Paris votes to ban hired e-scooters

Residents of Paris, one of the first major cities to adopt public hire electric scooters as a mode of transport, have voted to ban them from the streets of the French capital amid rising safety concerns.

The bikes, known in French as trottinette, were introduced in 2018, making use of Paris' extensive network of cycle lanes, and remain hugely popular, with usage soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each of the city's approximately 15,000 vehicles for hire is used on average 3.5 times a day, the highest usage rate anywhere in Europe. But there have been increasing numbers of accidents involving scooters, with at least 27 scooter-related deaths across the whole of France last year, up from just seven in 2020.