Safety aspects of e-scooters in urban areas: Preliminary results on citizens' perception, users' behavior and role of pavement

This study is focused on safety aspects related to the use of e-scooters in urban areas. Since e-scooters recently appeared in urban areas, rapidly spreading, and increasing in popularity, several Countries and Municipalities have been not able to properly update both legislation and infrastructure. In fact, many of the enacted rules have been temporary and repeatedly modified, causing confusion among users. Moreover, road pavements are mostly inappropriate to e-scooters, equipped with small wheels and with serious stability issues, especially during braking. As a result, recently, a significant number of e-scooter-related accidents occurred, raising attention to the road-safety topic. These are the reasons why the preliminary investigation reported in this study is devoted to understanding typical user behaviors and the overall safety perception connected to these vehicles. In detail, the study is focused on three main points: (i) the Italian citizens’ opinion on e-scooters’ effects on urban mobility safety, by submitting an on-line questionnaire to collect opinions from both users and non-users of e-scooters; (ii) the e-scooter users behavior, by performing on-site surveys aimed at achieving a direct observation of the phenomenon in Milan (Italy); (iii) the e-scooters-pavement interaction by means field tests carried out installing an accelerometer on an e-scooter and measuring the vibration effects deriving from different pavement types and distresses. The preliminary results reported in the paper demonstrate the different safety perception of e-scooters users and non-users, some critical aspects related to e-scooters drivers’ behavior, non-negligible safety effects arising from pavement-e-scooter interaction as consequence of pavement type and condition and e-scooter's speed.