ATTITUDES OF ELECTRIC SCOOTER DRIVERS REGARDING THE CHOICE OF THE SAFEST MOVEMENT SURFACE AND OTHER ASPECTS OF SAFE TRAFFIC PARTICIPATION

The modern development of cities induces a need for greater mobility of the population, and especially for the fast and easy change of locations of people and goods during the day. As a response to these needs, micromobility vehicles have appeared, representing a huge potential in solving these problems. Due to their characteristics, electric micro-vehicles, i.e. electric scooters, have particularly stood out in application as flexible, economical, and ecologically sustainable vehicles. The untimely harmonization of valid legal regulations with the intensive increase in the participation of electric scooters in traffic has led to a series of problems regarding their status and the issue of safe inclusion into the existing traffic system. In practice, in many cities, the infrastructure is not adapted to their movement, which has led to their movement on all available surfaces. As a consequence, there has been an increase in the number of conflict situations between different categories of traffic participants, which leads to the question of the justification of moving electric scooters on pedestrian and other surfaces used by vulnerable traffic users. In order to determine the justification of driving electric scooters on pedestrian and bicycle surfaces, a survey research was conducted, which pointed to the complexity of solving this problem and safely including scooter drivers into the traffic system. The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences in the perception of safety depending on the type of movement surface (roadway, bicycle, or pedestrian surface). It was concluded that riding electric scooters on pedestrian surfaces is not justified as a permanent solution,
but exclusively as a temporary measure in the absence of dedicated infrastructure.