There is still no legal framework that regulates both electric scooters and other types of Personal Mobility Vehicles (VMP) when they travel the Spanish streets.
Due to this lack of regulations we continue to see cases in which these VMP are misused. The last of which we have evidence has been in Zaragoza, a city in which a woman has been fined after crashing into a tree while driving an electric scooter while drunk .
Electric scooters remain in a normative limbo
The Zaragoza Police wanted to educate its citizens on Monday. He posted a tweet in the afternoon announcing that he had sanctioned a woman for driving a drunk electric scooter. The driver lost control of her vehicle and ended up crashing into a tree in the Plaza Emperor Carlos V.
The woman, after undergoing a breathalyzer test by the local police, tested positive for 0.65 mg / l of exhaled air. We remember that in Spain, as a general rule, the limit for driving a motor vehicle is 0.5 grams per liter in blood or 0.25 mg / l of exhaled air. After checking the state of drunkenness of the lady, the police put a fine of 1,000 euros , without loss of points.
The Personal Mobility Vehicles, such as the electric scooter that the woman from Zaragoza drove, are not considered as vehicles in the General Traffic Regulation although they are. For this reason the lady only received the fine. It would have been very different if these types of vehicles were already included in the aforementioned regulation.
According to article 379 of the penal code , those drivers who drive with a motor vehicle with an expired air alcohol rate of more than 0.60 milligrams per liter imply a prison sentence of three to six months , a fine of six to twelve months or jobs for the benefit of the community from 31 to 90 days and, in any case, the deprivation of the right to drive motor vehicles and mopeds for a period exceeding one and up to four years.
This woman got rid of a crime against Road Safety and, therefore, a much harder penalty because there is still no law regulating these VMP and that the DGT promised for this summer .
So far it is the Municipal Ordinances that are regulating its use in cities, although it should not be so. It is clear that more and more general regulations are needed that make common sense of their use. In this way, the number of 273 accidents registered with this type of vehicles could be reduced in 2018 or even a death of those registered to date.
