Too little, too late – again

A young woman rides an electrical scooter connected the aforesaid roadworthy where a 12-year-old lad was injured earlier that aforesaid time when his electrical scooter collided with a car, successful Aspropyrgos, west of Athens, connected Thursday, May 7, 2026. [InTime News]

There are simply too galore incidents involving electrical scooters to number – thankfully, not each of them fatal. What we bash cognize is that successful 2025 alone, 400 children and teenagers under the property of 16 were injured successful such incidents. We besides cognize that 17 accidents took spot successful the archetypal two months of this year, which means astir 1 each three days. The caller decease of a 13-year-old lad successful Ilia successful the Peloponnese, however, shocked the state and triggered reactions. And we don’t cognize however galore of the incidents recorded person resulted successful superior injuries that required hospitalization and which whitethorn person near serious, possibly adjacent irreversible, damage.

“Managing the contented of electrical scooters is tricky. It is an environmentally affable mode of transportation and we request to find a way for them to run astatine a definite level of safety. The archetypal measurement to this extremity is simply a implicit prohibition for minors,” Minister for Citizen Protection Michalis Chrysochoidis said connected Friday.

Maybe it would beryllium an thought to marque the parents of youngsters utilizing electrical scooters reply for kid endangerment

Until the measurement goes into effect, therefore, children and youngsters will proceed to beryllium allowed to spell astir connected electrical scooters without a helmet and without immoderate operator education. There is nary request to spell into however exposed riders are to a wrong turn of the wheel from a passing αυτοκίνητο and the elements, oregon the incredibly unsafe speed astatine which these vehicles tin spell astatine – well supra the ineligible bounds of 25 kilometers per hr – becoming each the much unsafe when they are being driven connected cardinal roads and avenues. Maybe it would beryllium an thought to marque the parents of youngsters utilizing electrical scooters reply for kid endangerment.

How did we get to this point, yet again? How did something that was hailed arsenic a flexible transportation enactment travel so rapidly (after the dangers were pointed retired again and again from the very archetypal time that electrical scooters appeared connected the country’s streets) extremity up adding so galore injuries and adjacent decease to the agelong database of roadworthy accidents this state is already notorious for? We should cognize amended – Greece is sixth connected the European Union database of countries with the astir roadworthy accidents and fatalities. Some advancement is being made with the intensification of Breathalyzer tests and stricter implementation of helmet rules for motorcyclists.

But the aforesaid question keeps coming back, again and again, remorselessly: Why are the rules enforced when it’s too late? And particularly successful cases where you know, with implicit certainty, that not enforcing the rules will pb to death. Did anyone truly judge that each electrical scooters would bring to Greece’s streets was a amusive and eco-friendly way to get around?