VIDEO: Riding bicycles and electric scooters is healthy, but the traffic rules are the same for everyone

Cyclists / Photo: Free Press

Skopje residents have been following trends in recent years, replacing traffic and bus congestion with bicycles and electric scooters. On sunny days, more and more citizens decide to do their daily activities moving with these means of transportation.

Some Skopje municipalities and the City often provide subsidies for the purchase of electric scooters and bicycles, emphasizing them as practical city transportation, the use of which reduces air pollution.

But scooter and bicycle riders say they feel unsafe on the streets, and more and more serious traffic accidents involving cyclists or scooter riders are being reported.

According to the data of the Ministry of the Interior, in the period from January to August 2022, the traffic police fined 47 drivers of electric scooters, for various reasons. Skopje residents are increasingly nervous about scooter drivers, believing that they do not respect traffic rules.

The spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior, Toni Angelovski, recently stated that "it's nice that citizens drive electric scooters, but that doesn't mean that traffic rules don't apply to them as well."

With the amendments to the Law on Road Traffic Safety adopted in December 2020, the drivers of these scooters are obliged to operate the vehicle on cycle paths or on footpaths. They also must not move at a speed of more than 25 km/h on a bicycle path, and at a speed of more than 6 km/h on a pedestrian path.

According to the Law, the driver of the scooter must not be younger than 14 years and must wear a protective helmet on his head, something that can rarely be seen on the streets of Skopje.

The Ministry of the Interior, as well as the Republic Council for Road Traffic Safety (RSBSP), often call on citizens to be able to ride bicycles and electric scooters as much as possible, but also to be cautious while driving such vehicles and to follow the rules.

This week marks the "European Mobility Week", a campaign that the European Commission has been implementing since 2002, until today, in the third week of September.

RSBSP is also part of the campaign this year, and as they say, the main goal is to form healthy lifestyle habits, a clean environment, safer traffic and support for alternative forms of mobility.

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