France to ban electric scooters from pavements in September

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2019/0504/1047489-france-scooters/

by CaptainZapp • 7 years ago

103 121 7 years ago

rienbdj• 7 years ago

The road is dangerous, the pavement is banned. Scooters and bikes need dedicated road space.

noobermin• 7 years ago

The article says they are being placed in bike lanes and streets. Paris streets aren't super safe but they are considerably easier to ride on than they are in American sroads.

consp• 7 years ago

In some parts of Europe that is the case. In most of the world it isn't unfortunately.

In the Netherlands those scooters are allowed on the pavement if their max speed is 5kph but this is a grey area if the law. Otherwise they need a "specialized electronic moped" type approval and can either be classified as a bike (max 18kph), a low speed moped (same place on the road as a bike, max 25kph outside, 20 inside cities, requires driving licence and insurance) or moped (helmet, required to go in the car lanes in cities, max 45 kph, requires driving licence and insurance).

A rental company came by my office a while back to promote people into buying one. They completely ignored the obvious safety concerns people had as it is far les easy to stay up with smaller wheels but still compared it to biking. We will see where this is going but I would not go fast on one without proper body protection especially if they go > 20 kph.

Freak_NL• 7 years ago

In the Netherlands those scooters are allowed on the pavement if their max speed is 5kph but this is a grey area if the law.

Wrong. The law is quite clear on this. They are not allowed on public roads, unless they are RDW-approved. Those that are approved (like the Segway) are considered mopeds, require a moped-licence and the minimum age of 16, and are consequently forbidden from using the pavement.

Cf.: https://www.vraaghetdepolitie.nl/verkeer/overig-verkeer/mag-...

anonymou22• 7 years ago

No way, that's a lie been repeated for the last 60 years to get rid of bicycles and leave the roads only for motorists. Cyclists have the same right to use the public roads as motorists, no more but certainly no less. Some of us, cyclists, are actively fighting against the cyclist apartheid.

thecatspaw• 7 years ago

I dont think the intention is to get rid of bycicles on the streets, rather to seperate them into their own lanes, to increase safety. By fighting against the 'cyclist apartheid' you are fighting against your own safety.

isostatic2• 7 years ago

I read it as "we should get rid of cars and use the space they currently occupy"

hkmurakami2• 7 years ago

Was in Paris earlier in the year. It appeared that most people were already riding in the street rather than the sidewalk.

Traffic in Paris is rather chaotic though (it's actually nice to see quite a few cyclists despite this chaos). I'd be concerned about rider safety.

nemanjaboric• 7 years ago

Yeah, the article is somewhat confusing, or wrong? I didn't see much people driving on pavement as well (I can't recall any), but had to move four of these to the side so that the lady with a roller can go through the pavement. The parking is literally - just leave them anywhere. And then they fall on the side, making them unwanted since nobody wants to drive scooter that's on the ground, so they stay there for days.

She said parking in such a way as to obstruct traffic or pedestrians will mean a 35-euro fine -- but the Paris city council has pledged to build parking spots for 2,500 scooters.

lucsky• 7 years ago

And then they fall on the side

No they don't, some assholes push them and make them fall on purpose, I have seen it done many times here in Paris. Those idiot vigilantes seem to hope that by wreaking havoc they will increase the negative perception of the population against the scooters and their riders.

nyandaber• 7 years ago

I guess you were lucky or in a very specific area. Most of the "shared" electric scooters in Paris are used on the sidewalk, sometimes going very fast. I'm kinda split on the issue, on one hand they're a danger to pedestrian and there's a non negligerable amount of accident involving scooters on the sidewalk. On the other hand, it's hard to blame them from not using the cycle pathes because motorcycles will happily use them to avoid traffic. Still, bikes manage to use the streets just fine, so there's no reason electric scooters can't.

Overall there's a huge need for traffic rules enforcement in Paris, for everyone. Pedestrians complain about cyclists/scooters, cyclists complain about motorcycles, motorcycles complain about cars, cars complain about pedestrian and bikes, all in good reason.

hkmurakami2• 7 years ago

Yeah I was mostly in district 7 and 1 which is not exactly representative of the whole of Paris.

I've lived in Japan before and cyclists aren't allowed to ride on the sidewalk sure to danger to pedestrians but this happens way too often anyways due to lack of enforcement. Unexpectedly some of the worst offenders are middle aged housewife types. Agreed that in pedestrian heavy cities like Tokyo or Paris you really need to look out for their safety.

lunchladydoris• 7 years ago

For a second I thought this was actually about scooters being abandoned on the sidewalks. I was in Paris in February and there were scooters littered all over the place.

deanclatworthy3• 7 years ago

They just rolled out scooters in Helsinki. People are riding on the sidewalk everywhere. I contacted the city to suggest learning from the other examples of cities which have had many teething problems with scooters, but they were not in any position to enforce any form of rules on the operators. Crazy.

ahje3• 7 years ago

The Finnish habit of riding bikes and scooters on the pavement is outright dangerous. Alas, I couldn't find a single candidate willing to raise the issue in the recent elections. :/

deanclatworthy3• 7 years ago

I believe it's technically against the law to cycle on the pavement here. It's also legal to ride a small scooter (e.g. a Vespa) on the cycle lane, yet nobody can tell me if it's actually illegal to ride an electric scooter on the sidewalk.

For me it would be as simple as this:

- Make it illegal to ride a scooter on the sidewalks with an immediate on the spot fine of 100e.

- Make it illegal for scooter companies to operate the park anywhere model. They must work with the city to install stations. The city could even offer a standard model where operators can use the city-run recharging stations.

- Get rid of the majority of city center parking and aggressively install more central bike lanes, allowing future mobility solutions (e-scooters, e-skateboards etc.) more transit ways.

donjoe4• 7 years ago

Traffic in cities should be remodeled.

Currently, approx. 7/8 of public space is used by cars. Most of the time they're stuck in traffic or 'dead capital' while in parking mode. Furthermore, where I live, the price to park a car is ~10 times cheaper than to rent (per sqm) and highly subsidized by tax payers.

I wonder why we do protect our workers but pedestrians and cyclists/scooters just don't matter. Have you ever seen a working environment where an object with 2-40tons is allowed to freely move next to a person at a speed of 50km/h and more? I'm glad we do have rules in working enviromnents. It would be great to see the same on roads as well.

I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists. We wouldn't have to build new infrastructure but could simply use the existing one. I could imagine we could even remove most of our traffic lights replaced by roundabouts.

In the long run I hope to see less cars overall and people switching to smaller means of transportation. Moving 2 tons to buy a 500g loaf of bread is just insane.

smt882• 7 years ago

I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists.

1. People don't obey speed limits

2. In the US at least, there are people who aren't very wealthy living outside of cities.

They may commute 20+ miles into the office. Their retirement may depend on their house retaining its value.

Drastically reducing throughput of streets is nice for people who are only traveling a mile or two, but it hurts long-distance commuters.

nickserv• 7 years ago

There's the same situation in Europe too.

One option is to build large car parks on the outskirts of cities close to the highways and with good access to public transport.

This way people living outside the city center can still use their cars to get to the city, but can bike/escooter/walk or take the subway/bus/tram to get to work.

Even in Marseille, a city with terrible public transport, there are some of these, with new ones in construction or planning stages.

Parking is free or heavily discounted if you have a transit pass.

I believe this could work well in major US cities with a dense downtown area.

ben_w• 7 years ago

People don't perfectly obey speed limits, but lowering speed limits does lower average traffic speeds. When limits were reduced from 30 mph to 20 mph in much of Cambridge (the original one), local news reported that average traffic speed in those areas reduced from 35 mph to 25 mph.

Also in Cambridge, there’s a thing called “park and ride”. I have no idea how common park and ride in the USA, but Wikipedia says it exists. Summary of the idea [1]: out-of-town car park with a good public transport link to where commuters need to go.

Unfortunately, people whose retirement depends on their house retaining its value are probably screwed regardless — what happens when self driving, self-charging, solar covered RVs/mobile TinyHomes/seasteads can be mass produced (including interiors) by the sort of robots currently used for cars? Material costs for those should only come to about $35k, most of which is the battery, which doesn’t need to be as large as the one in a commuter vehicle like a Tesla.

[1] implementations vary in quality.

denvrede• 7 years ago

1. And this should be what? An argument to against speed limits in general? 2. You read that this was a case for speed limit IN cities? No one said you should drive 20km/h on highways or country roads.

Just park your car at a P&R just outside the city and use a scooter / public transportation for the last mile.

jacobolus2• 7 years ago

The goal is to reduce instantaneous speed, not throughput (or even necessarily total travel time).

Because people don’t obey speed limits, the roads must be physically redesigned. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming

Urban streets should be limited to 15–20 miles/hour. Any faster and cars are grossly unsafe for everyone else on the road.

On my street the average speed is something like 40 mph (despite a speed limit of 25 mph), and some cars drive 55 mph. At that speed cars can’t react in time to avoid obstacles in the road, and if a pedestrian (e.g. young kid) or cyclist gets hit by a car, they are almost certain to die. And yet this is perceived by Americans as perfectly normal and acceptable.

Reason0772• 7 years ago

1. Is quite true, but you can improve compliance by designing streets in ways that encourages low speeds.

2. Can be solved with park & ride. Just make sure that the park & ride is significantly cheaper than driving/parking in the city.

jnty• 7 years ago

If we believe we can have driverless cars in 10 years, I don't understand why we can't have smart speed limiters as a first step now.

on_and_off2• 7 years ago

Yes !

Some cities have already started to ban cars from their centers.

I have been living in the US for one year. The omnipresence of cars is really bothering me.

Moving from point A to B without using a car is way more of a chore compared to Paris.

I don't believe I will spend all my life here, and I hope that my next destination will be car free.

kerng• 7 years ago

I would really like to move to San Diego - but then I saw the enormous amount of cars parked everywhere and I was surprised how ugly it made everything look.

There are these gorgeous beaches and then all these ugly cars parked in endless lines right next to it.

dfxm12• 7 years ago

Paris has an especially exceptional transit system. When you leave your current city, consider another city that once hosted the Olympics recently. They tend to be easy to get around without a car.

kayoone• 7 years ago

I am all for safer roads, less city car traffic, but in the end it is the perspective of people living in the city who can commute by train or bike. Lots of people live outside of cities though and commute. For many a car is the only way to get to work in a reasonable amount of time. I'm actually more concerned about the pollution and i'd rather bet on electric and self driving cars to solve both of these issues. Getting rid of many parked cars would free up so much space. I hope this happens while I am still working though.

piokoch• 7 years ago

Why self-driving cars would help reduce pollution (or traffic)? People who can't drive will start using those cars, so probably there will be more, not less cars on the roads.

CaptainZapp• 7 years ago

It's pretty much the American concept of Suburbia that makes it hard to use public transport if you don't live in a city (or even if you live in a lot of cities, it seems).

Most European and Asian (specifically Japanese) cities have very good connectivity from the outskirts into the city centers.

Granted, it can be complicated and time consuming to connect from outskirt to outskirt. This is no reason, however, to throw away well working public systems of connectivity for some pipe dream, which still uses much too much resources for the density of a city.

kaybe• 7 years ago

It would really be good if the remaining cars were substancially smaller though. Driving an SUV into the city is not ok and does not provide significant increases in utility for the one doing it compared to a small car.

adrianN2• 7 years ago

So build parking spaces at the outskirts and have people switch to public transport or bikes to enter the city proper. Or just extend the rail lines to the outskirts and have people commute by rail all the way.

ahoy• 7 years ago

The suburbs are a problem. We badly need to re-urbanize and live more closely together so that public transit works better.

Xelbair• 7 years ago

Traffic in cities should be remodeled.

Absolutely.

I wonder why we do protect our workers but pedestrians and cyclists/scooters just don't matter. Have you ever seen a working environment where an object with 2-40tons is allowed to freely move next to a person at a speed of 50km/h and more? I'm glad we do have rules in working enviromnents. It would be great to see the same on roads as well.

There are plenty of jobs where such things happen - even something as 'simple' as working with trains, factory jobs etc.

Let's not get paranoid - death rates from traffic accidents in countries with civilized driving culture(mostly Europe, but not everywhere in there) is about 0.05-0.1%. It also includes car->car collisions and car->object collisions - so pedestrian deaths are even lower.

Separation of lanes(pedestrian vs motorized vs bicycles/electric scooters) should be even higher I agree. I really like overpasses for pedestrian crossings - but they introduce plenty of extra costs and problems(mostly for disabled and/or old people).

I'm all for 'shared roads' with a speed limit reduced to 20km/h which makes it unnecessary for cars to overtake scooters/cyclists. We wouldn't have to build new infrastructure but could simply use the existing one. I could imagine we could even remove most of our traffic lights replaced by roundabouts.

Outside of specific residential zones(where speed limit is already usually between 20-30 km/h(depending on country) and pedestrians already have a right of way) this is insane.

Economically, convenience wise and paradigm wise.

Such system exists because there is a need for fast transportation - it is tied into very complex economical system. If you want to get rid of it - what do you replace it with? If you replace it in your area, will it give advantage to businesses in there? Do majority people living in such areas want to have that speed limit?

In the long run I hope to see less cars overall and people switching to smaller means of transportation. Moving 2 tons to buy a 500g loaf of bread is just insane.

People usually buy quite more things than just a single loaf of bread. I personally walk to stores, because i can't transport as much goods as car can, so i spend less money.

There are better ways to waste less resources than limiting speed to 20km/h. Electric cars, good public transportation system(it is a nightmare to use in rush hours over here)

donjoe4• 7 years ago

The avg. speed in London for example is already down to 19km/h due to traffic jams. I don't see a problem with setting it to 20. You'll even reduce the chance of traffic jams by lowering speed limits. There's quite a pleasant traffic simulator to play with: http://traffic-simulation.de/

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37200/umfrage...

mocha_nate• 7 years ago

Moving 2 tons to buy a 500g loaf of bread is just insane.

Such a great way to put it

repsilat• 7 years ago

As a programmer, it doesn't seem like a strange thing to do at all. That's a fair description of using Python or Ruby -- 100x "less efficient" than other approaches, but very convenient.

People value convenience over abstract congruity.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

this isn't a traffic problem, it is a zoning issue. Most cities suffer the same problem, affordable housing at any level is almost impossible to build for many reasons. From the land use regulations prohibiting tall buildings, from "concerned groups" looking for their slice of the pie or exercise of their political connections to city leadership, to environmental concerns which most are copies of the previous issue, to labor use issues restricting who can even do the work.

If more people could afford to live in town it would alleviate a lot of in town traffic. So until we can take city planning, at least the veto and coercion part, away from local politicians, not much is going to be done. I am not saying cities should have no say, what I am saying is that independent boards should be established to stop political graft which is the biggest inhibitor.

black_puppydog2• 7 years ago

I live in a city center where cars are largely banned, and every time I leave that little "enclave" I am amazed how people put up with that noise, that smell, that constant stress factor...

alunchbox• 7 years ago

Cars being largely banned? Forgive my ignorance but where can I find a place like this?

turtlecloud• 7 years ago

Trouble is that rich people don’t want to share cars with homeless people. If they did, they would actually have to spend money on fixing homeless issue.

adrianN2• 7 years ago

Good thing that most people are not rich.

system_panic• 7 years ago

The plural of pavement is pavement.

majewsky2• 7 years ago

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pavement

davedx2• 7 years ago

This seems fair. I was in Paris a month ago and we used Birds to get around. Many people rode them on the roads but plenty were whizzing up pavements too, pretty dangerous considering the top speed, speed delta with pedestrians and nobody wearing helmets.

The only issue with riding scooters on the road is a lot of the roads in the centre-north area of Paris are cobbled, but you can just slow down.

I don’t find anything remotely controversial about banning a powered vehicle capable of ~30 km/h from pavements.

<3 Paris!

INTPenis• 7 years ago

I don’t find anything remotely controversial about banning a powered vehicle capable of ~30 km/h from pavements.

30km/h?!

Here in Sweden they forced the company to bring the top speed down to 20km/h for rental scooters.

Of course many have bought their own since the fad started dying down. And those are sometimes capable of illegal speeds up to 40km/h. Impossible for police to tell, and also a waste of time seeing as there are more pressing issues.

mercer• 7 years ago

Impossible for police to tell.

How's that? Here in Holland there's quite an industry making scooters faster, but the police regularly set up funnels where they test the maximum speed of the scooters they catch. From what I hear some people even install hidden buttons to limit the top speed whenever they're checked (which I suppose is not too difficult to figure out now the police knows).

davedx2• 7 years ago

Yup, the ones we rode had a digital speedo, and I rode mine almost 30 a few times when the roads permitted it (on the southern side of Paris where they're smooth and relatively open). It was kind of scary though given the small wheels and lack of helmet so we generally kept our speed lower than that.

de_watcher• 7 years ago

Yea, had to go to Paris recently. These scooters on pavements drastically change the feel of the city: it's suddenly way too chaotic.

tlrobinson2• 7 years ago

To clarify for the Americans, "pavements" means sidewalks in this case, correct?

Carpetsmoker• 7 years ago

Yes, it's the same.

Stratoscope2• 7 years ago

That's exactly what I was confused about too. You must be right.

Imagine saying "you can't ride on the pavement, you have to ride on the street!"

You and I would be scratching our heads, thinking the street is paved.

Aha! I just noticed a clue: "pavements". That is a word that almost doesn't exist in English. It's like "sands" or "waters". Those are actual words, but it's pretty rare to see them.

kwhitefoot2• 7 years ago

That is a word that almost doesn't exist in English American English.

It's perfectly ordinary in British English. In British English although the road is usually paved the use of pavement in that sense is a jargon word applying to a particular trade (road building or mending) whereas pavement in general means what American English calls a sidewalk.

Also paving in British English generally brings to mind paving slabs not tarmac even though most pavements are of course tarmac. And tarmac is also mostly British English for asphalt.

kwhitefoot2• 7 years ago

Yes, British English pavement means American sidewalk. I suspect that when the word was first used only that part of the street was paved.

See https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pavement

majewsky2• 7 years ago

In German, sidewalks are called "Bürgersteig", which means "citizens' step". Probably because the middle part of the street was used by peasants and merchants bringing goods into the city on carriages, while the citizens were walking on the sidewalks.

hocuspocus• 7 years ago

It's already illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalks. And anywhere else really, given that these vehicles don't fall into any category.

As usual, France is really good at introducing laws that don't bring anything new instead of simply enforcing the current ones. I've seen seven different companies providing free floating scooters in Paris, and plenty of them are used by complete idiots. There have been several deaths already. The mayor could easily ban all these startups if she really cared about the law and public safety. Riders who own their own scooter seem to be a bit more responsible, and those are the ones that should be targeted by new laws.

smt882• 7 years ago

It's illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalks in my city in the US, but everyone still rides them on the sidewalks.

There's no practical way to enforce the sidewalk law. We know that's true because laws regarding cars are often ignored as well.

adev_• 7 years ago

As usual, France is really good at introducing laws that don't bring anything new instead of simply enforcing the current ones.

The usual French way is to have law that makes almost everything illegal but with laws that are never enforced in practice.

And when you want to make something really illegal, you pass 10 laws on the same topic to be really sure one of them is enforced in practice.

jessriedel3• 7 years ago

I've seen seven different companies providing free floating scooters in Paris... There have been several deaths already.

Cite? I couldn't find any news stories about electric scooter (not mopeds) deaths in France, and this page suggests they are exceedingly rare.

https://m.ranker.com/list/worst-electric-scooter-accidents-a...

VSerge• 7 years ago

you will find below a 2018 article (in French), it lists a 23% rise in injuries, though fatalies appear stable year on year. Experts are cited as expecting a sharp rise of both with the increasing numbers of "trottinettes électriques". Seeing the people ride everyday (headphones on, no helmet), it seems like it's pretty much a statistical certainty.

http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-accidents-de-trottinett...

ernesth• 7 years ago

In fact, the french law is that vehicles are tolerated on sidewalks as long as they are not faster than reasonable (which is understood to mean up to 6km/h). Electric wheelchairs for example have the right to use sidewalks.

However, people do not know the law, so an explicit ban by a mayor is better than status quo.

rjsw• 7 years ago

Plenty of them about in Toulouse, can't tell whether they are owned by their user or not, all the ones I have seen have been the same colour.

tlrobinson2• 7 years ago

It seems entirely reasonable to ban powered vehicles from sidewalks, and I say that as a daily user of a Boosted Board.

Now in exchange, go forth and create more dedicated (and preferably protected) lanes for bikes (electric or otherwise), electric scooters, skateboards, and other light personal vehicles.

In 2001 Dean Kamen said Segway would "cause cities to be redesigned". I think he was only off by a couple decades and a slight variation on the vehicles' form factor.

TulliusCicero2• 7 years ago

The problem here is that in the year 2019,

a) most cities have few, if any protected bike lanes (or equivalent)

b) scooter riders experience more danger from cars in the road than pedestrians do from scooters on the sidewalk (just think if you'd rather be hit by a scooter while walking or by a car while scooter-ing)

Thus, forcing scooters off the sidewalk is a net negative for safety, is it not?

lm284692• 7 years ago

Banning scooters is a net positive for safety for everyone until the infrastructure can handle them safely.

Stubb• 7 years ago

Banning cars from downtown areas would be a net safety improvement for everyone.

scarejunba• 7 years ago

In San Francisco, there's this common view that you can't ride on the sidewalk because _it's dangerous_! So I took this long trip to Japan, and everyone rides their bikes on the sidewalk there and shifts to the road when they want to and Japan is safer.

Made me wonder.

And it was everywhere. In Tokyo, where it's crowded. In Odawara, where it's less so.

EDIT: You know what I think? This is the same thing as the panic around kids playing outside. The notion of 'danger' is overplayed in the West.

o_nate• 7 years ago

I saw the same thing in Tokyo. It may have something to do with the common courtesy of the bikers to yield to pedestrians and not buzz past them. Here in NYC, I'm much more terrified of bikers who stick to the road (given that I occasionally have to cross the street) than I was of bikers on sidewalks in Tokyo.

jasonlingx• 7 years ago

Singapore seems to have gone the opposite direction and banned electric scooters from the roads. They also require government registration of every device.

https://www.gov.sg/news/content/are-e-scooters-allowed-on-ro...

mapcars• 7 years ago

A question from a rider, I ride on the pedestrian side when the road is full of holes and broken pieces of asphalt which is only possible to ride on a car wheel. Are they going to fix the roads to be ridable as well or just make one more stupid law?

TACIXAT• 7 years ago

Where I live the streets are so much better than the bike paths. I tend to residential since they're quieter but damn, I would love to have some nicely maintained dedicated lanes.

whydoineedthis• 7 years ago

Clickbait. They aren't banning scooters from anywhere - you just can't physically ride them on the sidewalk anymore.....if anyone was dumb enough to anyway.

LifeLiverTransp• 7 years ago

Thats the old europe we all know and hate. Dont even search for a solution to a problem, just ban it, until the fad goes away. There are laser projectors, to mark your trajectory ahead of time.. a thousand ways- and instead - the nays.

Like a grumpy old guy, on a bench, envying the still living for his life wasted, hating on the new joys and the joy of the new.

France to ban electric scooters from pavements in September

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