Myths & Facts

“The pavements are permanently cluttered”

Reality: This was a real problem, and regulation has largely fixed it. Since the mandatory drop-zone regime, improperly parked scooters fell 63% between December 2024 and January 2025, and the share of correctly parked vehicles has risen every month since. Users must now photograph a parked scooter to end a ride or face a fine, and Bolt and Dott field their own street teams in the busiest areas. A ban now treats a wound that has already healed, while removing the transport mode for hundreds of thousands of riders.

Source: Brussels Times, “No miracle solution to e-scooter nuisance in Brussels,” Feb 2025, quoting Brussels Mobility spokesperson Inge Paemen.

“Paris banned them and it worked”

Reality: The Paris ban came from a referendum with 7.46% turnout: 103,084 votes from 1.38 million registered voters, on the same day as the Paris marathon, with 203 polling stations against 899 at the previous presidential election. France's own transport minister called it “a massive democratic flop.” And the “it worked” claim doesn't survive contact with the evidence: the main documented effect was a surge in shared-bike use, with dockless bike rides more than doubling, not a return to cars. Where restriction has pushed people back to cars is Atlanta, whose night-time scooter curfew increased driver time in traffic by 10–11%, costing the city an estimated 325,000–780,000 extra hours of travel a year. Brussels is not Paris: no comparable metro density, a polycentric commute pattern that scooters serve well, and a transport network built on radial spokes that leaves cross-municipal journeys badly served.

Sources: TechCrunch and NPR (referendum figures); Electrek and Cities Today (post-ban shift to bikes); Georgia Tech study via Lime (Atlanta curfew congestion).

“Villo! is a sufficient alternative”

Reality: The Region has extended the Villo! concession to 2028 while banning shared scooters, keeping one fixed-station docked system and removing thousands of dockless, point-to-point scooters. Brussels Mobility's own comparative study scored Villo! at 0.7 rentals per bike per day, against a European benchmark of three to seven. It runs on fixed terminals, the bikes are heavy, and it requires cycling ability and physical fitness. It is not a neutral substitute, and the operator (JCDecaux) is staying on past contract expiry because no successor has been identified and no tender has been announced.

Source: Brussels Mobility comparative study; Villo!/JCDecaux concession terms.

“This only affects tourists and young professionals; riders are uncivilised”

Reality: Aside from the fact that young professionals and tourists are important, in 2025, more than 781,573 people took 9.502 million shared scooter trips in Brussels, roughly two-thirds of all scooter rides in Belgium. A large share of trips happen during commuting hours or late at night, when metro and tram services are reduced or stopped: hospital staff on night shifts, delivery riders on last-kilometre runs, service workers heading home at 1am from communes with no metro line. The people least able to absorb the extra time or cost are the ones who feel this most.

Source: trip and user figures as cited by operators and press coverage of the 2025 fleet.

“Scooters are dangerous and cause too many injuries”

Reality: The 666 figure the government cites covers all e-scooter injuries in 2025, private machines included, yet only shared scooters are being banned, and only shared scooters are speed-capped and geofenced. Set against 7.55 million shared trips, that is an injury rate of under 0.01%. For comparison, 4,303 people were injured on Brussels roads in 2024 across all modes, including 951 cyclists; of the people killed, the majority were pedestrians, none struck by a scooter. Nobody proposes banning bicycles or cars. Public policy manages risk, through speed caps, pedestrian-zone geofencing, designated parking and operator licensing, rather than removing the activity.

Source: Brussels Mobility road-safety figures, 2024; government injury figure, 2025.

“Shared and private scooters are the same problem”

Reality: They are opposites. Shared scooters are speed-limited, geofenced to slow in pedestrian areas, remotely disabled, insured, maintained on a schedule and ridden by identified account-holders. Private scooters are none of these: they are routinely derestricted past the 25 km/h legal cap, uninsured, untraceable and bought for cash. The ban removes the regulated category and leaves the unregulated one untouched. Displaced riders who buy private machines will make the safety and clutter picture worse, not better.

Source: Belgian Highway Code speed cap; operator licensing conditions.

“Criminals use shared scooters, so banning them fights crime”

Reality: No public data substantiates the figure of 25 shootings linked to shared scooters; it comes from a single line in the prosecutor's circular, with no case breakdown or methodology released. The logic is also backwards. A shared scooter is the most traceable vehicle on the road: every trip is logged to a verified account, with GPS to within a few metres and payment details available to police on request. A criminal fleeing on a Bolt leaves a full evidence trail. One fleeing on a private scooter bought for cash leaves nothing. Removing the traceable option is the appearance of toughness at the cost of an actual investigative tool.

Source: prosecutor's circular as reported by La Libre and VRT, June 2026.

“Scooters aren't green anyway, so losing them is no loss”

Reality: It's true that studies find shared scooters often replace walking, cycling and public transport rather than car trips, which is the strongest argument the ban's supporters have. But two things follow. First, that is an argument about emissions, not about access: it says nothing to the commuter whose cross-town journey has no decent transit option. Second, it ignores where displaced demand goes, to private scooters, which are no greener and far less controlled. If the concern is genuinely the climate, the answer is to integrate scooters with public transport, not delete them.

Source: ETH Zurich and 6t modal-shift studies on scooter substitution.

“Most major cities are banning them”

Reality: While Paris and Madrid have banned shared scooters, the vast majority of European cities regulate them instead: fleet caps, two- or three-operator licensing, mandatory drop zones, geofenced speed limits. That is precisely the system Brussels already built between 2022 and 2024, and which was beginning to work. Brussels is choosing to abandon a functioning regulatory model rather than refine it.