New South Wales has embarked on a move to legalize the use of private e-scooters, as some cities around the world seek to restrict or phase them out.

The Electronic Micromobility Action Plan will examine how the state could decriminalize the use of private e-scooters in public and explore more e-scooter trials.

Other states, including South Australia, have also reported changes to laws that would allow private use of e-scooters in public.

But cities like Melbourne, Madrid, Rome and Paris have restricted or banned shareable public electric scooters, mainly for safety reasons.

Experts say the rules in Australia are confusing and there is limited regulation for private e-scooters, posing risks to users and pedestrians.

So, is there a place for electric scooters in Australia, and can pedestrians and motorcyclists coexist?

Electric scooter safety concerns lead to crackdown

The City of Melbourne ended a shared trial of e-scooters in August due to concerns about the safety of e-scooters, mainly because some users were riding on pedestrian paths or not wearing helmets.

Melbourne Mayor Nicholas Reece said e-scooters posed an “unacceptable safety risk” to pedestrians in the busy and densely populated city.

“There are literally more people disobeying the e-scooter law than there are actually following the rules,” he told councilors in August.

Some Melbourne residents and business owners have complained to council that improperly parked e-scooters pose tripping hazards to pedestrians.

One resident told the council: “I regularly have near misses because people are on the sidewalks or running red lights while I am at a crosswalk. »

In Madrid, electric scooter companies were ordered to remove their devices from city streets after authorities said they had failed to implement driving and parking controls.

Paris has banned the rental of electric scooters in 2023, while authorities in Rome have restricted the use of electric scooters to prevent further injuries and deaths.

Are shareable and private electric scooters safe?

Queensland Center for Accident Research and Road Safety researcher Narelle Howarth said public e-scooters were easier to control than private e-scooters.

Professor Howarth said shared public e-scooters could be programmed not to exceed a certain speed limit and could be banned in certain areas, while those purchased by individuals could not.

“Shared facilities are actually the ones that the government can most easily regulate, because they cannot operate without obtaining a permit from local government,” Professor Howarth said.

But she added they still posed a safety risk to users who were often inexperienced and unlikely to wear a helmet.

Professor Haworth research on wearing helmets on electric scooters found that drivers of shared e-scooters were more likely to ride without a helmet than drivers of private e-scooters.

According to the study, helmet use was strongly linked to the rider’s understanding and support of the law.

“People not wearing helmets when they are required and those who are often inexperienced…makes them more likely to get into trouble,” she said.

Professor Howarth said some private e-scooters were unsafe because they could be ridden at high speeds and, sometimes, easily modified.

She said the federal government needed to step in and regulate the importation of private e-scooters until established standards were in place.

“The first thing is to pass regulations and we haven’t done that. We certainly haven’t done that in terms of what can come into the country,” she said.

“Then we need to have parameters at the state government level that will address how fast and where e-scooters can be used, and then we can educate people on those rules.”

Australia’s Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts told the ABC that e-scooters do not meet the definition of road vehicles and are therefore not regulated by the federal government .

Electric scooters reign in Australia, “the Wild West”

Richard Buning, head of micromobility research at the University of Queensland, said Australia lacked consistent rules for e-scooters.

“We call them different things. Some places are electric vehicles, in Queensland we call them personal mobility devices. We can’t even decide what we want to call them in the first place.”

Private e-scooters – or personal mobility devices – are legal in Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT.

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But they are banned in New South Wales, the Northern Territory and South Australia, despite some councils testing shareable electric scooters.

For states where private e-scooters are legal, there are different rules for how fast they can accelerate or where they can be ridden.

Dr Buning said e-scooters provided a convenient way for city residents to get to work, school or university when public transport was not an option.

“If you’re a professional or a student and… you can’t afford a car or public transportation doesn’t work for you… (e-scooters are) probably the best solution simple way to get there sustainably,” he says.

Tourists embraced e-scooters because it allowed them to explore a city without using “confusing” public transportation such as buses, he said.

“Tourists are looking for an experience when they visit a place. They want to take photos, they want to slow down, they want to take the long way,” Dr. Buning said.

“Normally, transportation is the boring part of traveling and if you’re a tourist…and you’re in the city, public transportation is usually out of reach for you.

“Tourists find buses very confusing.”

Can pedestrians and electric scooters coexist?

Alexa Delbosc from the Monash Institute of Transport Studies said cities needed to create safer infrastructure for e-scooter users and cyclists so pedestrians felt safe.

Dr Delbosc said removing e-scooters from cities would reduce the number of transport options available to people in urban areas.

“The proportion of people using the footpath was halved in an area where there was a cycle path compared to a street where there was no cycle path.

“If we want people to be able to cycle or scooter safely, we need to provide safer segregated infrastructure.”

She said existing rules needed to be enforced more strictly.

“That would be rewarded by community goodwill and people doing the right thing,” Dr. Delbosc said.

“If people don’t think they’re going to get caught, they’re just going to keep riding on a footpath, and clearly there wasn’t enough enforcement (in Melbourne).”