Should hoverboards be illegal to ride in London?

Presumably, like celebrities who threaten to emigrate whenever someone moots a 50 per cent tax rate, homegrown fans will zoom off to the States in hordes. Lily Allen, who has been spotted swaggering through Soho on hers, will have to leave. Brooklyn Beckham is a boarder, and uploaded an Instavideo of himself hoverboarding in London at the weekend (321,000 likes); he’s probably already begged Dad to take another job at LA Galaxy.

Mystifyingly, the vehicles (toys) have really struck a cultural chord. #hoverboard has more than 99,000 tags on Instagram, and yesterday, Twitter was frothing with outrage, derision and jokes. The artists are coming for it: choreographer David Moore has released a video of dancers doing a hoverboard “routine” to Justin Bieber’s What Do You Mean?. It claims to be the “world’s first premium conceptual mini-Segway dance YouTube video”. No one, so far, is contesting that claim.

Lance Gittens-Bernard, founder of trapboards.co.uk, who once lent me one, is furious. He insists that he will be petitioning the Crown Prosecution Service and that the legislation fails to account for “evolution”. He says that the police can only stop the march of progress for so long before “people will be using one on a daily basis”.

“When technology is just introduced, and there’s an influx,” he says, “you have no chance to test it out.” He’s confident that the mix-up will be rectified in good time and the boards will be “back on the street”.

Are the DfT really overreacting? You can’t cycle on pavements, so parts of the “ban” are consistent with other rules pertaining to wheels. When I careered through the streets on a hoverboard I posed a very real risk to myself and to others. For anyone unpractised or uncoordinated (#guilty), it is very hard to intuit and control the board’s movements unless – bizarrely – you take your shoes off and hold them in your hands, which then throws off your centre of gravity, making you more likely to fall off, again. It’s like the plot of a pedestrian and even more boring Catch 22. I don’t want to see cycle deaths climb when you account for hoverboard deaths, too.

America, you can stay the land of the free and home of the brave. The Brits are sitting this one out – and not just because they keep falling off.

@phoebeluckhurst