Russia Wants to Track All Electric Scooters. What People Think About It and What Concerns Are They Expressing

The State Duma is currently working on it billwhich will require electric scooter owners to install registration numbers and radio beacons for real-time tracking.

According to officials, this will help to record violations by scooter riders automatically and, if necessary, find the owner of the electric scooter, for example, if he left the scene of an accident.

The rules will be the same for everyone: both kicksharing companies and private owners of electric scooters. It is not yet known how exactly this system will work, how the data will be collected, but our readers already have many questions.

Briefly

How safe is it to track a scooter?

IN telegram channel iPhones.ru There has been a big debate on this topic. Many people do not want their movements to be tracked by the state system.

This practice is currently used only on airplanes and helicopters. Owners of regular cars and motorcycles are not required to install radio tags.

Naturally, everyone is concerned about the privacy issue, which remains open for now. Of course, it is unlikely that anyone will monitor your movements in real time, but, in theory, it will be recorded and provided if necessary. For example, in the event of an accident.

In 2023 happened 3,100 accidents involving SIM, which is 3.3 times more than in 2022. As a result of the accident, 3,177 people were injured and 43 died. Very often, scooter riders leave the scene of the accident and do not face any punishment.

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Will the law be respected?

Artem Sheikin, one of the authors of the bill

Another part of readers rightly asks the question about how this law will be observed.

In Russia counted at least 330 thousand scooters, not counting private owners. And if kicksharing services can be forced to comply with the requirements of the law (there are no problems with this), then what to do with ordinary people remains a mystery.

Ministry of Transport will create SIM register “with the issuance of a registration number, registration sign and registration mark”, but it is unclear by what criteria and which electric scooters will be included there.

Registration of a SIM card will be accompanied by the assignment of a registration number to the SIM card, along with which a radio frequency identification tag will be issued.

Artem Sheikin, member of the Federation Council Committee on State Building and Constitutional Legislation

It is likely that some details will be made public when the bill is finalized for the second reading. But even without this, one can be sure that not all people will register electric scooters. And what punishment will be provided for this is also not yet clear.

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How necessary are such strict measures?

An example of how city cameras are being recorded scooter riders violations

Real-time geo-location tracking is a very controversial solution. Of course, in the case of electric scooters, there are many people who support it, because this type of transport is currently almost completely unregulated.

But in other way, Most electric scooter rides are uneventful. In 2023 there were done 211 million trips, and these are rough estimates without taking into account trips by people on personal electric scooters.

In the study of the site Thrushing It is noted that “most often, accidents occurred at the intersection of traffic flows due to poorly developed infrastructure for bicycles and SIMs.”

According to Whoosh, more than 99.9% of all scooter rides on the service in 2023 were without incident.

At the same time, according to research of the SuperJob service, 41% of Muscovites believe that scooters should be banned throughout the capital26% of respondents spoke out against this decision.

The largest number of people against riding electric scooters in the city center is in Rostov-on-Don (32%), Perm (28%), Samara and Ufa (24% each). A complete ban on electric scooters is most often advocated in Novosibirsk (39%), Rostov-on-Don (38%) and Nizhny Novgorod (35%).

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How can the law be improved?

At the moment, there are no details about how the registration of electric scooters should technically work. How this procedure will take place, how much it will cost (if it is paid), what the radio tag is – all this is currently unknown.

If legislators do decide to pass this law, it should be as transparent as possible, especially in terms of location tracking.

This law mostly affects private owners of electric scooters.. Kicksharing services can already track the user’s movements during the trip. They already set the numbers.

Therefore, it is necessary to understand to what extent it is necessary to extend these measures to ordinary people, many of whom are clearly unhappy with them and drive carefully.

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A similar bill was not adopted

Moscow already has scooters with state registration plates

At the end of 2023, something similar bill was submitted for consideration to the State Duma by a group of deputies, including Sergei Mironov.

This bill requires SIM card owners to register them on the State Services website and set up numbers.

After registration, the SIM is assigned a state registration number, the owner of the SIM is obliged to place a state registration plate on the SIM that complies with current standards. If the design of the SIM does not allow this, then the use of such a SIM on public roads or pedestrian areas is not allowed.

It is stated in the explanatory note to the bill

Moreover, the obligation to register an electric scooter also extended to everyone.

At the end of January, all documents for the first reading were ready, but since February, consideration of the bill has been constantly postponed. Most likely, it will not be adopted.

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We are waiting for further news

There is not enough information to draw any precise conclusions. The bill is currently being revised and it is not yet known when it will be ready.

If the deputies want it to be adopted at the spring session of the State Duma, then they need to hurry, because it ends on August 5.

And if they do not manage to finalize and adopt the law by this date, it will be postponed until the autumn session, which will last from September 3 to December 29.