Vespa-Loving Italian Minister’s Safety Law Targets ‘Wild’ E-Scooters

Italy will require helmets, license plates and insurance for e-scooter riders after a surge in injuries, banning the controversial micro mobility machines from cycle lanes and pedestrian sidewalks.

Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said in a social media post: “No more wild scooters.” However, Salvini has previously supported Vespas, saying they were part of the “national cultural heritage” and should be protected from the “eco-craziness” of the EU’s sustainability regulations.

E-scooters are increasingly controversial following bans in Paris and Madrid, though Italy isn’t outright outlawing them. First mooted over the summer, the Italian parliament last week approved a transport bill that regulates e-scooters, as well as introduces tougher penalties for drunk driving and abandoning animals alongside roads. Salvini said the changes were designed to “reduce the carnage on Italian roads.”

The move follows a rise in e-scooter deaths in Italy. According to Reuters, the national statistics agency ISTAT reported 16 deaths and 2,929 injuries in 2022, climbing to 3,365 injuries and 21 deaths last year.

The law requires helmets, license plates, indicators and insurance for e-scooters and their riders, as well as limiting speed and banning them from cycle lanes, sidewalks and “non urban” roads.

“This is an example of countries trying to work out the best way to retain the benefits of e-scooters as a cheaper and more accessible alternative to cars whilst trying to minimise some of the impacts on other road and pavement users,” says Dr Graeme Sherriff of the University of Salford. “I’m sure we will see some more back and forth on this before we find the ‘sweet spot’.”

E-scooters vs Vespas

Over the summer, Salvini submitted a bill to protect Vespas from future legal restrictions, be that from the EU or Italy’s national or municipal governments. The EU is banning sales of internal combustion engines by 2035, but it’s as yet unclear how that will impact motorcycles and Vespa-style scooters.

Salvini said Vespas must be allowed to “ride freely”.

Classic Vespas using the traditional two-stroke engine were infamous for their noise and pollution; Vespa modernised to a four-stroke design in 1996, and introduced an electric model in 2018.

As with sustainable transport more widely, e-scooters appear to be caught up in politics: they were backed as a sustainable option by Rome’s former mayor Virginia Raggi, a member of the anti-establishment, progressive Five Star Movement. Salvini, meanwhile, is a member of the far-right Lega party, who faces a court case over blocking migrants from leaving a boat in 2019.

Giorgio Cappiello, the head of institutional relations for e-scooter firm Bird in Italy, told Reuters that the new regulations were “completely ideological”.

Making e-scooters safer

Politics aside, do the new rules make sense? The Italian law largely fits with other efforts to regulate e-scooters. A recently released report from the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) called for speed limits, banning dual riders, and preventing those under the age of 16 from renting from shared schemes — and, like Italy, for mandatory helmets.

Helments are a sensible move, says Dr Petya Ventsislavova of Nottingham Trent University, supported by “overwhelming evidence” and likely to become standard across Europe, adding that rental e-scooters have a higher rate of accidents and injuries than bicycles.

“Given the numerous collisions reported since the introduction of e-scooters, helmets provide essential safety benefits and should be welcomed rather than rejected,” she tells me. “Current evidence strongly indicates that helmets are a necessary safety measure.”

The concern over mandatory helmet requirements on e-scooters echoes that of the debate around cycling, with some arguing that forcing riders to wear a helmet discourages the activity.

Indeed, Michele Francione, head of operations at Bit Mobility, told Italy’s La Nazione that 80% of the company’s e-scooter rentals are occasional riders who make the decision to rent at the last minute. She reportedly said: “It’s unthinkable that someone will bring a helmet from home.”

As to including helmets with rentals, Enrico Stefàno, a senior public policy manager for Lime, said attaching them to e-scooters would cost €1 million and cause rentals to drop by a quarter.

But Ventsislavova says experiences elsewhere suggest rental e-scooter use doesn’t appear to be limited by mandatory helmet rules — helped by companies that have worked out ways to include such safety equipment in the rental service. “Evidence from Denmark, where helmet use for e-scooters is mandatory, shows a positive trend, their adoption has increased,” she says.

“Companies should view this not as a punitive measure but as an opportunity to provide riders with maximum protection and a safer journey,” she says. “An easily accessible, built-in helmet should not deter anyone from choosing to ride an e-scooter, instead, it enhances the overall safety experience.”

More widely, the operators’ complaints aren’t unreasonable, suggests Dr Sherriff. “My sense is that [this law] goes too far in the direction of restrictions and that there is more that can be done initially in partnership with the operators – such as tests to avoid riding after drinking, speed limiting in geofenced areas, and providing optional helmets,” he says.

E-scooter insurance

Beyond helmets and safety measures, there’s insurance.

“The issue of insuring e-scooters is more complex, as it requires governments to classify e-scooters within an appropriate vehicle category,” says Ventsislavova. “In some European countries, insurance is mandatory for public e-scooters which provides riders with protection.”

Paris banned e-scooter rentals but still allows private e-scooters, requiring riders to be insured. According to that ETSC report, ten European countries — including Germany, Norway and the Netherlands — require insurance of some sort, with the report saying that it helps pay for long-term care in case of injury but also improves personal responsibility, “leading them to drive or ride more carefully”.

Health benefits of e-scooters

Safety aside, e-scooters have health benefits. Not only do they link up areas underserved by alternative means of public transport but they also have no emissions at point of use — a fact worth noting given the climate-change worsened fires that have impacted Italy as well as caused a rise in heat-related deaths.

Over the last decade, Italy’s air pollution deaths have fallen, but it still has the highest rate of deaths in the EU attributable to PM2.5 particle pollution, of which one cause is combustion engines. And of course, though comparisons of different forms of transport is fraught, cars and other forms of motorised personal transport — Vespas included — cause more injuries and deaths on Italian (and other) roads, with ISTAT reporting 3,039 deaths from road accidents in 2023.

Beyond road safety, one criticism of e-scooters is the way they — and other shared micro mobility, such as e-bikes — are often left scattered on sidewalks. The Italian law will also include fines for disregarding parking rules.