Estonian mobility company Bolt is to launch ‘Reckless Ride Score’, an evaluation system to address the unsafe driving habits of e-scooter drivers. It is the first micro-mobility provider to do so. Through this approach, Bolt hopes that safety standards for the highly stressed sector of shared e-scooters will continue to strengthen across the industry.

The new scoring system evaluates a user’s driving behavior based on data collected from Bolt steps’ sensors. This includes the detection of tandem driving (with two on one e-scooter), frequent abrupt braking and skidding, collisions, and illegal parking. The system assigns points to each of these issues every five trips, thus evaluating the user’s driving behavior.

If the user falls in the 2% of a city’s most reckless customers, Bolt will impose three-step measures to teach safer driving habits. In the first phase, the reckless rider will receive educational material on the dangers that e-scooter users expose themselves to.

If riders do not improve their behavior during the next five trips, their e-scooter speed will be limited to 15 km/hour for the next five trips (the normal top speed is 25 km/h). If those first two measures do not improve riding behavior, the user will be suspended from using a Bolt e-scooter for a week.

Safety Pledge

The new app feature is currently being tested in Germany and Portugal. In the coming months, it will be further rolled out in more than 260 cities in 25 European countries where Bolt operates. It is also part of Bolt’s Scooter Safety Pledge, a nine-point document on the mobility company’s safety initiatives.

For example, Bolt was one of the first shared e-scooters providers to come up with an alcohol prevention test, a test that is now being scaled up further because a study by Brussels-based hospital St Peter’s UHC showed that one in three shared e-scooter accidents are alcohol- and night-related.

And because one in three e-scooter accidents with injuries happens during the first ride, its beginner mode, the win-app option that limits the speed of a shared e-scooter to 15 km/hour for new users, will also be further developed.

Additional measures

Just as the use of shared e-scooters is under pressure in several cities – it even came to a ban in Paris – because of incidents and nuisance, Bolt is also going to make further efforts to try to contain shared e-scooters lying around in public spaces as much as possible.

According to Bolt’s data, incidents involving parked shared e-scooters account for only 15% of incidents. But because poorly parked e-scooters pose a particular risk to the elderly and people with disabilities, Bolt will further expand its AI parking system and the ambient sound emitted by the e-scooters to warn pedestrians of an approaching vehicle.