Amendments were made to the State Duma on the registration of electric scooters, unicycles and other personal mobility devices

A bill on mandatory registration of electric scooters, unicycles and other personal mobility devices (SIM) through the government services portal has been submitted to the State Duma. It is proposed to equip these vehicles with numbers “allowing the owner to be identified and a set of government enforcement measures to be applied.” The initiative, the authors believe, will reduce the number of accidents involving SIM. The Ministry of Transport also proposes to establish their mandatory registration, by analogy with registering a car, but the department is not talking about issuing license plates for SIM.

A group of deputies from the LDPR (led by party leader Leonid Slutsky) submitted to the State Duma amendments to the law on state registration of vehicles, according to which all personal mobility devices (electric scooters, unicycles, Segways, etc.) must be subject to state registration. It is proposed to carry out the procedure on a single portal of public services; based on its results, SIM holders will be issued numbers. The detailed procedure for registration should be established by the government of the Russian Federation. “Current legislation does not create sufficient instruments for legal regulation of the use of SIM,” the authors write in the explanatory note. “This is manifested in the increasing number of accidents. It seems justified to prohibit the use of this type of transport without license plates that allow identifying the owner of the vehicle and applying a set of government coercive measures.”

The high level of accidents involving a new type of transport, we recall, has been discussed for several years. To strengthen control over SIM traffic, the Ministry of Transport and the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate prepared amendments to the traffic rules, which came into force on March 1: SIM owners were prohibited, in particular, from reaching speeds above 25 km/h, driving onto highways, etc. The traffic police, conducting raids, fines violators by amounts from 500 rub. up to 1.5 thousand rubles.

However, federal authorities have already recognized that additional control measures are needed as accidents continue to increase.

According to the Scientific Center for Road Safety of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, over the six months of this year, more than 1 thousand accidents involving SIM were registered (+181.9%), in which 12 people were killed and more than 1 thousand people were injured, including 432 children. So, last Wednesday in Moscow, two adults on a kick-sharing scooter hit a child, who was taken to the hospital with injuries.

In September the Ministry of Transport (“Kommersant” talked about this) has prepared a draft “road map” that includes a number of new measures to regulate personal mobility devices, including new amendments to the traffic rules (which will include, among other things, the obligation for SIM users to undergo a medical examination). The list of measures also included mandatory registration of devices. But unlike the deputies, the Ministry of Transport proposed amendments to the laws “On the Organization of Road Traffic” and “On Road Safety”: individuals and legal entities will be required to enter data on electric scooters into the federal register. This will become a government service, similar to registering a car.

The document, according to Kommersant, is at the final stage of approval in the White House.

Against this background, regional authorities are already engaged in independent regulation. Moscow, for example, is expanding the list of zones where the speed of kick-sharing scooters is automatically limited (or riding is prohibited altogether): there are currently 250 such zones in the city, but there will be more.

Director of the Association of Micromobility Operators Ksenia Erdman conceptually supports the idea of ​​“total” SIM registration, noting that all kick-sharing electric scooters have numbers and are controlled remotely. Now, the expert says, it is necessary to establish similar control over SIM cards in private ownership, connecting them to a single platform (already announced by the authorities). This, Ms. Erdman believes, will make it possible in the future to forcefully limit the speed of traffic in “slow zones.”

“We support measures aimed at regulation and transparency of the SIM market, especially in relation to private scooters,” says the press service of Yurent. “Rental services already have authorization and identification numbers for scooters, as well as other tools that allow for personal identification user in the event of an accident. While it is almost impossible to determine the identity of owners of private SIM cards and couriers.” Yurent emphasized that the LDPR bill essentially duplicates the proposals contained in the road map of the Ministry of Transport.

The bill raises many questions, says Vadim Melnikov, general director of the “Traffic without Danger” expert center and member of the public council of the Ministry of Transport. “What will SIM owners have to do to register? Who and how will check this on the roads? — the expert asks. “Perhaps it would be better, before making a total count, to think about the markings in order to understand how many SIM cards are on the roads now?” This can be done first with electric scooters for kick-sharing and couriers, and then move on to private SIMs.”

Ivan Buranov