New digital partnership launched to help improve safety of e-scooters across Northamptonshire

A digital company has joined forces with Northamptonshire County Council and Voi to help improve the safety of e-scooters across the county.

Vianova, which is a French technology company, is working with the council to implement safety regulations and more zones where the scooters can only travel at a lower speed.

The tech-based approach is the first to be rolled out in the UK as 170,000 trips on e-scooters have been made so far in Northamptonshire.

Since the scooters first launched in Northampton in September last year, the trial has been extended to Corby and Kettering and will shortly be launching in Wellingborough, Rushden and Higham Ferrers too.

The new tech collaboration launched in December and has been used to implement and enforce more than 250 regulations for e-scooters.

Ian Achurch, e-scooter lead for Northamptonshire County Council, said: “We are delighted to be working with Vianova and Voi on this new platform.

“Whilst still at pilot stage, the signs are very promising.

“The platform enables us to create regulations which can be implemented with a matter of minutes.

“It provides the ability for us to track and evaluate compliance. With this we can develop better insights and understand how effective the regulations are, and where these need to be changed or tightened.

“Ultimately, it will benefit users, local communities and other stakeholders, and should help to inform some of the considerations on best-practice and guidelines for e-scooters operations in the UK.”

An additional 100 no parking zones, 20 no riding zones, 10 low speed zones and 140 incentivised parking zones have also been added, designed to reduce the chance of incidents involving e-scooters around sites, such as schools, care homes and highly pedestrianised areas.

The county council can now also receive alerts regarding any vehicles that might be causing nuisance, such as by breaking parking regulations, directly through the digital platform and report them to Voi.

Thibault Castagne, CEO of Vianova added: “We are thrilled to partner with Northamptonshire County Council and Voi Technology on this pioneering project, which we hope will set the trend for the broader e-scooter experiment across the UK.

“Better managing micro-mobility is an important first step in reclaiming streets for people, and using data to shape the transportation revolution underway.”

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