The users of electric scooters in Barcelona and the surrounding municipalities - in particular, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Adrià de Besòs, l'Hospitalet de Llobregat and Esplugues de Llobregat - are almost universally guilty of one specific traffic violation,and it is one of those which cause most inconvenience to the rest of the public: excess speed in bike lanes located on the pavement, where the maximum allowed velocity is set at 10 kilometres per hour. Thus, according to the third survey of Personal Mobility Vehicles (VMPs, in its Catalan acronym) in and around Barcelona, presented out by the Royal Automobile Club of Catalonia (RACC) this Wednesday, 99.6% of scooter users do not respect the speed limit in this case
In fact, as with the RACC's previous surveys, ignorance of the regulations remains a serious problem, although it is tending to decrease. Thus, according to this new study, 23% of scooter users still admit not knowing the traffic regulations for their VMPs, which include scooters. A year ago the figure was 32%. This fact perhaps explains facts such as 27% of users jumping red traffic lights or 17% not respecting pedestrian crossings. Even more, 75% of users admit to having ridden their scooters on the pavement, when the regulations specifically prohibit it except in the case of a cycle lane, which is when the speed is limited to 10 km/h.
One in seven has had an accident
Another significant datum from the RACC study is the fact that one in seven electric scooter users claims to have had an accident with personal injury in Barcelona and its accesses, and of these, 53% of accidents involved other modes of transport, mostly other scooters (24%), pedestrians (18%) and cars (18%). In addition, 83% of VMP users state that they are not satisfied with the accessibility of the network, which makes it difficult to comply with the regulations in their journeys and that scooter users themselves recognize risky behaviour, with data such as the fact that 40% admit that they drive faster than allowed. Likewise, electric scooter users only give a middling to the safety of the traffic infrastructure in Barcelona and its accesses: they rate it at 5.5 out of 10 on the roads analyzed in this study.
In addition, as the president of the RACC, Josep Mateu, points out, users complain about "vehicles stopped in the bike lanes, especially for loading and unloading" and also about the fact that they "demand a more continuous and segregated infrastructure, better signposted and more protected". For his part, the director of the RACC's mobility area, Cristian Bardagí, has pointed out that one of the black marks against this type of vehicle is that "accidents with scooters continue to grow", stressing that "there are already more accidents with scooters involved than with bicycles, even though there is more movement with bicycles than with scooters”.