Electric scooters|Efforts are being made to tackle the use of electric scooters by tightening legislation in the near future.
Three person died in an electric scooter accident in the capital region during the summer. Two of them were under 15 years old.
“Undoubtedly, it took us a long time before fatal accidents occurred,” states the police inspector Heikki Kallio.
According to Kallio, apart from supervision, the police have almost no other means of preventing accidents.
“Supervision is the number one way, but of course it’s not without gaps in that way either. We don’t monitor everywhere all the time. It doesn’t solve the problem 100%,” he says.
Kalliot is especially concerned about the traffic behavior of people under the age of 18, because traffic rules have not yet become familiar through driving school. He estimates that traffic education received through school and at home may have shortcomings.
“Traffic safety, for example, has good instructions on avoidance obligations on its website, but that’s another matter,” whether young people go to look at them.
According to the Hus corporation’s statistics, 297 people over the age of 16 who were injured in electric scooter accidents were treated in Helsinki last year. In 2022, the corresponding number was 668, so at first glance the number of accidents has decreased in the capital.
Starting in 2022, the speed of electric scooters for rent in Helsinki has been reduced to a maximum of 20 kilometers per hour during the day, and at night the boards travel at a maximum of 15 kilometers per hour or, alternatively, they are not in use at all. The change in speed limits is considered to have contributed to the decrease in the number of injured people. Hus does not keep statistics on people under the age of 16 treated for electric scooter accidents.
Accurate there are no nationwide statistics on electric scooter accidents. In addition, in connection with electric kickboarding, wild adventures have been seen recently, when, for example, the Mestarintunnel in Espoo was filmed video about a speeding electric scooter spread on social media.
According to the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom, the researched data on electric scooter accidents in Finland is based on the data collection of individual hospitals. Based on hospital studies, it is known that hundreds of e-scooters are injured in Finland every year.
The most common type of accident is an electric scooter fall involving no other parties. This makes it difficult for the police to compile statistics, because the police are usually not informed if a single person falls on an electric scooter. The police are often needed only when two parties collide.
New a dangerous trend with e-scooters would seem to be tuning them to travel at considerable overspeed. Kallio already recognizes tuned devices as some kind of problem, although not a big one yet.
“But you have to knock on wood. Most of the electric scooters are these rental boards and they all go at legal speeds. That’s the good side of rental boards.”
Kallio, on the other hand, sees the fact that more helmets are worn with private electric scooters than with rental boards.
Electric scooters for rent in particular arouse strong opinions. For example Paris banned rental boards completely last year. in Copenhagen the boards were also banned in 2020, until they came back to the street scene the following year, albeit with stricter rules.
Kallio says that the police would not currently ban electric scooters in Finland.
“The ban in Paris then meant that the number of private boards exploded. You can still see them in the street scene, but I don’t know how they are driven there. Is it the same as here, that we go where it hurts, in the wrong places and with too many people on board”, Kallio ponders.
Prime minister Petteri Orpon According to the (kok) government program, a working group for tightening the legislation on electric scooters was created last fall, and the changes to the law were supposed to come into force by next summer.
According to Kallio’s information, the proposal of the working group led by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to manage micro-mobility is coming to the opinion round this fall. Micro-movement refers to movement on standard and electrically assisted bicycles as well as light electric vehicles, such as electric scooters.
The purpose of the working group is to present improvements to micromobility in general and to improve its safety.
Most of the accidents involving electric scooters happen at night and when the skateboarder is intoxicated, which is why the law is introducing a blood alcohol limit for riding an electric scooter. Minister of Transport and Communications Lulu Wrist (ps) told earlier this week to HS that the alcohol limit would be set at 0.5.
In addition, most of the injuries that occur in accidents are aimed at the head and face area. Kallio is thinking about making helmets mandatory in the law.
“Of course, that also doesn’t prevent a person from dying in a bad accident, but at least in principle it would reduce the consequences.”
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