Who received the largest fine for riding a scooter last year?
According to the court registry search engine “Babushka,” 71 court cases involving electric scooters were recorded in 2024. Such violations are usually punishable by fines ranging from 340 to 34,000 hryvnia and sometimes by the revocation of driving privileges. The largest fine was imposed on a man who was driving an electric scooter while intoxicated in Odesa.
Last year, 71 offenses involving electric scooter enthusiasts were recorded in Babushka. Over the course of the year, such cases increased by 42%. Already this year, the court registry has recorded at least 17 such cases.
Scooter drivers usually appear in administrative offenses. For example, this year, 13 administrative and 4 criminal cases have been recorded. For comparison, last year there were 64 administrative and 7 criminal cases, respectively.
The maximum fine for drunk driving was imposed on an electric scooter driver in Odesa in June 2024. It turned out that the man did not have a driver’s license and was not riding a scooter while drunk for the first time. The court fined him 34,000 hryvnias and ordered him to pay court costs. It should be noted that if the defendant had a driver’s license, he would have been deprived of his driving privileges for such a violation.
Another 17 people have been fined 17,000 hryvnia over the past two years. Fifteen of them were driving a scooter while intoxicated, and two were under the influence of drugs. Three people were banned from driving for a year.
Since 2023, all electric scooters (monowheels, Segways, etc.) have been recognized as vehicles, which has allowed the police and courts to hold electric scooter drivers administratively liable on the same basis as car drivers. However, there are still no specific rules and responsibilities for electric scooter drivers. This conflict could be resolved by draft laws 3023 of 2020 and 10441 of 2024, which have been pending in the Verkhovna Rada for a long time, according to Mykola Polyukhovych, a member of the traffic safety council of the NGO U-Cycle (Kyiv Cyclists Association).
“Electric scooter drivers are not allowed to ride on sidewalks, and there is currently no bicycle infrastructure for them, which can only be used by cyclists, which would be appropriate given the similarity of their characteristics. Therefore, scooter riders must ride exclusively on the roadway, following the traffic rules on a general basis, for violation of which they are held liable — after all, a vehicle equipped with an electric motor is a source of increased danger to other road users. “Given the almost unrestricted access to electric scooters, as well as the growing number of cases of such drivers being held liable by the police and courts, this issue needs to be regulated by law,” comments Mykola Polyukhovych.
Source: https://opendatabot.ua/analytics/electroscooters-courts-2024
