Oct 29, 2020
E-scooter use is thriving in cities across Europe. The two-wheel ride is transforming urban environments by reducing CO2 emissions, congestion and pollution. But as e-scooter adoption continues to rise, it raises the question of how — and where — riders park.
At Bolt, we’re committed to educating our riders to park e-scooters responsibly in a bid to improve road safety. We appreciate that isolated examples of poor e-scooter parking can happen as their usage grows. Which is why we’ve introduced measures that allow the public to notify us of such examples. We’ve had tremendous support from our users in helping to identify poor parking examples, enabling us to act on them immediately.
Above you can see Bolt app screenshots showing how our users can report issues quickly. As well as describing the issue, users can also scan the scooter’s QR code and take a picture of the offending hardware.
Whilst we’re grateful to the public for reporting these issues, we knew that more needed to be done. That’s why we’ve introduced rider education initiatives to prevent such problems from happening in the first place.
To get our riders up to speed on all-things-parking, we took our parking message to the streets of Lithuania. In cities across the country, we launched our ‘Nedėk skerso’ campaign (translated as ‘Don’t block the pavement with your scooter’).
The campaign’s message urges riders to consider their fellow commuters when ending a ride. It focuses on preventing obstructions for pedestrians, cyclists and cars.
But it also highlights crucial safety themes such as road traffic rules, speed, vigilance, helmet wearing and responsible driving.
The campaign’s visual identity is inspired by examples of irresponsibly parked e-scooters. By showcasing these examples across Lithuania, we’re raising e-scooter parking awareness on a national level.
And this is what it all comes down to — education.
E-scooters are a new phenomenon for many European cities. And as the leading European transportation platform, it’s our job to educate and guide our riders.
That’s why we teamed up with local authorities to share details of the campaign via major news outlets (15min.lt, delfi.lt, lrytas.lt ), regional press (MadeInVilnius.lt, etaplius.lt, ve.lt, jp.lt) and local municipality websites (vilnius.lt). For maximum exposure, we also promoted the campaign on our social networks to reward riders who could identify examples of badly parked e-scooters.
The campaign didn’t only exist online though. In Kaunas, we set up camp at the famous Laisvės Alley in cooperation with the Lithuanian police to educate passers-by on e-scooter safety. Those who could answer questions correctly were given a bonus Bolt helmet to ride around the city in style!
We also joined forces with Vilnius City Municipality Communication Services at European Mobility Week. Here, participants had the chance to try out Bolt e-scooters in our makeshift slalom and get acquainted with the latest traffic safety rules. By the end of the event, riders knew exactly what responsible parking looked like and how to ride safely around Vilnius.
We know you’ve got places to go, people to see and things to do. But we also know you need to do these things safely.
Don’t delay, download the Bolt app today for a quick, convenient and affordable e-scooter ride!
