Electric scooter on Auckland Harbour Bridge: Police give man warning

A man has been snapped on camera riding an e-scooter across Auckland’s Harbour Bridge. Photo / TikTok / bradtiktok9000

A man snapped on camera riding an e-scooter across Auckland’s Harbour Bridge has received a formal warning from police.

A video of the stunt, posted to social media, showed the man tailing a bus across the bridge on his scooter – seemingly travelling at a similar speed to the traffic around him.

“What a mad, mad, mad dude,” the person filming says as the scooter rider checks around him for blind spots.

Police said the man made it as far as Takapuna, where he was stopped near the corner of Barrys Pt and Esmonde Rds.

They said he was “spoken to” and received a formal written warning for being a pedestrian on the motorway.

“We are disappointed to see these types of dangerous acts as depicted in this video for the sake of a social media trend and would ask that this not be replicated,” a spokesperson said.

Taxpayers have handed over $30 million for e-scooter-related injuries in the four years since the machines started whizzing about New Zealand’s streets.

New data shows people injured by e-scooters lodged 10,577 claims with ACC, which paid out $30.1m between October 2018 and October 2022.

That included paying $7.4m for 2215 claims in the 10 months from January to October this year.

The average cost per claim was $2931.