Riding Electric Scooters Soon to Be Regulated by Law – What Can the Owners of These Micro-Vehicles Expect?

The use of electric scooters, which have been ridden for years without any regulations or limitations, is to be regulated by law.

They will be defined as a light means of transport, whose maximum speed on a driving lane will be 25 kilometers per hour, and they will use the same lanes as the cyclists do. Only in special situations will they be allowed to use roads.

This, the Novosti daily learns, is what the draft Amendments to the Law on Traffic Safety say, which could soon enter the parliamentary procedure. According to Zlatko Belencan, the deputy chief of the Traffic Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this act will regulate the movement of these means of transport, which experts call “micromobility”.

– Our proposition is for rules which apply to cyclists in traffic to also apply to scooters. That means that children aged 12 could ride them, except that they would be using traffic areas along with cyclists, while under certain conditions, they could use roads. The speed of 25 kilometers per hour applies to lanes, whereas, on sidewalks, they will have to adapt to the movements of the pedestrians, that is, they will have to move at three to five kilometers per hour. We have asked for light-reflecting vests to be worn when riding on a sidewalk. Scooter drivers are not aware that they have an advantage over the pedestrians, in terms of both speed and the structure, and they consider themselves pedestrians. Because, a strike by a scooter which is moving at 15 kilometers per hour could be fatal to a child or an elderly person, if they knock them over – Belencan reveals.

Belencan clarifies that the Traffic Police Department, precisely due to such situations, sought to regulate this, in a manner of speaking, new situation in traffic, through amendments. Although legal regulations in this field have been considered by the Traffic Police Department since back in 2019, Zlatko Belencan says that a range of others’ opinions, as well as recommendations by the EU, needed to be taken into consideration.

– Someone might ask why we didn’t do so earlier. However, as an EU membership candidate, we must comply with the directives of the European legislation, which were also not harmonized when it comes to electric scooters. We waited for the EU to harmonize and now this micromobility, that is, the electric scooter, is defined as a light means of transport. We addressed experts in mechanical and technical sciences and professors at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering. There were various approaches, some thought that we shouldn’t designate it as a vehicle, but we have to qualify it as that, because there is a person controlling it. We will have to be cautious when it comes to the item determining whether it’s a means of transport of people, because the European legislation has not yet defined that – Novosti’s interviewee says.

It has not yet been defined what the penalties will be and which violations will be subject to sanctions against the drivers. Based on this draft, the Traffic Police Department will prepare the draft Law on the Amendments to the Law on Traffic Safety, which will first go through an expert discussion and then be forwarded to the Government of Serbia, which will decide on its implementation.

Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova Republike Srbije

Traffic Police Department

Zlatko Belencan

electric scooters

light means of transport

means of transport

Amendments to the Law on Traffic Safety

Law on Traffic Safety

micromobility