Dott, Lime and Tier announce measures to overcome safety concerns in Paris 

Micromobility operators in Paris have announced a series of measures in the hopes of alleviating safety concerns, as councillors have considered scrapping shared scooter schemes in the city. 

Dott, Lime, and Tier, the three micromobility providers currently operating in the French capital, have set out 11 steps to improve e-scooter integration. 

Councillors in Paris are considering a potential ban on rental e-scooters, and while the final decision would rest with city mayor Anne Hidalgo, Paris town council is debating whether or not to let the schemes continue.

On 29th September, Paris City Hall requested the operators to make proposals to improve their schemes, resulting in Dott, Lime and Tier setting out 11 measures ranging from age verification to banning orders.

The proposals made to the City of Paris are: 

• User age verification: already established and will cover 100% of the fleet from Monday 28 November
• Vehicle registration plates: increasing rider accountability through easier reporting of highway code violations
• Banning offenders: Removing users who repeatedly violate the highway code
• Funding an experiment using camera technology to detect highway code violations
• Testing sidewalk detection technology to prevent sidewalk riding
• Education campaign produced by all three operators to raise awareness of highway code laws and responsible use
• Creation of a ‘micro-mobility observatory’ to produce independent data on uses and accidents, to be shared with city authorities
• Using technology to prevent overfilled parking spots and doubling the number of patrollers to move vehicles from full spaces. 
• Financing infrastructure which benefits e-scooter users by increasing the fee paid to the City of Paris
• Price incentives to encourage users to choose walking over very short trips
• Financing long-term rental of adapted e-scooters for disabled users in collaboration with OMNI

In a joint statement Henri Moissinac, CEO of Dott; Wayne Ting, CEO of Lime, and Lawrence Leuschner, CEO of Tier said: “Shared e-scooters now offer an efficient, highly regulated transport service which is being used by hundreds of thousands of Parisians. We have listened to the requests from the City of Paris and believe that we have provided robust and effective responses. These have been shared with the Paris City Hall and we are waiting on a response. We are already introducing two strong improvements, with vehicle registration plates and user age verification now in place.

“We have no doubt that Paris will maintain its leadership in the fight against pollution and the promotion of sustainable transport. We are not preparing for a ban, which would be a step backwards when other major global capitals are making this type of service permanent.”

Paris currently has 15,000 rental electric scooters in operation.

After the initial introduction of e-scooters in Paris in 2018, authorities reduced the number of permitted schemes following complaints from citizens, resulting in the three operators being given contracts to run their scooters there.  

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Garance Lefevre, public affairs director for Lime, recently said that if these new safety measures are implemented, Paris would become the city with the strictest scooter regulation in the world.