National governments and industry step into EU regulatory vacuum on e-scooters
Belgium has become the latest European country to grapple with how to make e-scooters safer, with a federal helmet rule, new technology being rolled out on shared e-scooters, and new injury data all landing in the space of a few weeks. Together, they show how much of European e-scooter safety policy is now being shaped by national rules and operator decisions, in the absence of harmonised EU standards and guidelines.
On 30 March, Belgian Federal Mobility Minister Jean-Luc Crucke announced a Royal Decree that will, from September, make helmets compulsory on all e-scooters capable of speeds above 20 km/h. On 22 April, shared mobility operator Bolt rolled out 1,200 new e-scooters in Brussels with built-in AI that detects pavement riding and slows the vehicle automatically. Around the same time, the industry coalition Micro-Mobility for Europe (MMfE) reported that serious injury rates on shared e-scooters fell slightly in 2025.
Crucke’s helmet rule will result in shared e-scooter riders being excluded, in a European first. A Vias study of e-scooter casualties at five Belgian hospitals found that none of the e-scooter riders presenting at A&E had been wearing a helmet at the time of their crash, and a more recent Vias hospital-data analysis found that 60% of seriously injured e-scooter riders admitted to hospital had a head injury – a higher rate than for cyclists or car occupants. International data cited by Vias suggest that fewer than 7% of e-scooter riders wear a helmet when they crash. Meanwhile Vias’s 2025 traffic safety barometer, published in March, recorded 13 e-scooter deaths in Belgium in 2025 – more than triple the 4 recorded in 2024, against a backdrop of falling overall road deaths.
Mandatory helmets for e-scooters are overdue. But shared e-scooters in Belgium are excluded, on the basis that operators have voluntarily agreed to cap their fleets at 20 km/h. That leaves Belgium with a peculiar split: owners of faster private e-scooters will need helmets; users of capped shared ones will not. Private e-scooters sold in Belgium must be limited to 25 km/h.
ETSC’s view is that all e-scooters should have a factory-set 20 km/h cap – a vehicle technical standard, and properly an EU competence – and that the EU should issue guidelines on rider rules (helmet use, minimum age, no pavement riding) so that member states implement them consistently. Belgium has the speed cap on shared fleets through a voluntary deal, but stops short on helmets for those riders.
The Bolt rollout shows how operators are making efforts to improve safety with technology. The new vehicles can detect pavement riding, warn the rider and then slow the vehicle if ignored. They also detect the proximity of pedestrians and guide users to legal parking areas via an in-handlebar screen. Pavement riding has been illegal in Belgium for some years; what has been missing is consistent enforcement. Bolt’s technology is a voluntary, proprietary initiative – there is no agreed European standard for what such a system should detect, how reliably, or how it should respond.
Meanwhile the MMfE industry group’s 2025 incident data, drawn from more than 640 million km on shared e-scooters, reports that serious injury risk per million kilometres on shared e-scooters fell by 0.6% between 2024 and 2025. These are industry-aggregated, self-reported figures rather than independent data, and MMfE itself acknowledges that “reductions in serious injuries and fatalities are not yet happening fast enough to meet the European Commission’s targets, and vulnerable road users remain among the most affected in urban traffic.”
ETSC would like to see the European Union taking firm action. The case for harmonisation has two halves – mandatory vehicle technical standards, and EU guidelines on rider rules to drive consistency across Member States (as we now have for drink-driving rules, for example). A Commission-funded TRL study set out the options for the technical-standards half in late 2024. The Commission has yet to bring forward a proposal on either technical standards, or guidelines for rider rules. The Dutch government also requested EU harmonised rules for personal mobility devices, including e-scooters, at a meeting of EU transport ministers in December last year.