Santa Cruz has gone from imposing more than 200 sanctions for the misuse of electric scooters in a single month to put only one in October, and none in September. In total, so far this year 449 sanctions have been imposed, which means that until June 365 scooters were fined, and from that month until October, only 64. In 2021, from June to January of this year others were imposed 306 fines, hence the sharp drop in the imposition of these sanctions is striking.
These data are contained in the response given by the Security and Mobility area to the PSOE of Santa Cruzwho was interested in this question.
In addition, a distinction is made between companies and individuals when imposing sanctions, so that of the total fines, 300, have been received by electric scooter rental companies, while the rest, 149, have been imposed on individuals. There are four companies that appear as sanctioned, registering one of them 82% of all the fines imposed on companies.
Among the reasons that can explain the drop in the number of disciplinary proceedings against electric scooters in the city is, on the one hand, the car parks that have been set up for these vehicles, which encourages users to leave them well parked, or the difficulty to penalize drivers at the time of committing the offence.
To these questions we must add, as DIARIO DE AVISOS has learned, that the agents have been overwhelmed by the administrative processing of each of the complaints imposed, since the companies, mainly, present the corresponding allegations, discharge sheets that must be solved by the agents themselves. Given this situation, before continuing to collapse the service, as confirmed by police sources, the agents have chosen to close files instead of maintaining the pace of sanctions imposed on these vehicles.
In addition, the same sources recall that, at present, the ordinance that would allow charging for the withdrawal of vehicles from the municipal deposit is still not updated, so, in practice, this becomes the parking lot for companies, which pass to remove them when they deem convenient, at no cost to them, beyond the sanctioning file. On many occasions, to avoid the latter, the agents, when they locate a badly parked scooter, call the companies to come and remove them.
The information transferred from the Mobility area also details the amount of penalties that have been collected from these 449 fines imposed so far this year and totaling 5,095 euros. This amount, taking into account that the minimum amount of penalties is 100 euros, would only mean that 10% or less of the total fines imposed have been collected.
Penalties can range from 100 euros to 1,000, depending on the offenses committed.
