Electric scooters have become part of daily life, especially in big cities, in the past two years. Though they help pedestrians frustrated with traffic or climbing fuel prices to travel around easily, they also sparked a debate on safety.
Between April 2021 and this June, eight people were killed and 899 others were injured in accidents involving e-scooters. The number is relatively low compared to 394 people who died in motor vehicle accidents across the country between January and March. Nevertheless, the debate over their safety had forced government to impose regulations on e-scooters in April 2021, after their numbers proliferated thanks to rental systems offered by private companies in big cities like Istanbul. Regulations cover everything, from the minimum age of e-scooter drivers to conditions for renting e-scooters.
Under current regulations, only people at the age of 16 and above can ride e-scooters and only on bicycle lanes. In places without bicycle lanes, they can ride on motor vehicle roads which has a speed limit below 50 kilometers per hour. Any safety violations are subject to fines and those include riding e-scooters on sidewalks, doing stunts on them or riding them while clutching to other vehicles to speed up.
Yet, some 767 accidents involving e-scooters were reported since 2021, while traffic police issued fines to some 1,500 e-scooter rides, amounting in total to $91,186 (TL 1.5 million).
Aykut Kılıçkaya, a high school student riding e-scooters, said the vehicle has been a part of his life. Every day, he spends some one and a half hours aboard his e-scooter, either going to school or going around with his friends. He says they are far more cheaper than other vehicles but other drivers often do not care about riders. “Pedestrians are also unsympathetic. They don’t even give us way. Once I almost ran into a pedestrian because he suddenly ran across the road. I had to jump out to avoid the crash,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday.
