A 15-year-old boy from Boim, in the northern Portuguese municipality of Lousada, has died in an electric scooter accident, prompting local mayor Nelson Oliveira to demand an urgent overhaul of the country's e-scooter laws.
Writing to Internal Administration Minister Luís Neves, Oliveira argued that legislation has not kept up with how quickly e-scooters have spread across Portugal as a form of personal transport. He stressed this was not an isolated incident, citing other serious accidents — often involving minors — in different parts of the country. Excessive speed and riders skipping helmets were among the risks he singled out.
His wishlist for the government and the National Road Safety Authority (ANSR) is extensive: a minimum age for riding on public roads, restrictions on selling scooters to minors, mandatory helmets, speed limits adjusted for the rider's age or the machine's capabilities, and clearer rules on where scooters can legally go — including an outright ban on pavements and crowded pedestrian zones. He also wants tougher enforcement, real penalties for offenders, and awareness campaigns aimed at schools, families and young people.
The safety debate is not confined to the north. In the Algarve, Portimão council last March banned bicycles and scooters from several pedestrian streets in the city centre after complaints about riders speeding through busy areas.
For visitors, this matters more than it might first appear. E-scooters are easy to rent in Portuguese cities and coastal towns, and the rules can feel vague — who has right of way, whether a helmet is needed, where you can legally ride. Until national regulation catches up, individual councils are making their own calls, so what's fine in one town may be banned a few kilometres down the coast. If you plan to scoot around Lisbon, Porto or the Algarve, keep off pavements, ride at sensible speeds and assume the strictest interpretation — enforcement is likely to increase as pressure builds on the government to act.
