Ban on driving at night and road signs: what's new for fans of electric scooters in Kazan

Kazan authorities are seriously concerned about the problem of increasing the number of injuries due to electric scooters. The mayor of Kazan, Ilsur Metshin, at a meeting with representatives of the traffic police, ministry of healthcare, prosecutor's office, and electric scooter rental services, instructed to develop rules for using this now very popular transport as soon as possible.

Today in Kazan, there are more than 2,000 rental scooters, which have already been used more than 700,000 times.

“Pedestrians no longer feel safe. Not only Kazan, but also other cities have faced this problem. We are here to solve these problems, we can't just sit back and do nothing. At the same time, we understand that this issue cannot be solved by bans," Ilsur Metshin said.

Due to injuries after falling from electric scooters, 915 people have turned to medical institutions, including 63 people over the past week. The number of accidents involving electric scooters has now reached six, four of which occurred in Kazan. One person was killed and six were injured, including four children aged between 11 and 15.

At the meeting, a number of measures aimed at controlling the operation of electric scooter rental services were proposed:

• making a list of parking spaces for scooters. The Department of Architecture and Urban Planning approved only 500 of the 1,200 parking spaces requested by the sharing companies. Then the places will be drawn in a competition. All this will take about two months;
• consideration of the possibility of creating an electronic map with the designation of places where riding on electric scooters is allowed, as well as areas where they will be automatically cut. We are talking about pedestrian crossings and roadways;
• replacement of existing road signs 4.4.1 “Bicycle path or lane” with the sign 4.5.5. “Pedestrian and bicycle paths with traffic separation”;
• recommendation to rental services to allow children from 16 years old to drive scooters and to prohibit the movement of users weighing less than 30 kg;
• proposal to reduce the number of scooters that can be rented per account to one;
• proposal to ban traffic from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m. on highways, as well as to reduce the maximum speed to 15 km/h at regulated intersections;
• development of user driving quality index, which will allow to block the accounts of violators.

What has already been done:

• parking margin has been reduced from 40 metres to 15 metres. At the same time, the head of the Traffic Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tatarstan, Lenar Gabdurakhmanov, stressed that the organisation of the work of car rental companies in parking lots requires improvement. For example, the users of electric scooters continue to leave their devices at a great distance from the designated parking lot.
• speed limit zones have been introduced in the city — in different sections, the speed of the scooter is automatically reduced to 20, 15 and 10 km/h. There are 70 such zones in the city so far, as well as 13 no-traffic zones.

The representatives of electric scooter rental services supported the proposals and said that all technical developments can be implemented in a short time.

Last Saturday, the president of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, at a Saturday meeting, instructed to develop rules for the use of electric scooters in the republic in a week. At the same time, the Kazan Kremlin believes that it is necessary to determine the rules for electric scooters at the federal level.