제 7 호 Electric Scooters, Two-faces of Smart Mobility
KICKER: SOCIETY (SHARING SERVICE)
Electric Scooters, Two-faces of Smart Mobility
Revolutionary or far to go?
By Dong-Wook Kim, Reporter
Recently, sharing service has been such a trend around the world. You can easily find lots of people on crowded streets, riding electric scooters to reach their destinations. However, due to the short history of sharing services, their laws and cultures are not settled yet. Can there be some problems with electric scooters, despite having become popular attractions of consumers and the market at the same time?
Appearance of a New Transportation
If you are thinking to move just a few meters, but you think it is unclear whether to ride a bus or go on foot, electric scooters can be something tempting for you. It is simple to ride electric scooters around if you just download the application on your smartphone and find where the scooters are parked. It is perfect for pedestrians who are willing to move shorter distances than riding buses or subways. Just by looking at the crowded cities, you can easily spot students, office workers and some self-employed people riding electric scooters to go to their destinations. Smart cities, cities combined with electronics, have been a solution to rapid urbanization.
Electric Scooters Parked at the Corner of the Street
Including personal mobilities, like electric scooters and electric bicycles, are called smart mobilities. Smart mobilities usually use electricity as their main power which means they do not emit exhaust gas when riding. Therefore, the importance of smart mobilities has come into prominence due to the eco-friendly system. According to the Korea Transport Institute, the smart mobility market is growing more than 20% annually. Korea’s smart mobility market scale is going to reach up to two hundred thousand smart mobilities by 2022.
In conclusion, as smart mobilities develop, members of the society become comfortable. As for users, the process becomes efficient because they can use the optimal transportation through many situations of the traffic. In addition, less people are likely to use transportation based on roads, so we can expect traffic jams to happen less. For business purposes, the operators can collect the data of the users so they can further use. For instance, there can be information about individuals’ preferences of smart mobilities or the distance the smart mobility users travel on average.
When Inventions Emerge, Problems Come Out Too
As written above, smart mobility made our lives much easier than before. However, as smart mobility markets grow rapidly, the users and press are demanding to amend the law for user’s safety. Since this market is quite new and it differs from the original transportation on roads, here are some issues about smart mobility in Korea.
Improvement of the Legal System
Due to the expansion of smart mobilities, the maintenance of the legal system about vehicles must be amended. Until the 9th of June 2020, to ride electric scooters, you had to be older than 16 years old and also have a two - class driver license. If you still meet the former conditions, electric scooters are classified as a motor device so they were not allowed to be ridden on bicycle roads or sidewalks. Yet now the laws are amended for users to use more electric scooters. Users without the driver license can now ride electric scooters if they are older than age 13. Yet, the law will not come into effect until the 10th of December 2020. Still, there is a lot to legislate about riding electric scooters. As said before electric scooters are only allowed to be ridden on roads with vehicles. However, their maximum speed is controlled to be 25kmh which is quite dangerous if riding with cars.
Safety Plans Should Be Drawn up
With the improvement of legal systems, there should be some plans between the smart mobilities and the pedestrians or the vehicles. Just like electric scooters, bicycles are classified as a motor device. If there is an accident between the pedestrian and the rider, the rider is most likely to take most of the responsibility. Still, bicycles still have their private bicycle roads, but this is not the case for electric scooters. The users of the electric scooters are in a dilemma of riding on a dangerous road with vehicles or to threaten the pedestrians or bicycles on sidewalks.
To ensure the safety of pedestrians, there should be laws that can make safer electric scooters. For instance, it can be an obligation to attach bells to warn the pedestrians or the reflector lights. It can also be an obligation to put on safety helmets and safety equipment while riding the scooters. Concerned with the low entry barriers of the scooters from December, safety training and riding guidelines should be widely spread among the users.
A User Riding Electric Scooter without Safety Gears
Parking Issues with Electric Scooters
You might be wondering why parking scooters at a random place can be a problem, but it has a lot of drawbacks. Electric scooters have a parking system called free - floating, which the users can just park anywhere they want. This can be beneficial for the users to just use the electric scooters everywhere but not for the others who are using the road. Even some landlords are making an appeal that the random electric scooters are parked in front of their houses. There are no definite fines to the free - floating systems yet. Thus, the need for temporary parking places for electric scooters is desperate. The users of the scooters and the companies of these smart mobilities should intend for users to use the fixed parking place.
Electric Scooter Parked at Someone's Property
In 2020, there are more than 10 enterprises which are providing smart mobility services in Korea. While the service is growing its market fast, indeed, will there be more specific laws introduced for the electric scooter users and the pedestrians? I hope someday an agreement between the two shall be made so everyone can feel relaxed while riding electric scooters.
Sources:
https://hankookilbo.com/News/Read/202005111727051195
https://biz.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/09/28/2019092800735.html
