Sensible Permissions Needed to Thwart Senseless Bans!

As reported by the news website Reuters, Parisians have overwhelmingly voted in a referendum to ban electric scooters!

We believe this results from not having the right type of policy in place to promote safe use and rider education. The argument favoring personal electric vehicles, which enhance personal mobility at a lesser financial and environmental cost, should not be ignored. Allowing anyone to hop on a rental scooter and go, while wonderfully convenient and wildly popular, may have been too loose and free, and the human injury and lives lost tipped the scale to an outright ban.

From the article:

The ban won between 85.77% and 91.77% of the votes in the 20 Paris districts that published results, according to the City of Paris website on what was billed as a rare "public consultation" and prompted long queues at ballot boxes around the city.

It's difficult to compare the safety of an open-air vehicle such as a scooter or skateboard against the modern automobile with steel protection beams, crush zones, seatbelts, and airbags. It is easy to see a huge difference in the environmental cost of propelling a vehicle weighing under 100 lbs (plus rider) with cars (or even SUVs), which scale in at more than 20 to 30 times that weight. Clean or dirty fuel issues aside, the amount of energy consumed by cars is huge compared to scooters. This energy also has a real cost beyond just the expense, the health of people, and our environment.

So how do we weigh people getting hurt on E-scooters against killing our planet and health? It's not a black-and-white issue and should not be turned into an all or none ban, but this is what politics sometimes does. Perhaps lots of people don't want to wear helmets, and it would be difficult for a scooter rental company to supply such safety gear along with easy access to scooters. Still, maybe this is what we need to do, the hard little steps that keep the big bad things like BANS from happening.

CEVRA.org is currently researching policies in places that have had great success permitting the use of PEVs (Personal Electric Vehicles) in the hope of providing safety programs and blueprints for municipalities to easily adapt to their communities. SENSIBLE PERMISSION before SENSELESS BANS.

CEVRA.org would love your input in building momentum to advance clean energy vehicle recreation. You can help just by <u>FOLLOWING</u> us and staying in the loop of our progress. We are interested in your ideas, and if any other efforts are underway in your area, <u>LET US KNOW.</u>

Get updates or tell us what's happening where you ride: contact CEVRA.