Boon or blight? E-scooters around the world
electric scooters that have become ubiquitous in Paris and other cities worldwide will be banned in the French capital on September 1.
It is the biggest metropolis to remove the app-based devices that first zoomed onto streets in 2018, but many other cities have taken action on the vehicles that can inspire love or loathing.
While users hail them as eco-friendly ways to avoid gridlock, detractors consider them as an unsightly menace with the power to maim and kill.
Here is a look at the state of play in other cities worldwide:
Paris: the pioneer
The French capital was an early adopter of e-scooters in 2018, when the pavements were soon strewn with discarded rental devices from the first operator, Lime.
After an uproar over the anarchy and a number of fatal accidents, the city clamped down, reducing the number of operators to three (Dott, Lime and Tier) and the number of scooters to 15,000.
For privately owned scooters, the minimum age for riders is 12 (the government wants to raise that to 14), but the Paris rental operators said last November they would step up enforcement of a minimum age of 18 — after city officials warned their licenses were in jeopardy.
They also must be parked in designated spots and riders are not allowed to go over 10 kilometres per hour in most parts of Paris — but many do anyway.
In April, residents voted in a referendum to ban rental scooters, a move that will not impact privately owned devices.
Barcelona and Montreal: outright bans
A few cities before Paris have taken the same drastic measures with an outright ban.
Barcelona outlawed rental scooters on public roads in 2018.
When the German firm Wind launched an electric scooter sharing programme in the city that year, within hours police
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