Will Paris’s ban stop e-scooters killing people?

Rental e-scooters have been banned from Paris since Friday after residents of the French capital were asked to decide their fate in a referendum. The vote, held in April, attracted a low turnout, with only 103,000 of the city’s 1.38 million men and women bothering to cast their ballot. Of those that did, however, 90 per cent voted to rid their streets of rental scooters.

Rental scooters were first introduced onto the streets of Paris five years ago amid much fanfare. They were, claimed the company responsible, California-based Lime, the environmentally-friendly future. ‘Very quickly our fleet will grow to respond to demand,’ claimed Lime’s director for France, Arthur-Louis Jacquier.

The American start-up chose Paris to launch its European operation because it regarded the city ‘as a pioneer for new forms of commuting’. Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor, was initially enthusiastic, seeing the e-scooter as compatible with her vision of a Green future for Paris. But