Neither a citizen’s card nor a driver’s license. Prague will let the perpetrators of the offense on scooters go unpunished

The Technical Administration of Communications (TSK) has sent out for comments the very first draft of the Prague-wide contract with the operators, who until now only had agreements with the city districts.

According to the mayor’s deputy Zdeňko Hřib (Pirates), the contract will make operators, i.e. companies, responsible for compliance with the rules. Prague thus chooses a different path than the German Gelsenkirchen, which enforced its demands against the operators in court. It has now succeeded, with a court ruling that a German city can require customers to register by uploading their ID or driver’s license to an online application. The operators refused.

But according to Hřib, Prague “now has no reason to establish rules for the identification of individual users”. It is to receive anonymized data on the location of the scooters as well as photos after the end of individual rides in its database. “The data platform will enable compliance checks and provide overview statistics on the use of shared mobility. Another form of control will then be carried out by the TSK, city districts and the city police,” Hřib described.

The city will not collect personal data of clients, its partner will be companies. “It will therefore be up to the individual operators to further resolve possible fines with their users,” added the deputy.

According to Václav Petr from Lime, Prague operators recommend that customers carry a driver’s license with them. “Just like private owners of bikes, e-bikes or scooters, our clients do not have this obligation either, so we cannot force it from them,” said Petr.

E-scooters will start paying for insurance, but they are not allowed between cars

Finance

Even if a citizen’s or driver’s license is missing, it can be used to find out who has committed a possible offense. “In most cases, we can find out where our machines went at what time and we can identify them and, based on that, also identify the rider who ordered the ride. However, it works best in cases where the police have a scooter’s QR code,” added Petr.

Other European cities have already restricted shared electric scooters. A referendum on them was held in Paris last year with a clear result: about 90% of voters were in favor of the ban, and it has been in effect since last August. The island of Malta has also banned sharing, i.e. renting e-scooters.

survey

People especially in Prague 1 complain about scooters strewn on the sidewalks or standing at pedestrian crossings. Last September, representatives already voted to ban the parking of shared e-scooters in places under the administration of Prague 1. The municipality should also have called on the municipality to do the same in the entire conservation area, but according to Filip Lachmann (Prague 1, Zelení), this has not yet happened. According to Hřib, the Prague-wide contract should also specify places for parking shared electric scooters.

CLEARLY: Which electric scooters must have a new compulsory insurance

Economy