Badly parked scooters, driving on the sidewalks or concentrated in the most touristy areas of the center. The Madrid City Council, which announced this week that it would ban the 6,000 rental vehicles of this type that travel around the capital from the streets, has been continuing these bad driving practices for months. It was only in the first six months of this year, according to the latest report from the Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility Department, that the SER inspectors denounced 35,399 scooters badly parkedcompared to the 27,337 sanctioned during the same period of 2023. The most conflictual months, with more than 211 sanctions per day, These were April (6,627), May (6,595) and June (6,528).
If this trend continues, 2024 would have ended several years of decline in the number of sanctions imposed by SER controllers, who began monitoring scooters in 2021. In his first year with this new function They imposed 122,868 finescompared to 94,927 in 2022 and 46,881 in 2023. At the same time, the area led by Borja Carabante has amended the Mobility Ordinance, among other things, to require them to park on the road in specific reserves. Fines for non-compliance with local regulations in this regard vary from 30 to 200 euros. In addition, they have increased the number of forks for parking bicycles and scooters by 30.6% since 2018.
Before taking the decision to expel rental e-scooters from the city, the city council last year limited the number of dealers operating these vehicles in the city to three, Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility, to 2,000 each. However, they now understand that the conditions agreed in the permits are not being met, particularly in terms of geographical distribution in the city and parking and driving in inappropriate places.
Road accidents and complaints
In 2023, as published by ABC, the accident rate associated with these vehicles increased, but road complaints also decreased. Based on official figures, Last year there were 712 accidents in which a scooter was involved, compared to 613 in 2022. None of them were fatal, however. The number of serious injuries also increased, 25 in 2023 compared to 21 in 2022; and minors, 577 last year compared to 497 the year before.
Police sources then confirmed to this newspaper that “checks on these VMP (personal mobility vehicles) have increased significantly”. This may be why Traffic complaints increased from 2,325 in 2022 to 1,500 in 2023Most of them concern parking in prohibited areas (with 1,153 fines from January to November 2023), driving in prohibited places (138 fines) or driving with headphones (67 complaints).
In addition, police sources explained, in 2023, they recorded 66 crimes investigated by the road traffic judicial police station related to these vehicles, the majority (59) being related to something about his speed. The rest of the crimes concern driving under the influence of drugs (4) and alcohol (3). Of course, all these figures refer to crimes committed with any vehicle of this type, whether it is the 6,000 rental vehicles that will circulate in the capital until October or private individuals, whose census is unknown.
