Scooter owners will be subject to further pressure: they will be required to obtain licenses or banned
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The “pokers” of rental electric scooters glowing in different colors have become a familiar landscape for the capitals and large cities of Russia. But they may disappear in the near future, just as they disappeared on September 1 in Paris. The irritation and fear that electric scooters cause in the city is too great. The State Duma is already discussing further tightening in relation to personal mobility devices (IMs): whether rental scooters will be banned in Russian cities and whether drivers of private scooters will be required to have a license and a license plate – our correspondent looked into it.
Exactly six months have passed since the introduction of the concept of SIM and the first restrictions for these devices into the traffic rules, and further tightening of the rules is on the agenda: the number of road accidents, including those with casualties, is not decreasing, and the resonance in the media has even increased. And so, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin launched an informal survey of social network users about what to do next to reduce the accident rate and the number of victims in accidents with SIM.
In a survey on his Telegram channel, Volodin proposed two options for the development of events. The first is “Tighten traffic rules for electric scooter drivers (fines, mandatory driver’s license, etc.).” The second is “Ban the rental of electric scooters (as in a number of European countries).” The latter refers primarily to the experience of Paris, where, after a city referendum, the rental of electric scooters was banned from September 1 of this year.
The first option – 41% of more than two hundred thousand respondents voted for it in the survey (versus 50% for banning rentals) – resembles the scheme implemented ten years ago. On November 5, 2013, category “M” driver’s licenses were introduced for driving mopeds and scooters with 50 cc engines. cm or less.
Before this, from the point of view of traffic regulations, such equipment was equated with bicycles – and in the Soviet years, when only a few motorized bicycles and mopeds were available among such vehicles, there were no problems with them. But affordable scooters (motor scooters) of this size that appeared in the early 2000s required radical solutions.
“Anything can happen, but it’s unlikely that they will introduce it,” an employee of the traffic police headquarters of the Moscow region shares his doubts with MK. — I remember well the story with scooters, I myself participated in raids. A scooter, unlike an electric scooter, cannot jump along curbs, and you cannot carry it on your shoulder. And the main thing is slow acceleration: you can stop a scooter in the yard even on foot, it will not have time to leave. A scooter is a completely different matter; it instantly develops speed.
Raids on SIM – in particular in Moscow – have already been carried out in August and September of this year. As a rule, both traffic police officers and patrol police participate in such raids. As participants in such a raid told a MK correspondent in early September, the main attention is paid to checking documents and preventive conversations about the inadmissibility of violations related to SIM and traffic rules.
Among the violations that resulted in a fine during the raids were riding on one electric scooter more than alone, as well as in oncoming traffic (most often, SIM users still ignore road markings and, in the absence of strong traffic, can ride in “oncoming traffic.” In addition, police warned against riding scooters on pedestrian crossings and in some cases imposed fines.
The only clear consequence of the introduction of rights for electric scooters is that this innovation will break the established business model of kick-sharing operators. A representative of one of the operators of this service could not clearly answer whether the company is ready to provide accounts only to holders of a driver’s license. Yes, car sharing operators initially work according to this model, but their customer base (more than a million people in Moscow) is potentially inferior to the number of electric scooter rental subscribers (1.1 million trips per week, according to mos.ru).
The second option discussed by Volodin is the “Parisian” one, that is, a ban on kicksharing as a service. As we can see, half of the social network users surveyed by the Chairman of the State Duma voted for such a radical remedy. But in Moscow (and in cities that look up to it), unlike Paris, kicksharing is positioned as one of the types of public transport.
One of the reasons for the rapid growth of electric scooter rentals is precisely the fact that
Kicksharing was seen as one of the elements of a new, “multimodal” transport framework. In which all means of transportation (except personal vehicles) are equally welcomed as ways to get from point A to point B. Electric scooters (more convenient for “civilian” trips than bicycles) have occupied the niche of the “last mile” – from the metro to the entrance of the house. At almost every new residential complex, especially economy and comfort class, at night you can see a chaotic “parking” of electric scooters: residents arrived on them in the evening from the metro and in the morning they will go “to the city”, to school (yes, together with a child, albeit a violation), on business.
“Where is the most correct option? “Develop infrastructure for SIM: paths, lanes, new rules,” expert Alexander Shumsky comments on Vyacheslav Volodin’s survey. “It’s clear that deputies don’t ride electric scooters, but it turns out that those who do don’t even have an answer to click on.” And indeed, it is already obvious that there is only one alternative to electric scooters for residents of densely built-up new neighborhoods – walking to the metro.
Meanwhile, social activists turned to the government on another transport-related issue. The National Automobile Union asks to introduce separate technical regulations, tax and other benefits for cars over 30 years old. But there is a chance that these relaxations will not be introduced for everyone, but only for officially recognized collector’s items. And everyday driving in retro cars can be significantly limited. So the number of pedestrians may also increase due to those who drive an old car and cannot afford a modern one. Well, walking on your own feet is a useful thing.
Newspaper headline:
Your rights, comrade scooter!
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