US Nashville bans the electric scooters in the city after the first fatal accident associated with them.
The mayor of the city Nashville (Nashville) of Tennessee, USA, David Briley, announced to seven scooter companies operating in the city that he is ending the pilot program and banning electric scooters from the roads, according to a letter that was posted on Twitter on Friday.
In his message, the mayor states: "We have seen the cost of public security and accessibility caused by these devices and it is not fair for our residents to continue this. If these devices return in the future, it will be after a public process, in our terms, with strict supervision for numbers, security and accessibility. "
Mayor Briley had considered banning scooters and a month ago. But only when Nashville had its first scooter-related death did the mayor formally announce his plan to remove them completely from the city.
The accident took place in May 2019 and involved Brady Gaulke, 26, who was hit by a vehicle and killed while driving a scooter. Police found Gaulke had twice the legal limit for cars in his blood alcohol and was responsible for the accident.
In Nashville, seven companies operated with a total of 4.000 scooters on the streets. According to information, Briley, in consultation with the Nashville City Council, plans to allow one or two companies to return by installing a much smaller number of scooters. The selected companies will compete through a process that will be supervised by the City Transport Licensing Committee, according to Tennessean.
From the moment they first appeared, at the end of 2017, electric scooters brought a lot of headaches to cities. The current officials of each city that hosts them, try to weigh the popularity of the devices, with the need for better regulation of their distribution framework.
Some cities have proposed overly burdensome rules for scooter companies, forcing them to decide whether to stay or leave. Uber withdrew the Jump scooters from San Antonio, Texas last week, after the city authorities cut them in half. In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo proposed new rules after the death of an electronic scooter rider on June 10, who was hit by a truck.
In Greece, fortunately we did not have any fatal accidents, but the lack of rules in their traffic as well as the almost complete lack of bike lanes combined with the small sidewalks that are full of traps, make the accident a matter of luck.