Roughly 90 percent of the Parisians who in a participated in a recent referendum voted to ban rented electric, stand-up scooters. The decision comes as the citizens of France’s capital are increasingly concerned about the safety and clutter of the mode of transportation.
Paris was among the first cities to adopt e-scooters and currently has contracts with providers Lime, Dott, and Tier. But those contracts are set to expire at the end of August, and may not be renewed, based on the results of this referendum.
Although the city was an early adopter, many have turned against the technology. David Belliard, Paris’ deputy mayor, claimed that the electric scooters have been involved in hundreds of accidents.
They lead to “a feeling of overall insecurity in the public space, notably for the most vulnerable people, I’m thinking of seniors or people with disabilities,” Belliard told the Associated Press. “There are a few benefits, but what I see today is that the costs are greater.”
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People have complained about the high-speeds of scooters, that they are often parked in inconvenient places, and the fact that many are ridden by pairs of people. In fact, one e-scooter, being ridden by two people, hit a 31-year-old Italian woman in 2021, causing her to die, reports the BBC.
The companies behind the scooters say that make up only a small proportion of traffic accidents in Paris. The referendum concerned only rented e-scooters, and has no impact on the use of the privately owned vehicles.
Although the vote was a landslide, it was a poorly attended one. Just eight percent of eligible voters turned up to participate in the referendum, something that the e-scooter companies had feared.
Although roughly 2 million people used the scooters in Paris in 2022, 71 percent of them were under 35, and people as young as 12 can legally use them. In an attempt to get out the vote, the scooters companies launched Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok campaigns, and offered free rides to people who typed “Je vote” (French for “I’m voting”) into their apps on Sunday.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said that she is “committed to respecting the choice of the voters, purely and simply.”
