Tatarstan in top 5 regions by number of accidents with e-scooters

From January to May, seven accidents with electric scooters occurred in Tatarstan — the republic is on the list of anti-leaders along with Moscow (24 accidents), St. Petersburg (22), Krasnodar Krai (12), and Sverdlovsk Oblast (6). Such data was provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia on 17 June.

The number of accidents involving electric scooters this year has jumped by as much as 195% — to 112. In five months, 119 people were injured in accidents and 2 more were killed.

“The legal status of personal mobility devices is currently undetermined. The Ministry of Transport is developing a corresponding draft resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation," the Ministry of Internal Affairs stressed.

Soon, the statistics of road accidents will be updated — in June, there have already been several high-profile accidents with electric scooters. At the beginning of the month, the head of Kislovodsk, Alexander Kurbatov, was hospitalised in serious condition after falling from an electric scooter. He has been operated on and in a medically induced coma. The condition of the head of the city has stabilised, but remains serious. Recently, he has been transferred to Moscow for treatment.

In Ufa, a criminal case was initiated because of an electric scooter hitting an elderly man. The victim has a broken femur. The suspect helped the man to stand up after the fall and left the scene. In Bashkiria, people have proposed an initiative to ban riding on electric scooters without a helmet and at a speed above 10 km/h.

Accidents with electric scooters occur regularly in Tatarstan, reports about this regularly appear in the traffic police reports. Because of this, in Kazan in the near future, there are going to appear rules for the use of electric scooters. The head of the press service of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, Lilia Galimova, said that the measures that will be taken must be tough. The introduction of legal restrictions for driving scooters and electric scooters, according to a SuperJob survey (available to Realnoe Vremya), is supported by 52% of Kazan residents, and this is more than in Russia as a whole (49%).

At the end of May, the Investigative Committee in St. Petersburg opened another criminal case under the article on the provision of services that do not meet security requirements. According to the investigation, the renters of electric scooters “for personal gain, neglecting the safety of other road users, provided two young people aged 20 and 21 with electric scooters for short-term rent," and they drove into a local resident.

By Daria Pinegina
Tatarstan