Paris is getting tougher on electric scooter safety, with new rules now requiring riders to wear both a helmet and a high-visibility vest while using their scooters on public roads.
The crackdown comes as French authorities point to a sharp increase in serious accidents. According to France’s road safety watchdog, 79 people were killed in e-scooter crashes last year, up from 45 fatalities the year before. Around 1,100 people were injured in Paris alone, representing a 33% increase year-over-year.
Under the new rules, riders caught without an approved helmet face a €135 (around US$155) fine, while failing to wear a reflective vest or other approved high-visibility gear can result in a €35 (around US$40) penalty, according to the BBC.
The requirements also apply to other categories of motorized personal transportation devices, including electric unicycles and hoverboards.
One notable exception, however, appears to be electric bicycles.
French law distinguishes between pedal-assist e-bikes and “motorized personal mobility devices” (EDPM), the latter category covering electric scooters, hoverboards, Segways, and similar vehicles. That means the new mandatory helmet and high-visibility requirements do not appear to extend to standard 25 km/h (15.5 mph) pedal-assist e-bikes, which continue to be regulated under France’s bicycle laws rather than the EDPM framework.
Paris has already taken an aggressive stance toward e-scooters in recent years, banning shared rental scooters in 2023 after a public referendum, while still allowing privately owned scooters to operate. Existing rules already prohibit riders under 14 years old, ban passengers, and cap scooter speeds at 25 km/h (15.5 mph).
Despite the rental ban, privately owned e-scooters remain hugely popular in France. The country has the highest rate of private e-scooter ownership in Europe, with around 2.5 million privately owned scooters recorded in 2023 and hundreds of thousands more believed to have been sold since.
Electrek’s Take
This is ridiculous, or at least partially. I agree with the helmet part – as France is one of the modern, civilized countries that offers universal public healthcare. If I’m paying for your health insurance, you should wear a helmet so the hospital visit is more about cleaning out road rash than performing brain surgery.
But the high-vis vest part reveals that Paris is now saying the quiet part out loud: that scooters aren’t the problem; cars are. The high-vis rule is a band-aid to the problem of cars killing people. If Paris is acknowledging that painting scooter riders bright yellow might help cars murder fewer of them, then they’re also saying it’s easier to require riders to wear vests than to just police their drivers. But that’s not how society works. It’s like handing out bulletproof vests to American school children instead of focusing on the real problem.
Admittedly, France has done slightly better than the US in terms of a justice system designed to penalize drivers who hit pedestrians and cyclists. In the US, the simplest way to get away with murder remains to do it with a car. But activists still say France has a long way to go in terms of dealing out real prison sentences for drivers convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Only then, when drivers realize that not looking around them can result in doing hard time, will other road users like scooter riders have a hope of safety.
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