2023-08-31 04:42:00
To the point that today, more and more capitals and big cities around the world have decided to ban self-service scooters on their territory. New York, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam or even Copenhagen have already banned these devices on their territory. And, this Friday, it will be the turn of Paris. Last April, Parisians were indeed invited to vote for or once morest shared electric scooters, during a major popular consultation. With an implacable verdict: 89% of voters (who however represented only 7.5% of the population of voting age), were opposed to maintaining this micromobility system. “On September 1, there will be no more self-service scooters in Paris,” commented Anne Hidalgo at the time. And the mayor of Paris has not changed her position one iota: this Friday, shared scooters will be banned in the French capital.
All scooters limited to 20 km/h in Brussels: the Region is also tightening the screw for private vehicles
Brussels, Namur, Liège, Charleroi… should they follow the Parisian example? Some are convinced of it. This is the case of the mayor of Uccle, Boris Dilliès, who has hardened his tone once morest free-floating scooters. “After two years of fruitless discussions with the various operators, I have strictly applied article 44 of the police regulations which stipulate that the free passage of pedestrians on the sidewalks cannot be obstructed, confides the mayor of Uccle who specifies aim for the shared scooter and not the private one, pampered by its owner. So I gave the order to have all the badly parked scooters removed to take them away. With the key to administrative penalties of €250 per machine payable by the operators. Since then, most operators have deactivated the Uccle area. Their users can still drive there, but no longer park there.”
For the mayor of Uccle, the Brussels Region, which intends to give the shared scooter system one last chance, “is on the wrong track”. The Region intends to reduce the number of machines to a maximum of 8,000 throughout the agglomeration, with a limitation of 20 km / h and drop zones, a kind of parking for scooters, which are compulsory. “Shared scooters are only welcome in Brussels if they do not disturb other road users, commented Brussels Minister for Mobility Elke Van den Brandt, as soon as the government approved the decree setting the new rules. That’s why we finally opted for stricter legislation: fewer scooters, fewer operators, mandatory drop-off zones and fines for wrong parking.”
With a warning: “If it appears that the rules are not being followed or not proving to be effective enough, we will consider moving to a total ban on shared electric scooters.”
Brussels will toughen the tone once morest shared scooters: 8,000 machines from 2024 once morest 20,000 currently, limitation to 20 km / h and mandatory drop-zones
Boris Dilliès does not bode well. “The Region has created a gas factory which refers the problem to the municipalities which will be responsible for developing and enforcing these drop zones. The new plan is pure electoralism because we don’t want to offend a certain public. It is all the more incomprehensible to continue to support this system of shared micromobility since these scooters, which arrive in whole containers from China, only have a lifespan of one year and are stuffed with hyper-polluting chemical components. From an environmental and security point of view, it is a real scourge. It is also false to claim that it is motorists who use scooters to do the last mile: it has been proven that those who use them are either public transport users or former pedestrians.
The mayor of Uccle pays no heed to what he thinks of shared scooters: “In reality, we must follow the example of Paris.” Understand: ban scooters.
Despite the tightening of the law in July 2022, risky behavior remains legion with shared scooters. ©Alain Apaydin / Bestimage
Give shared scooters a last chance or ban them permanently: doctors are divided
Surveyed by us, several emergency physicians tell us that they no longer count head trauma, fractures and other sprains both among scooter riders themselves and among weak users hit by them. They too have a rather negative image of these machines. Last year, more than 2,100 people were injured in an accident involving a scooter. And four were killed, according to Vias figures. Declining figures since the introduction of a stricter framework in July 2022, but which are undoubtedly only the tree that hides a much larger forest: many injured people go to the emergency room themselves, these accidents pass under the radar of police reports. “In our service, half of the doctors are in favor of the ban, comments an emergency doctor from a large Brussels hospital. The other half asks that we legislate more severely on it, with dissuasive fines as a result,… and one part specifies that in the absence of concrete and effective measures, it will then be necessary to think regarding banning them all the same.”
1693460853
#great #fed #shared #scooters #cities #follow #Paris #ban
