Some electric scooters are lined up in a parking lot. Britta Pedersen/dpaAccording to a survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of dpa, most Germans have a bad opinion of electric scooters, while many have never used one.
Just over half (51%) of adults in Germany have a somewhat or even very negative attitude towards vehicles, while 61% of respondents believe that road safety has worsened since electric scooters were allowed on German roads in 2019.
Only 5% report an improvement and 25% say no change has occurred.
Another 76% of respondents believe that e-scooters should be parked in specially designated parking spaces, with 13% favoring the roadside and 12% on pavements as parking spaces.
At the moment there are no parking spaces reserved for rental scooters, which are found in large numbers in large and medium-sized cities, causing problems especially for the elderly and people with visual impairments.
“Seniors have huge problems” because of incorrectly parked scooters, said Jens-Peter Kruse of the German National Association of Senior Citizens’ Organizations.
“In some cases, the e-scooters were parked in a way that was even provocative: on the other side of the bike lane, on the other side of the sidewalk,” Kruse explained.
“This is a very big danger for people with vision problems, but also for all people who ride this cycle path in the dark.”
The German Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired is currently taking legal action in Bremen, Münster and Berlin “to enforce fixed parking on pavements”, says deputy director Christiane Möller.
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