Let the children hover in Dubai malls, as long as their interest holds up

Where do we stand on motorised hoverboards? Well, one foot on the left, the other on the right would seem to be the answer.

But when I tried to do this on the one I recently bought my daughter for her seventh birthday, the little machine told me straight away – in a series of growls and kicks – that I was doing something wrong. It angrily threw me off.

Maybe it was an age thing. My girl Amira had no such problem, but just glided away around the living room as if she had been born with the device on the end of her legs.

But I mean, of course, where do we stand in the debate on whether the all-the-rage devices should be banned completely, allowed with conditions, or encouraged as the inevitable future mode of transport for homo sapiens?

It’s a debate that affects all of us, children, parents, mall-owners and users, and public policymakers.

There is also quite a lot at stake for Chinese import-export traders who must have stumped up millions of dirhams for stock, but who now face the prospect of being banned from many public spaces.

It is unlike me, tech-trog that I am, but I actually quite like them. Certainly the look of joy on Amira’s face, and the obvious pleasure she gets from hovering around on it, was enough to endear me from the outset.

The pedestrian area around the fountain in Dubai’s Marina Walk is the epicentre of the hover phenomenon.

Much like the grown-ups parading their Ferraris and Aston Martins along nearby JBR Walk, the under-12s assemble every evening to show off their boards and their hover skills.

The machines come in all colours, but gloss electric blue seems to be the top seller. Most have lights at the front, some have music coming from small loudspeakers. All are obviously the pride and joy of their little owners.

I asked one young lad about his top-of-the-range model, which colour-matched his Arsenal football shirt (yeuch), and he told me it was a great keep-fit workout, balancing backwards and forwards and steering by foot pressure to the right and left. Well, he had convinced himself anyway.

So far, I have seen only a couple of minor bumps at the nightly hover extravaganza. Certainly no more than the scooter and bike crashes that are a regular feature of fountain life.

And nothing like the chaos some Cassandras are obviously anticipating in the malls. Regulators in Dubai have told the mall authorities to ban the use of hoverboards “to avoid accidents and any legal liability that may follow”.

There’s the kicker – “any legal liability”. Nobody wants to be held responsible in the event of a multi-hoverboard pile-up in Fashion Avenue and the carnage that would follow: police investigations, public inquiries, multibillion dirham law suits.

What transparent nonsense. The little machines move so slowly, with their drivers so close to ground level, that any damage inflicted to them or the machines must be minimal. That is as long as they avoid contact with motor cars, which is why it’s right to ban them from public roads.

You might ban them on the grounds that they make life a little more difficult for other mall users, but if we start to ban or regulate everything that might cause shopping inconvenience, where do we stop? How about pedestrian speed lanes for slower moving walkers? Segregated areas for shopping trolleys? Banning of holding hands, or families strolling five abreast down the mall walkways?

Let them hover, I say. They will soon grow out of it.

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