When Back to the Future hit our screens in December 1985, I was still at primary school and hit right between the eyes with a captivating time travelling adventure and pumping soundtrack. 🎥
You might be interested to read that when Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale first began to write the script for the film, they initially had in mind a reconfigured refrigerator as the time travelling device not a DeLorean DMC-12. That alone would have made for an interesting session in the 2050: Fridge of the Future event last month.
It was one of the very first films I can remember where product placement featured heavily whether this be from the cool Nike Bruins low swish red trainers to the Madrid Valterra skateboard.
Jump forward to the future, and our towns are awash with budding Marty McFly’s on e-scooters as they whip through the streets, pavements and pathways at anything up to 15mph. 🛴
Being a popular lockdown purchase, sales of e-scooters have soared as many have abandoned buses, tubes etc where social distancing is an impossibility whilst also supporting the environment by reducing the impact of congestion and pollution in one hit.
By the end of this year it has been predicted that more than a million of us in the UK will own an e-scooter on top of using the trial rental schemes across the country. Unfortunately, it has also been predicted that one in five e-scooters users is predicted to be involved in an accident. ⛔
Looking at this from a product safety perspective, the news of the streets is that problems have been identified with e-scooters coming in from China. Where there are trend rises in products such as e-scooters, there will always be those who try and cash in on a products popularity by forsaking quality.
These e-scooters can look like pretty convincing duplicates but on closer inspection the build quality is poor with problems with tyres and or wheel alignment, incomprehensible assembly instructions and deficient helmets.
An accident waiting, but we can create windows of opportunity for decent manufacturing.
On 30th September, the Public Committee Report on protecting consumers from unsafe products made a number of recommendations and highlighted areas of action for OPSS to address as a matter of urgency. One of these concerns online sales as we now live in a world where one third of products are purchased this way with the safety risks to consumers never having been higher.
With UK government being charged with finding ways to better regulate online sales and act tough with those flout the law and put consumers at risk, perhaps now is the time to create an environment where businesses of all shapes and sizes who want to build robust products that meet with safety standards can thrive and prosper.
If you want to talk skateboards, Nike trainers or need help navigating your way through the streets of product safety regulation, I’m your man so get in touch.
