World News for Students of English

07-04-2023 07:00

Parisians voted in favor of banning rental electric scooters from the city in a non-binding referendum. The referendum was called in response to a rising number of people being injured and killed on e-scooters in the French capital.

Almost 90% of votes cast on Sunday favored a ban on the battery-powered devices; however, only under 8% of those eligible turned out to vote. Most people believe that e-scooters are accident-prone for both the users and pedestrians. However, some claimed that e-scooters were the only way to see their grandchildren who lived on the other end of the city because metros and busses didn’t work well.

E-scooters have operated in the city since 2018, and Paris was one of the first cities to adopt them. But critics argue they were causing more harm than good. There was a concern with the way some people were driving the scooters. Riders often didn’t wear helmets, weaved through traffic, dodged pedestrians on pavements and got up to speeds of 27 kilometers per hour. Children as young as 12 can legally hire the e-scooters in Paris.

Difficult words: non-binding (having no legal power), accident-prone (tending to be involved in a greater than average number of accidents), dodge (to avoid someone or something by a sudden quick movement).

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