The president of the Portuguese Association of Insurers, Galamba de Oliveira, defended today that it should be created compulsory insurance for bicycles, namely scooters.
Galamba de Oliveira was speaking in Aveiro, on the sidelines of a conference on “Safe Micromobility”, organized by the Portuguese Insurers Association (APS), as part of a cycle of conferences, to be held in different locations around the country, under the general theme “Insurance in a changing world”.
“There is a problem with the legal framework of protection for this type of mobility, and I believe that in Portugal we have to develop and make mandatory an insurance policy for soft mobility that, on the one hand, guarantees the protection of the driver, but also guarantees some clauses of civil liability to third parties,” he advocated.
For the president of APS, “there is a new reality that we are witnessing today in the cities, with this mobility very available through the new platforms and it is necessary to ensure the protection of citizens, and there is a legal vacuum in terms of mandatory protection.
The president of the National Road Safety Authority, Rui Ribeiro, who spoke at the conference, believes that “soft mobility is here to stay and will have to be regulated so that it can fulfill its purposes”.
The number of accidents associated with the new soft modes has been increasing, and there are already a significant number of accidents involving, in particular, scooters, which, as scooters, are bound by the rules of the Highway Code, which many users are unaware of.
“If we look in terms of accidents, bicycles, which include scooters, have a great weight: they don’t compare to light vehicles or pedestrians, but they have relatively serious consequences,” Rui Ribeiro points out.
The president of the National Road Safety Authority says that the problem occurs more in shared mobility, in other words, where the scooter is not owned by the person driving it.
In his opinion, “scooters spread throughout the cities of Lisbon and Porto, people driving without helmets, riding in the opposite direction, running red lights or walking on the sidewalks, people with reduced mobility or handicaps bumping into and tripping over bicycles and scooters parked on the sidewalk” are factors that are raising an alert from the public opinion.
Rui Ribeiro warns that drivers can lose points on their driver’s license, and are subject to the rules of the Highway Code as speeders, and may even commit a crime if they drive under the influence of alcohol.
“The thing is that people don’t know about this and there has to be an awareness campaign by all means, so that they understand that they have to effectively comply with the highway code,” he concluded.