Belgium is putting in place a number of new traffic regulations to deal with safety issues caused by the exploding popularity of lightweight electric scooters, including 400 scooter accidents in the Brussels region alone for 2020.
Under the new rules, they’re banned from sidewalks, can only carry one rider at a time, and are no longer legal for anyone under 16. The sidewalk ban comes because previous rules allowed them but only at walking speed; the Federal Mobility Minister said that rule “does not seem to be respected.”
The age-16 requirement aligns the scooters with other motorized vehicles including mopeds. The Flemish Mobility Minister told reporters that “It is too dangerous to let children ride on roads on unstable vehicles that reach 25 km per hour.”
