Electric scooters will be defined by law as light electric vehicles, will have to have a characteristic label, mandatory traffic insurance, will be driven on bike paths or, if there are none, on the right side of the road, and their drivers will have to be at least 16 years old, wear helmets and may not have headphones.
This is stated in the proposed amendments to the Law on Compulsory Traffic Insurance, which is in the parliamentary procedure and whose proponent is the Ministry of Finance, and in the draft amendments to the Law on Road Traffic Safety, which is under public debate until May 11 and whose author is the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The National Bureau of Insurers of Montenegro, which brings together insurance companies, as well as the Police Directorate, have been indicating for six years, since the appearance of these vehicles on Montenegrin streets, that they are not included in the laws, but that they participate in traffic and traffic accidents.
The law has been in effect since 2019.
The Police Directorate told "Vijesti" back in September 2019 that they had initiated an amendment to the Road Traffic Safety Law to include these vehicles in the law. The draft law was finalized last week and has been under public debate since April 11.
At the end of last year, a draft amendment to the law on compulsory traffic insurance was subject to public debate, and on April 4, the proposed amendments were submitted to the Parliament.
Director of the National Bureau of Insurers Boris Saban He said that both laws should be adopted to finally regulate the use of these vehicles.
"The proposed amendments to the Law on Compulsory Traffic Insurance, which have not yet passed the parliamentary procedure, among other things, propose a clearer definition of a vehicle and its use. This law has not yet regulated the mandatory liability insurance for electric scooters, and this is because this type of vehicle, or the way it is used in traffic, must first and foremost be prescribed by the provisions of the Law on Road Traffic Safety," said Šaban.
The Law on Compulsory Insurance states that insurance applies to owners and users of motor vehicles against damage caused to others in traffic. In the current law, a motor vehicle is “a self-propelled vehicle moving on land and a trailer, excluding vehicles moving on rails and vehicles that were used as a machine outside traffic at the time of the damage.”
The vehicle was anything faster than 14 km per hour.
The new amendment to the Law on Compulsory Insurance defines more precisely a vehicle subject to insurance as a vehicle "propelled solely by mechanical power on land with a maximum design speed exceeding 25 km/h, or a maximum net mass exceeding 25 kg and a maximum design speed exceeding 14 km/h".
The draft amendments to the Law on Road Traffic Safety introduce the term "light electric vehicle", which is: "a motor vehicle with at least two wheels, with mechanical steering, without seating, whose permanent nominal power of the electric motor does not exceed 0,6 kW, whose maximum design speed does not exceed 25 km/h and whose unladen mass does not exceed 35 kg".
This draft further places light electric vehicles in the chapter "Traffic of bicycles, mopeds, electric vehicles, motorcycles, tricycles and quadricycles". Thus, it is stated that these vehicles move on the right side of the cycle path at a maximum speed of up to 35 kilometers per hour, and if there is no cycle path, then on the right side of the roadway under the conditions that apply to bicycles.
An entire article has been added relating to the operation and movement of a light electric vehicle.
It is defined that a person under the age of 16 is not allowed to drive this vehicle on public roads, and that the driver must wear a fastened protective bicycle helmet.
Helmet required, headphones prohibited
It is prohibited for this vehicle to tow a trailer or any other vehicle or means of transportation, and the driver may not transport another person on it.
"A driver of a light electric vehicle may not drive the vehicle using headphones on or in both ears, which would reduce the ability to react and safely drive the vehicle. When there is no possibility of driving a light electric vehicle on a bicycle path or bicycle lane, the driver of a light electric vehicle may drive on the roadway on a road where the speed is limited to a maximum of 30 km/h. By way of exception to paragraph 6 of this article, a driver of a light electric vehicle who has reached the age of 18 may drive on the roadway on a road where the speed is limited to a maximum of 50 km/h," this article of the draft law states.
This means that even adult drivers are not allowed to ride electric scooters on roads where the permitted speed is greater than 50 km per hour, which means that they could ride them on city roads, but not on open highways where speeds exceed 50 km per hour.
Fines of up to 400 euros
It is also envisaged that this vehicle will have a manufacturer's sticker with characteristics that meet the requirements regarding the nominal power of the electric motor, the maximum design speed and the unladen mass of the vehicle prescribed by this law. This is part of the definition of these vehicles that "the permanent nominal power of the electric motor does not exceed 0,6 kW, whose maximum design speed does not exceed 25 km/h and whose unladen mass does not exceed 35 kg".
The fine for violating these regulations would be from 200 to 400 euros.
The Ministry of Interior sends the reports directly to the insurance company.
Šaban states that one of the important novelties of the draft law on compulsory traffic insurance is that it envisages electronic exchange of documentation between the National Bureau of Insurers and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with the aim of more efficiently resolving accident compensation claims for all traffic accidents.
"In practice, this should mean that injured parties would not be obliged to receive the accident report from the Ministry of the Interior, but rather these documents would be exchanged electronically between the Ministry of the Interior and insurance companies. Also, one of the novelties is the resolution of compensation claims in which damage was caused by the use of trailer vehicles. The aforementioned provision would provide injured parties with a simpler procedure when exercising their right to compensation for damage," said Šaban.
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