Europe Pushes To Slow Electric Scooters And Tighten Rules

Europe’s peak road-safety body has pushed to lower speeds and increase standards for stability and stopping power for electric scooters.

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) today pushed for a universal set of rules to limit top speeds to 20 km/h (12.4 mph), replacing a patchwork of nation-by-nation regulations.

It has also proposed limiting cars, trucks and vans in urban areas to 30 km/h (19mph) or less to lower the fatality risk for scooter riders, but also to benefit pedestrians and cyclists.

The ETSC also recommended Europe’s governments enforce a minimum age of 16, mandatory helmets and a ban on passengers and riding after the consumption of drugs or alcohol, report co-author Jenny Carson said.

“E-scooters are now an established and popular way of getting around in urban areas in the EU,” Carson explained.

“However, they also come with a degree of risk that needs addressing more effectively than today.

“With the right combination of a safer urban traffic environment, safer vehicles and safer rider behavior, we can ensure that the roads are safer for e-scooter riders as well as cyclists and pedestrians.”

The report comes in response to 119 confirmed deaths involving “motorized micro mobility” riders in 2022, up from 81 in 2021. European countries reported 5867 serious injuries from electric scooter crashes in 2022.

While that figure also sweeps up the much rarer electric unicycles as “motorized mico mobility”, it’s largely electric scooters, which the ETSC suggested gave them higher fatality rates than cycling.

The data was also incomplete, with single-vehicle incidents rarely involving police, leading to inconsistencies in the number of police reports added to the incident data pile. Of the 32 countries within its scope, the ETSB only received meaningful data from 22 of them.

Germany and Spain have the most comprehensive sets of electric scooter regulations, and 11 European nations have a 20 km/h speed limit for them.

And in the U.S.?

The issue is just as vexed in the United States, where electric scooters are not governed by a national rule, but rather a hodgepodge of state regulation.

There is no national speed limit, power limit, age limit or weight limit on electric scooters in the U.S., despite many electric scooters boasting top speeds beyond 60mph and one (the Rion RE90 Hyper scooter) even capable of 100mph (though Rion limits it to 80mph).

While the Federal Government has left it to the states, some states (Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Vermont) have brushed it aside completely, leaving it to individual cities and local authorities to deliver sometimes-confusing statewide arrays of rule sets.

At the other extreme, Pennsylvania has banned electric scooters completely.

Minnesota has a minimum age of just 12 for electric scooters, while it’s 15 in Hawaii, and some states require parental approval for 16 year olds to ride them.

Many states (North Carolina, Hawaii, Louisiana) require electric scooters to be registered with the DMV, while others insist they can only be used if their riders have valid driver’s licenses or instruction permits, though some have no licensing requirements at all.

In Wyoming, they’re covered under the same rules as bicycles, while in Texas they are covered under the same motor-assisted access scooter rules written to give greater mobility to aged and disabled people.

Back to Europe

Like states the U.S., some European countries have chosen to ignore the rise of small electric scooters, though others have embraced them, particularly Germany.

According to Statista, shared electric scooter trips totalled 17.5 million in Berlin in 2023, 12 million in Hamburg and 8.8 million in Munich. Outside of Germany, they accounted for 12 million trips in Brussels, Belgium, and another eight million in Paris.

Parisians, though, hated them, and voted overwhelmingly to ban them last year (though only eight percent of eligible Parisians voted).

Other country-specific ideas include Finland and Norway, where city authorities demand limited speeds at night to reduce alcohol-related injuries.

But the ETSC wants a pan-European approach, introducing everything from a single set of technical requirements to a fixed noise-emission system, like it demands from electric cars, to alert pedestrians of their approach.

It also wants to limit the acceleration of the scooters and introduce minimum braking standards, including a mandatory rear braking system.