Antwerp police to cut souped-up e-scooters to pieces with hydraulic cutters
Members of the public found with a souped-up electric scooter up in Antwerp may see police cut the vehicle to pieces on the spot using hydraulic cutters. Uninsured e-scooters or scooters that do not comply with regulations risk the same fate. ‘They pose a major road safety problem,’ explains Kim Bastiaens of Antwerp police.
Last year, no fewer than 354 accidents involving e-scooters were recorded in the Antwerp police zone. That’s an average of one per day. These are only the accidents that are actually reported. Many of the accidents are due to high speed or a failure to follow traffic rules, the police say.
What are the rules?
You must be at least 16 years old to ride an e-scooter
You are not allowed to carry any passengers
You may not ride on the pavement
You must ride on the cycle path, if there is one
Your e-scooter may not exceed speeds of 25 km per hour
Over 4,000 offences were recorded in Antwerp over the past 2 years. ‘A large number of people were stopped driving with several people on one vehicle on the footpath,’ explains mayor Bart De Wever (Flemish nationalist). ‘More than 320 e-steps were also seized in order to destroy them. Often, these are e-scooters that can reach hallucinatory speeds.’
Antwerp police have now bought hydraulic cutters to allow them to quickly destroy illegal scooters on the spot, although this will not immediately become standard procedure. ‘We are not going to cut every e-scooter to pieces,’ stresses Kim Bastiaens of Antwerp police.
‘A number of conditions have to be met. Unregistered or uninsured e-scooters that can reach speeds over 25 kilometres per hour will meet that fate. Offenders will also have to agree to the procedure.’
Why would anyone agree to that?
You may be thinking ‘Why would any offender agree to their e-scooter being destroyed?’ ‘By cutting the scooters into pieces, offenders avoid storage costs and a long legal procedure,’ Officer Bastiaens explains. It is important that these illegal e-scooters are taken off the roads as soon as possible. ‘There is a major road safety problem associated with them,’ he says.
‘E-scooters are extremely dangerous for users and may lead to very serious injuries. They are also the cause of unsafe behaviour in traffic and lead to justified frustration among other road users,’ adds Mayor De Wever.
