Scooter riders are close to my heart. Fell in love with them when I was a kid, watching the older guys cruising past on them – the embodiment of cool to an impressionable 11 year old me waiting at the bus-stop.

It took a few years until I finally got one. Had a couple of PXs and then (after being blown away at some traffic lights by one), I moved up to GTS300s but still have a PX150 in the garage. I’ve had a love affair with them ever since and set up and ran a scooter helmet company, Carnaby Designs, which involved dealing with scooterists and scooter riders on a daily basis.

I ride a scooter every day to the office – save for if there’s snow on the ground. Being on the road every day on one, really makes you alive to the risks that come with it. I’d say that someone would knock me off around three times a week if I didn’t anticipate what they were about to do.

It’s hard to explain to non-riders what it’s actually like being on the road as a scooterist. It’s as if car riders don’t notice you half the time and even when they do, they act really strangely towards you. They’ll pull a few feet out of a junction as you approach, as if there is room for them to do so and it will save them a valuable nano-second by being better positioned when you have passed. They’ll pull in or out without any kind of indication, assuming that you will just know what they are going to do. They will stop in the middle of the road, leaving you wondering what the hell they are doing. They’ll look at you like you are from another planet. It’s truly odd.

Riding every day certainly helps me understand better what has happened when scooter riders call us following an accident. I feel I can get to grips with the situation much more quickly than a non-rider would – a big advantage when dealing with an injury claim.

There are a lot of firms out there who claim to specialise in bike and scooter claims but check out their credentials and these people are often not much more than someone who has just been told to sit on a scooter because it’s part of their firm’s ‘marketing strategy’. That’s not us. We act for scooterists mainly through personal recommendations from one rider to another. We’ve acted for hundreds of injured riders over the years and we are proud of our testimonials. We live and breathe scooters. If you’ve had an accident, give us a call – you won’t find anyone who understands your case better.

— Stephen Hattersley, Wildwood Legal