Insurance required for scooters, hoverboards and electric wheelchairs

The customers of electrical scooters, hoverboard and even wheelchairs will in future have to have insurance coverage, based on a ruling by the Constitutional Court docket.

Previous to the ruling, insurance coverage was solely required for a self-propelling car in a position to journey at a velocity in extra of 25 km/h. An exception was made for Class A mopeds which can not exceed that velocity restrict however nonetheless should be insured.

The Constitutional Court docket was responding to a request for a ruling from a courtroom in East Flanders in relation to 2 instances earlier than it. One involved a person convicted for driving a moped with out insurance coverage, who complained that scooter and electrical bicycle customers had been in a position to journey on the similar velocity with out insurance coverage.

The second case, extra oddly, was a person convicted of driving a cherry-picker with out insurance coverage, who argued that the car was not in a position to exceeds 25 km/h and was moreover not a moped.

The courtroom seemed all the way in which again to the parliamentary debates concerned within the creation of the laws, and located that the legislator had been involved, within the case of the moped, with each the velocity of the car and its mass. A moped is on the similar time in a position to attain a comparatively excessive velocity whereas being extraordinarily gentle. The 2 issues collectively create a sure threat.

But when the laws got here to be drafted, the courtroom mentioned, solely velocity was taken into consideration. That had the impact of suggesting {that a} 7.5 tonne cherry-picker platform was thought-about much less harmful than a moped.

Nevertheless fortuitously, that specific case has been resolved for the longer term, because the day earlier than the courtroom’s verdict, a legislation got here into drive which incorporates raised platforms and different development automobiles expressly throughout the velocity restrict legal guidelines.

So far as electrical scooters and the like are involved – electrical sharing bikes may also be lined – customers can now be fined for driving with out insurance coverage. If the police resolve to go down that highway, the courts will probably be obliged to observe.

It’ll then be as much as the legislator to take care of the problem, based on Barbara Van Speybroeck, spokesperson for insurance coverage trade federation Assuralia chatting with the VRT.

“If the courts observe [the ruling], then it’s as much as politicians, which might do numerous issues. They might write a brand new legislation, with clear standards. Or we may fall again on a European directive, which stipulates that each one motorised automobiles should have obligatory legal responsibility insurance coverage. If our nation falls again on that directive, electrical scooters and the like would additionally want insurance coverage.”

In some European international locations, she identified, such insurance coverage is already obligatory.

Alan Hope
The Brussels Occasions