Paris: The French capital's streets will no longer be home to for-hire electric scooters after a resounding victory for road safety advocates and a blow to the industry.

The City of Light, which was once a pioneer in embracing e-scooter services, is now poised to become the only major European city to outlaw the widely used vehicles reserved through apps like Lime.

In a public consultation led by mayor Anne Hidalgo, citizens were asked to express their support or opposition to them. According to official results, nearly 90% of the votes were cast against them.

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"We're content. Arnaud Kielbasa, co-founder of the Apacauvi charity, which stands up for victims of e-scooter accidents, said, "It's what we've been fighting for over four years.

All Parisians claim to feel uneasy when crossing roads and on sidewalks. You must search everywhere, said Kielbasa, whose wife and unborn child were struck by an e-scooter driver. That is the reason they voted against them.

Operators claim that they are unfairly being blamed for the frequently chaotic nature of Parisian streets, where mayor Hidalgo has promoted bicycles and other non-emitting modes of transportation since taking office in 2014.

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In 2018, her administration gave e-scooter operators a warm welcome, but since then, it has tightened rules by designating parking areas, capping the top speed, and limiting the number of operators. However, residents who frequently complain about reckless and drunk driving have not been persuaded by such measures.

The dangers of vehicles that can currently be rented by children as young as 12 have also been brought to light by a string of fatal accidents. Hidalgo told reporters as she cast her ballot on Sunday, "I'm committed to respecting the choice of voters, purely and simply."

From August 31, it is anticipated that the 63-year-old will not extend the operating contracts of the city's three operators, California-based Lime, Amsterdam-based Dott, and Berlin-based Tier.

Their business model was "very expensive — five euros for 10 minutes," "not very sustainable," and, more importantly, "the cause of a lot of accidents," she claimed on Sunday.

Privately owned electric scooters, of which 700,000 were sold nationwide last year, will not be impacted by the consultation, according to data from the transport ministry.

In France, rented e-scooters are used to complete about 100,000 trips each day in about 200 towns and cities.

The ban could lead to other cities imitating it because it deals the multinational operators a serious financial and reputational blow.
Electric scooters for rental or personal use were outlawed in Montreal in 2020, and they were reinstated with stricter regulations a year later in Copenhagen.

The government of France last week unveiled tighter regulations, which would raise the minimum age to 14 and increase fines for infractions like driving while intoxicated. E-scooter companies have backed these regulations.

Of course, there are reckless actions and traffic violations. The cause of that is human nature, not the mode of transportation, said Dott managing director Nicolas Gorse on Sunday to LCI television. "Education, detection, and punishment are what we need."
Hadi Karam, general manager for France at Lime, stated to AFP last week that the decision to outlaw the use of rental e-scooters in Paris was "against the current" and cited recent decisions to expand their use in Washington, New York, Madrid, or London as justification.
According to him, there is a trend towards these cars, and Paris was a pioneer in this field.

Operators attempted to mobilise their primarily young user base by providing free rides to those who voted on Sunday and by using online influencers, but these efforts were largely ineffective as evidenced by the high percentage of people who said they had no intention of voting.

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Francoise Granier, a 68-year-old doctor who cast her ballot in the capital's ninth district, told AFP that the roads are risky for both users and pedestrians. "And the cops never get involved."

She was not alone in her dismay at the state of the city's streets; 50-year-old IT worker Michael Dahan expressed a similar sentiment, saying: "If it was better regulated, I wouldn't be against... but you see people behaving in a crazy way."