The EU association of shared micro-mobility providers, Micro-Mobility for Europe (MMfE), has published a first-of-its-kind factsheet on incident data involving shared e-scooters in Europe.
This report collates incident data from 2021 for MMfE’s six founding members: Bird, Bolt, Dott, Lime, Tier and Voi. In doing so, MMfE seeks to inform road safety policies to reduce incident risks for vulnerable road users, such as e-scooter riders, cyclists and pedestrians.
The results demonstrate that the overall risk of incidents requiring medical treatment is 60% lower than comparable data for shared e-scooters from 2019. In 2021, 5.1 injuries requiring medical treatment per million kilometres travelled on a shared e-scooter were registered.
In addition, fatality rates on shared e-scooters were twice as low as on private e-scooters.
Overall, MMfE reports a similar risk of fatal incident for shared e-scooter riders as for cyclists.
As motorised vehicles, particularly cars and trucks, remain the biggest source of road traffic fatalities in the EU, the industry association has presented a set of recommendations to improve the safety of vulnerable road users:
- Investment in protected infrastructure
- Harmonised incident reporting standards in the EU
- Acknowledgement of e-scooter riders as vulnerable road users
- Enforcement of rules by local authorities
