Electric Skateboard – Examining the Issues
Written by: Hadar Stein
Hover boards and electric bikes and scooters are growing in popularity worldwide. In the past few years, this new style of transportation has become very trendy especially for children. At the beginning of 2018 a new electric skateboard will reach the market and will have no remote control. Instead, it will be equipped with a gyroscopic sensor and weight and motion detectors. Like the hover board, the electric skateboard will accelerate when the rider leans forward and will shut off when the riders jumps off or leans backwards dramatically. This new skateboard will reach speeds of 28 kilometers per hour for a range of 20 kilometers.
This emergent technology is an extremely useful, easy and eco-friendly method of transportation, especially in urban areas. Israel should encourage this new transportation and welcome the change that it brings. However, these new forms of transportation, raise legal and regulatory questions such as minimum age, licensing, traffic rules and issues of liability for damages.
To address these questions, Israel enacted laws regulating electric bikes. However, as is often the case, the law hasn’t kept up with the pace of technological changes. For example, the hover board did not qualify as a bicycle under those laws, so it was regulated it as a Segway under a law passed ten years earlier. Similarly, the Israeli law does not mention electric skateboards at all. We can only assume that the electric skateboard will be regulated ineffectively either as a bike or a Segway.
Since these new forms of transportation are cheap and available even for children, Israel has had to deal with fearless young riders who lack a basic appreciation of traffic rules. In addition, these electric vehicles are much faster and more powerful than the average non-powered bike or skateboard, making safety precautions even more important for both riders and pedestrians.
To deal with inexperienced and young riders, Israel has not only enacted laws, but has also invested in their enforcement. Police are now empowered to enforce these laws and even issue tickets. To help with the enforcement, the Ministry of Transportation has also produced television and radio ads that show the dangers of negligent riding and educate the public on the current regulations. However, even though the minimum age for riding either an electric bike or a hover board was set at 16 this seems to be rarely enforced.
In truth, parents, rather than laws and police, must be the real enforcers of safety and education of proper use of electric vehicles. Even though technology changes quickly and the law tries to keep up, good ole’ parental responsibility may be the best way to keep us all safe.
