Poland’s government has moved to introduce new rules on the use of electric scooters and other mobility devices, amid safety concerns. The legislation would set speed limits and outline where such vehicles can be driven and parked.
Amid the growing popularity of e-scooters and other mobility devices such as electric skateboards and Segways, their unregulated status has “posed a real threat to safety on roads and pavements,” said Poland’s infrastructure minister Andrzej Adamczyk.
An investigation by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, a newspaper, found in 2019 that “hundreds of people were hospitalised” with injuries resulting from the use of electric scooters. Around half were pedestrians hit by riders.
Last summer, broadcaster TVP cited a surgeon at a hospital in Warsaw saying that they were dealing with three or four patients seriously injured in electric scooter accidents every day.
A 4-year-old has been hospitalised with serious injuries after being hit by a British man riding an electric scooter in Kraków's Planty park.
Rental scooters have become common in Polish cities. A recent report found they have caused hundreds of injuries https://t.co/tSJvrQv5tV
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 19, 2019
A draft amendment to the road traffic code, approved by the government last week, would now finally codify their use. Users of mobility devices are to be required to ride them in bicycle lanes, which they had not previously been allowed to use.
Where such lanes are unavailable, e-scooters and similar devices may use roads, but they should opt for pavements where the road’s speed limit is higher than 30 km/h. For comparison, cyclists are allowed to ride on pavements only when the maximum speed on the road is greater than 50 km/h and there is no bike lane.
On pavements, riders of scooters will be required to keep their speed down to approximately the pace of pedestrians (5km/h) and give priority to those on foot. More generally, their maximum speed will be capped at 20 km/h.
Moreover, driving under the influence of alcohol – or any other substances with a similar effect – will explicitly be prohibited. The bill also prohibits transporting passengers, animals and objects, as well as towing other vehicles. Wearing helmets will, however, not be required on personal mobility devices.
Electric scooters will have to be parked in parallel to the pavement’s outer edge. Municipal authorities will be able to punish their owners – currently mainly rental companies – for incorrect parking.
Riders aged between ten and 18 will be required to have a driver’s licence or a bicycle card, which is a formal requirement for a minor cycling without a guardian in Poland.
The new bill does not explicitly regulate road insurance for such devices. “This means that, as in the case of cyclists, each scooter user should take care to have liability insurance in their private life,” Łukasz Kulisiewicz, an expert at the Polish Chamber of Insurance (PIU), told Rzeczpospolita.
However, insurers hope that codifying the use of personal mobility devices will encourage higher take-up of such insurance, which is already available but tricky to enforce.
“For insurers, the introduction of additional regulations will allow for clarification of responsibility for accidents and damages caused by users of e-scooters and personal transport devices,” Ilona Tomaszewska, head of product development at AXA and UNIQA, told Rzeczpospolita.
“We hope that the increasing popularity of such vehicles will contribute to the increasing need for insurance”, she said. Insurers also note that users may want to consider purchasing accident insurance as the number of accidents involving these devices is on the rise.
Poland has the fifth highest rate of road fatalities in proportion to the population among all EU member states, according to Eurostat data. The country also has the third highest rate of pedestrian fatalities. In recent years the government has introduced a series of changes to Poland’s traffic laws in a bid to improve road safety.
Main image credit: Marek Rucinski/Unsplash (under Unsplash licence)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
