Europe 1 with AFP 5:13 p.m., November 24, 2022
The operators of self-service scooters - Lime, Dott and Tier - who are trying to save their place in Paris, announced on Thursday that they were going to equip their machines with a license plate to facilitate the verbalization of users who burn the lights or drive two.
Minors will also be prohibited from borrowing them.
A new tightening of screws for the practice of the electric scooter in Paris.
To avoid new tragedies, like the one that occurred last week on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris, the operators - Dott, Lime and Tier - announced on Thursday that they would ban their use by minors from Monday 28 November.
During a press conference, these operators announced that they will now ask their customers to scan their identity card: the ban on scooters for minors has so far been based on a simple declaration.
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The 15,000 Parisian scooters will also be equipped with a license plate on the rear mudguard, as in Grenoble or Germany, and the operators propose to finance an experiment in video-verbalization.
The objective is to facilitate the verbalization of users who burn out the lights or drive in pairs.
Limitation to 10 km/h in Paris
At the end of September, the capital's town hall had threatened Lime, Dott and Tier not to renew their contract in February 2023. Between accidents and users traveling in pairs or on sidewalks strewn with badly parked scooters, Paris is wondering about the “Cost/benefit ratio” of scooters, as well as their “environmental cost”, had indicated David Belliard, the assistant for mobility and roads.
Last year, the City of Paris limited the speed of self-service scooters to 10 km/h in 700 areas of the city in an attempt to reduce the number of accidents on the roads.
The mortality of electric scooter users was already rising sharply in 2021, with 22 deaths recorded compared to ten in 2019 and seven in 2020.
“It takes away a part of our freedom”
Lately, elected officials from the left and from the center of Paris wanted to "severely" regulate the use of these means of transport, which has developed strongly in recent times.
The president of the MoDem group Maud Gatel even asked for "the prohibition of use for minors as is done in other cities, in particular in Lyon".
In the Rhône prefecture, the city took this decision last September in response to a tragedy that occurred on August 22, in which two minors had lost their lives.
A decision that did not really please users.
"At the end of the day, when going to football, I will take a scooter. When I tried, it told me that I had to put an identity card", told Enzo at the microphone of Europe 1. "It's a bit frustrating. It also takes away a part of our freedom since we can no longer move around when there is no bus or direct transport," he added.