E-scooters were supposed to fix travel in Rome. Then they became a major problem

Rome (CNN) — Rome, the eternal city, has been invaded, conquered and pillaged countless times since its founding nearly 2,800 years ago. Each attack has left scars throughout the city, from the ruins of the Roman Forum to the cavern of the Circus Maximus where chariots once raced.

The current invasion of the Italian capital comes from e-scooters — more than 14,000 of them — modern chariots that block sidewalks, unnerve drivers and kill.

Since rental scooters were introduced three years ago as an alternative to public transportation during the Covid pandemic, four people have been killed while riding them, according to Rome City Hall mobility councilman Eugenio Patane. The city’s emergency rooms treat at least one scooter-related major injury every three days, health authorities say.

And yet only 2% (around 270) of the foot scooters for rent are used on a daily basis.

Rome City Hall has given licenses to seven companies responsible for changing batteries, carrying out repairs, moving scooters to high-traffic areas and fishing them out of the city’s Tiber River.

It’s the scooters that aren’t in use that are presenting the greatest challenge, especially to the disabled.

‘A series of frights’

As Giuliano Frittelli, head of the Italian Union for the Blind and Visually Impaired, navigates with his walking stick around a half a dozen scooters littering the sidewalk near his office in the city center, he tells CNN that for people who don’t see, they are a death trap.

“The first problem is the wild parking,” Frittelli says as he taps his walking stick on the base of a scooter, explaining that their unusual shape also makes it easy for someone with impaired eyesight to trip over them.

He also says that because they are electric, they are silent, which is also a threat to those who cannot see.

“You don’t hear them so you cannot navigate around them,” Frittelli says, recalling an incident when a scooter passed a blind person so closely their startled seeing-eye dog jumped off the sidewalk, causing what he called “a series of frights” that luckily did not end in physical injury.

Frittelli’s group is working with Rome City Hall to make it mandatory that scooters are parked only in designated stalls. He…