Another European capital bans the rental of e-scooters
Madrid has announced that it will ban the rental of electric scooters, making it the second European capital after Paris to do so due to the increasing number of accidents in which the victims are mostly pedestrians.
The city government of Madrid announced that the ban will come into effect on October 1, AFP reported.
“We are withdrawing all permits for companies to rent e-scooters on the streets of the city,” Madrid’s conservative mayor Luis Martinez Almeida wrote on the X network. He said that the priority is the safety of the citizens of Madrid.
The three companies that currently hold a license to rent electric scooters will now have to remove them from the streets. “Those companies did not respect the condition we set, which is to guarantee the safety of pedestrians, first of all the elderly,” wrote the mayor.
The three companies whose licenses will be revoked have so far rented around 6,000 electric scooters on the streets of Madrid.
We can Paris, Melbourne and Montreal
The Madrid authorities specified that the companies did not use technology that would make it impossible to drive or park e-scooters in prohibited zones, and that they did not have adequate accident insurance.
For some, e-scooters are a real revolution in transportation, as they allow the driver to move quickly and at minimal cost through the city bustle. For others, they disturb peaceful pedestrians and threaten to injure passers-by.
In just two decades, the global market for these small electric vehicles has reached tens of billions of dollars.
However, Madrid has now followed the path of Paris, Montreal and Melbourne, where their rental has been banned.
Paris banned renting a little more than a year ago, and unlike the capital of France, the Madrid authorities did not ask for the opinion of citizens for such a decision, agencies report.
In many other European cities, e-scooter driving restrictions have been introduced, such as limiting their number or banning them from riding on the sidewalk.
Source: Beta
Photo: unsplash
Source: bizlife.rs
