E-bikes and scooters: who should get the street? My take
Walk down a busy street today and count the wheels. Cars, buses, bikes, e-bikes, rental scooters zipping past, and a few more scooters parked across the sidewalk. Everyone wants a piece of the same narrow strip of space.
So who should get the street? I've spent more than 15 years working on traffic and rail projects in the US and the Middle East, and now I live in Rome. Here is my take.
The fight in one picture
Think of a street as a kitchen table at a family dinner. For decades, the car got almost the whole table. People on foot got the edge. Bikes got whatever was left.
Then a new cousin showed up: e-bikes and e-scooters. Engineers call them micromobility, which just means small, light vehicles that carry one person. The new cousin needs a seat too. Nobody wants to move their plate.
That's why the arguments get so loud. It isn't really about scooters. It's about space.
Paris said "no thanks"
In April 2023, Paris held a vote on rental e-scooters. About 103,000 people voted, and 89% said get rid of them. That sounds huge, but the city has about 1.38 million registered voters, so most people stayed home. Still, the result counted: the 15,000 rental scooters were due to leave when the operators' contracts ended that August (NPR / AP).
I understand why Parisians were angry. Scooters dumped on the sidewalk, riders weaving between people on foot. If you're pushing a stroller or walking with a cane, that's not a small thing.
But here's what the numbers say
The scary part is real. In the US, emergency room visits linked to e-scooters, e-bikes and similar devices went from about 37,000 in 2017 to about 149,000 in 2024. The US product safety agency counted 533 deaths over those years (CPSC).
Now look at who was involved. For e-scooter deaths, crashes with cars and trucks were the top cause: 140 out of 206. For e-bikes, it was the same story (CPSC).
The International Transport Forum, a research group linked to the OECD, found the same pattern. Motor vehicles are involved in 80% of fatal crashes with e-scooters and bikes. And riding an e-scooter is not much riskier than riding a bike (ITF).
So the scooter is often the one getting hurt, not the one doing the hurting.
My take: three simple rules
I think the answer is not banning one group. It's giving each group its own place at the table.
1. The sidewalk belongs to people on foot. No riding there, and no parking a scooter in the middle of it. Italy already went this way. Since December 2024, scooters can't ride or park on sidewalks except in marked spots, every rider must wear a helmet, and top speed is 20 km/h, about 12 mph (Il Sole 24 Ore).
2. E-bikes and scooters go with bikes. A slow e-scooter and a bike move at about the same speed, so treat them the same. Give them a lane with a real barrier, not just a painted line. A painted line is like a "please don't" sign. A curb is a wall.
3. Where everyone has to share, cars slow down. The ITF suggests 30 km/h (about 20 mph) or less where people on two wheels share the road with cars (ITF). At that speed, a driver has time to stop, and a mistake is far less likely to kill someone.
Yes, this means cars give up some space. A parking lane here, a traffic lane there. That's the part people fight about. But a street is not a parking lot with a sidewalk attached. It's how a whole neighbourhood gets around.
The other side
People who disagree make fair points. Some drivers say there's simply no room, and that taking a lane will make traffic worse. Some people on foot say scooter riders will never behave, so a ban like Paris is the only fix. Shop owners worry about losing parking in front of their door.
I hear all of that. But in my experience, people behave better when the street tells them clearly where to go. Chaos on the sidewalk usually means the street gave the scooter nowhere else to be.
The takeaway
Don't ask "scooters: yes or no?" Ask "where does each one go?" Sidewalks for walking. Protected lanes for bikes, e-bikes and scooters. Slower cars where everyone has to mix. Do that, and most of the anger fades on its own.
What about your city? Do scooters and e-bikes feel like a threat or a help where you live, and who would you give more of the street to? Tell me in the comments.
Want the engineering details? Valerio's technical article on ibano.com covers them: Pedestrian and cyclist safety in Italy: numbers, rules and a comparison with the EU, the US, Latin America and Asia. For more technical knowledge: ibano.com/insights.
Comments