer and hit me, he could have severely hurt me and my baby! He did not slow down, he did not stop. He kept speeding past pedestrians ...''
Another Aucklander, John Macgillivray, said road rules needed to be updated in order to cope with the new form of transport.
"Recently, an elderly, legally blind woman using her white walking cane was slowly walking along the pavement at the city end of Dominion Rd when two teenage girls on e-scooters came so close to her that they knocked her white cane out of her grasp and into the gutter,'' he said.
"No apologies. They didn't stop to check, just sped away. Needless to say, the blind woman was visibly distressed.''
Geoff Creighton said he received a message from his 82-year-old mother this week about her own near-miss encounter.
She told her son: "I was getting off the bus at Three Lamps on Jervois Rd when an e-bike shot past right by the kerb just as I was putting my first foot down. Another few inches and I'd have had a broken leg at least.
"Gosh, not only have to be careful on the roads but on the footpaths too,'' she told him.
Mike Vear felt some footpaths were too narrow for both pedestrians and those on e-scooters.
"I live by the Viaduct waterfront and regularly walk along the waterfront,'' he said.
"I have seen small children almost run over by these scooters which are coming almost non-stop, sometimes at speed. I am gravely concerned by these scooters which whizz past me within inches."
NZ Lime Launcher spokesman Hank Rowe told the Herald yesterday that rider safety was their top priority.
