The intense traffic in large urban agglomerations has made the popularity of light vehicles, alternatives to cars or public transport (also faced with traffic jams), increase. The consequence is obvious, the number of motorcycles, bicycles or scooters present in traffic increasing from year to year, as well as the number of road events in which they are involved.
If things are quite clear in the case of motorcycles or scooters, which have the same regime as that of cars in the event of an accident, things are a bit more nuanced as regards bicycles and scooters.
The rules regarding the obligation of bicycle and scooter drivers to take out an insurance policy are still in the draft phase, so the specific legislation has lagged behind traffic developments. Cyclists and scooter riders are therefore not required to take out liability insurance.
At the same time, the road law (OG 195/2002), which stipulates that they are obliged to move on the tracks dedicated to them — when they exist –, “pushes” them into traffic, because, in the absence of an infrastructure dedicated, cyclists and scooter riders are forced to ride on the street, among — and alongside — cars: “if a road is provided with a bicycle lane, bicycles and e-scooters will only be ridden on that lane. In the absence of this track, the circulation of electric scooters is allowed only on road sectors where the maximum speed allowed for the circulation of vehicles is 50 km/h“.
This fact and the obvious increase in the number of vehicles of this type have also determined the proportional increase in the number of accidents in which cyclists and scooter riders are involved. To find out what are the options available to a cyclist involved in an accident, we turned to an expert in the field of insurance, the broker Adrian Stoicathe founder of teasiguricuadrian.ro.
According to it, participating in traffic should be a proportionate responsibility of the participants, but assuming such an attitude remains, at least for the time being, optional: “once entering traffic, you can assume that there is a risk of being involved in an accident, either through your fault or through the fault of another traffic participant. In such a situation, the happiest option would be the one in which you already have a civil liability insurance, which would cover any damages caused to third parties. If you don’t have such, you are responsible for paying the damages.
Regarding the injury of the scooterist or the cyclist, the most effective form of coverage of possible expenses assumed for hospitalizations, treatments, etc. would be that provided by health insurance. Obviously, because the principle that works in such situations is that whoever is guilty will pay the possible damages, in the case of a road accident in which the driver was at fault, his RCA will cover the possible damages caused to the one on two wheels, both property damage and bodily injury“.
Failure to comply with traffic regulations can make the difference between “guilty” and “innocent” in the event of an accident. The traffic code imposes a minimum age for scooterists to ride on public roads (14 years), the obligation to wear a protective helmet and to equip the bicycle or scooter with lighting and reflective-fluorescent devices.
