Electric scooters flooded the streets of almost all cities of the world. What will our government base itself on when making decisions about electric scooters on the roads of our country.
With this question, we turned to the well-known Ukrainian lawyer, manager of the Shavrov and Partners law firm Ihor Shavrov. He analyzed the existing laws of different countries of the world regarding road traffic rules for electric scooters - something from this will sooner or later be applied in Ukraine as well.
So, the first electric bicycle appeared on the streets of cities in 1896 thanks to the manufacturer Humber - it accelerated to 60 km per hour and was bulky and uncomfortable.
For the first time, the world saw this hipster miracle of technology in 1915, when Autoped scooters flooded the stores of New York. The New York Postal Service has signed a contract with the Autoped company to provide postmen with a new vehicle.
Autoped was called a freak by the cycling community, and The Sun newspaper described it as "the devil's lone carriage". However, the hysteria in the press could not moderate the general interest: in 1917, Californian companies bought 50 autopedos for the upcoming beach season in order to rent them out.
Currently, the largest electric scooter rental services reported 23 million trips per hour.
The rental of electric scooters was mainly designed for citizens who need to overcome the so-called last mile - the section of the path between the train or subway station and the end point of the route, for example, work or home.
The Bird company says that about 40% of city trips by car are made at distances of less than five kilometers, so alternative transport such as bicycles or electric scooters may well serve as an adequate substitute in such cases. If at least some of these motorists are retrained as cyclists, traffic jams will be significantly less.
As Bird points out, Mexico City, home to more than 20 million people, has some of the busiest roads in the world: during peak hours, cars crawl at a speed of no more than 10 km per hour, and the trip to work can take up to two and a half hours for motorists .
However, it must be said that not everyone is happy with the rapidly growing number of electric scooter users. The authorities of some American cities - Miami, San Francisco, Washington and Denver - have already taken measures to limit the number of scooters on the streets. The work of rental companies there was even suspended until the rules regulating the use of this type of transport are introduced.
Companies that provide scooters for rent can boast of large investments and very modest expenses: they do not have to pay for the rent of parking spaces. This partly explains the fact that it is relatively inexpensive for rental services to purchase and maintain a large number of scooters.
As a result, too many scooters appear on the streets of cities.
In France, electric scooters and their relatives in the class of "personal motorized vehicles" (LPVs) - unicycles, gyropods and hoverboards - have become a real nightmare for both pedestrians and car drivers. If you believe the data of the newspaper Le Parisien, from 2013 to 2018, more than 1300 accidents involving owners of electric scooters were recorded. And in June, the first accident involving an electric scooter took place in Paris, which ended in the death of the owner — a 25-year-old man collided with a truck and refused to give way.
The point is that there are no clearly prescribed rules for the owners: their means of transportation do not fall under any definitions, and, what is most interesting, in their case ignorance of the law actually exempts them from responsibility, because there is no law at all. So the French authorities decided to put an end to such anarchy and in September approved a new set of rules for the owners of LMSP.
First, they introduced the very concept of LMSP, which is defined as "a vehicle without a seat, equipped with a non-thermal engine, intended for the movement of one person and without any special adaptations for the transportation of goods, with a maximum speed strictly higher than 6 km/h and lower 25 km/h However, LMSP can have a seat if the vehicle has gyroscopic stabilization. Equipment intended exclusively for people with limited mobility does not fall into this category." Secondly, the following restrictions have appeared: it is possible to ride an LMSP only from the age of 8; children under 12 must wear a helmet; the speed limit is 25 km/h; it is forbidden to drive on the sidewalk, you can only drive the device by hand without turning on the engine; passengers cannot be transported; do not ride with headphones or any other device in your ears capable of making sound; at night or during the day in conditions of poor visibility, you must wear reflective clothing, and you must also have a horn, front and rear lights on your LMSP. As for "parking" on the sidewalk, the authorities here have preferred to leave it to the mayor's offices to adopt some specific restrictions, having decided that it is impossible to leave LMSP in places where they will interfere with the movement of pedestrians.
Now the new rules allow owners of all this equipment in populated areas to move only on bicycle paths or highways where the maximum permitted speed does not exceed 50 km/h. At the same time, if the driver of the LMSP still dares to drive onto the sidewalk, he faces a fine of 135 euros. And for speeding, they will be fined up to 1500 euros.
In Germany, electric scooters were "legalized" in June 2019
, and before that, a progressive, by modern standards, type of transport was banned in the country. The pedantic Germans drew up strict rules. Driving on sidewalks is strictly prohibited. It is possible to move exclusively on bicycle paths, and if there are none, then they leave on the roadway. Recently, the Ministry of Transport proposed to open public transport lanes for electric scooters: according to the bill, this privilege can also be extended to cars carrying at least three passengers and motorcycles with trailers.
The speed limit for electric scooters in the city limits is no more than 20 kilometers per hour. Legislators also talked about introducing special rights for "drivers", but it has not yet come to that. True, the head of the Berlin Union of Persons with Disabilities, Dominique Peter, demanded that the owners of electric scooters be sent to driving courses without fail. Due to the fact that they rush past people in wheelchairs at high speed, they "began to feel much less protected in the city." As follows from the traffic accident reports, the restrictions for driving electric scooters are constantly violated. Especially the German law enforcement officers are concerned about the fact that the owners of motorized scooters do not consider it shameful to drink alcohol. A "dry law" in the form of zero ppm is already looming on the horizon for them. The German mass media discussed the incident when eight policemen in Erfurt were injured while trying to stop a drunk on an electric scooter.
In Spain, there are no rules for the use of electric scooters adopted at the state level. However, back in 2016, the General Directorate of Road Traffic issued an instruction according to which all "individual means of transportation", destroying the traditional division of people into pedestrians and drivers, are divided into four conditional categories. The first includes children's electric scooters and other devices with an electric drive, the speed of which does not exceed 6 km/h. The second includes segways, unicycles and electric scooters that accelerate up to 25 km/h. The third includes various types of bicycles, both with and without an electric motor. And finally, vehicles with a maximum speed of up to 45 km/h make up the fourth. To drive the latter, category AM licenses are required (you can get them from the age of 15, having passed the exam for driving a moped with an engine up to 50 cubic centimeters).
Actually, "individual means of transport" are those that fall into the second category. According to the instructions, they can be used on cycle paths and streets where the speed of traffic is limited to 30 km per hour (in Madrid, this is about 85 percent of all streets). However, it is said there that the regulation of this issue rests on the shoulders of city mayors and their councilors, it is they who must decide where electric scooters are allowed to ride and where not. So far, the management of only three of the largest cities in Spain has developed its own rules: Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. In all three, the owners of electric scooters must wear helmets and always give way to other traffic participants, primarily pedestrians. The Main Directorate of Traffic also intends to make a reflective vest a mandatory part of the equipment.
In Barcelona, since 2017, electric scooters have been allowed to be driven only on cycle paths or on the carriageway of pedestrian streets (although it sounds paradoxical, it means the central part where a car can pass if necessary). At the same time, in Barcelona it is forbidden to park such vehicles on the sidewalk, so as not to interfere with pedestrians, to tie them to trees, traffic lights, benches. The city authorities left only one possibility for this - places for motorcycles and bicycles.
In Valencia, the rules for using electric scooters were adopted less than a year ago. Owners of devices weighing less than 25 kg and with a maximum speed of 20 km/h were allowed to use the sidewalks, but not accelerating faster than 10 km/h. However, larger electric scooters cannot be driven on many sidewalks and in pedestrian areas. As for parking, bicycle racks are intended for this purpose, and if they are not found within 50 meters, the electric scooter can be tied to items of street furniture (but not to trees) for a period of up to 72 hours.
And in Madrid, drivers of electric scooters are prohibited from listening to music with headphones while driving and using the device while intoxicated. Those who drink while driving are fined: 500 euros if the alcohol level in the exhaled air exceeds 0,26 mg per liter, and 1000 euros if the "exhaust" exceeds 0,50 mg. To date, a fine of 1000 euros has been issued only twice. But how to punish the culprits of fatal accidents involving electric scooters is still not clear. The verdict in the first case has not yet been issued. The accident occurred on August 13, 2018, when a young man driving an electric scooter hit a 90-year-old woman, who fell to the ground and hit her head. A few hours later, she died in the hospital. The police opened a case of causing death due to negligence, since the scooter was moving at a speed of less than 10 km per hour, and the young man driving it was talking on the phone at the time of the collision.
As a result, the crime committed by him was considered relatively light by the prosecutor's office, for which, according to the Criminal Code, a fine is provided. And all because electric scooters are not formally recognized as vehicles.
But in Japan, electric scooters, segways, gyroscooters or unicycles have not yet won their place under the sun. All of them are not assigned to any of the categories of transport operated on Japanese streets. On the territory of the island state, in fact, it is forbidden to move freely on electric scooters and other new-fangled devices. So Japan can be safely called a cycling country.
In Italy, in July 2019, an experimental regulatory act was adopted regulating the use of electric scooters, Segways, unicycles and hoverboards.
Before its appearance, the legislative status of electric transport was quite ambiguous - everything that had 2-3 wheels and developed a speed of more than 6 km/h, with the exception of bicycles, children's transport and transport for the disabled, was by default considered to be mopeds or motorcycles. And this meant that the owners of these vehicles had to not only hang a number plate on them, but also necessarily purchase expensive insurance. Otherwise, they could face a fine of 1200 to 1500 euros. Thanks to the approved decree "micromobility" developed by the Italian Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, there are practically no more gray spots in this issue.
According to the new rules, scooters can be used on the road, but their speed should not exceed 30 km/h, and in populated areas and pedestrian zones - 6 km/h. The owners of the scooters also got the opportunity to move on special bicycle paths at a speed of 6 to 20 km/h. The law does not allow movement on sidewalks, as well as on streets equipped with tram rails.
Both adults and minors who have a driver's license of the AM category, which is issued to persons over 14 years of age to drive a vehicle with a speed not exceeding 45 km/h, can drive a mini-vehicle. But the democratic gesture is accompanied by the introduction of a number of serious restrictions. In particular, it is forbidden to transport people and goods, carry out any type of towing, as well as perform sharp maneuvers and perform acrobatic tricks on the above-mentioned "accelerators of movement".
Despite the fact that many Italians accepted the rules "with gusto", the decision on whether to implement them will be entirely up to the mayors of Italian cities. In two years, they will report to the Ministry of Transport on how the new law works.
The "northern capital" of Italy, Milan, was the first to react to the innovations. The city authorities, who began testing the law in July, took it very seriously. In the first month and a half, dozens of fines of 99 euros were issued for violating the rules of riding electric scooters. In addition, the city mayor's office, largely to its own detriment, voluntarily imposed a ban on the activities of companies that rent out electric scooters.
Also, in recent years, electric scooters, as a new type of urban transport, have gained wide popularity in Brazil. But since the number of incidents involving scooters has increased proportionally with the growth of their number, local authorities have seriously considered the need to regulate their use.
There are no exact statistics of traffic accidents on the scale of the entire country yet, but since the beginning of the year, more than 100 people have been admitted to one hospital in the city of Belo Horizonte in eastern Brazil with injuries resulting from incidents with electric scooters. And at the beginning of September, the first fatal case in the country occurred in the same city. A 43-year-old man died after hitting his head on the curb after falling from a scooter.
This news once again provoked a public discussion of the issue of regulating a new type of city transport. However, according to Brazilian legislation, this topic is under the jurisdiction of local municipalities.
Policemen in Frankfurt-on-the-streets. Photo: Gettyimages
In São Paulo, for example, in August a law came into force introducing a number of restrictions on the use of electric scooters. Only adults are now allowed to rent them. You can move at a speed of no faster than 20 kilometers per hour on cycle paths and highways with a speed limit of up to 40 kilometers per hour. Riding a scooter together is prohibited, as well as transporting animals and any kind of cargo. In addition, companies that provide scooter rental services will have to equip special places for their parking. Similar restrictions have been in effect in Rio de Janeiro since July.
In both cities, the question of the use of protective helmets stands out. If residents of Rio are still only recommended to wear them while traveling, then in São Paulo the law initially required scooter owners to provide them to their customers. True, after the legislators were reminded that most of the helmets could be stolen in the first day, it was decided to work out this point more thoroughly.
