Boy (12) from Vranja, who is driving on Wednesday (July 9). electric scooter fell under the truck, he is now in a stable condition, the clinic announced. His leg was previously amputated.
According to the initial statements of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office, the boy did not stop at the intersection even though he should have.
He allegedly took the scooter while his parents were at work, reports Blic.
Živojin Spasić, head of the Clinic for Children's Surgery in Niš, where the boy is placed, appealed to the parents to "remain firm and not meet the children and buy them electric scooters and motorbikes".
"It doesn't matter to us that, regardless of all our efforts and work, part of the children remain permanently disabled. I appeal, wherever possible, stop it. It's better to pay the children for 7 days of a basketball, football or any sports camp, than to give hundreds or thousands of euros to such gadgets, which unfortunately have their dark side," Spasić said.
Electric scooter regulations
Electric scooters can be operated from the age of 14, and then with some restrictions. But it is not uncommon for younger children to drive it as well.
Damir Okanović, the president of the Serbian Committee for Traffic Safety, emphasizes that the child is the responsibility of the parents, but that "as a nation, we are quite uneducated and ignorant in terms of traffic, and that is not through our own fault."
"We have a growing trend in the number of children killed. Even one child's life is a tragedy, let alone 16, as many as were lost last year in traffic and on the roads of the Republic of Serbia," he says.
Even though the Government of Serbia adopted a strategy in 2015, the goal of which was that by 2020, no children would be killed in traffic.
The interlocutor of "Vremena" reminds that there are good reasons why children are not allowed to drive motor vehicles.
"Don't be surprised if a child touches a stripped wire hanging from a pole. It won't be strange, because how can a child recognize it as a danger if no one has ever told him. How do you expect a child to react to whom no adult has properly explained that if he goes out on the road and a vehicle comes, that vehicle cannot dig in and take a certain distance and a certain time to stop. When no one has explained to the child that if a car hits him at a speed of 30 per hour, most likely they will not survive," explains Okanović.
Unfulfilled goal
Okanović emphasizes education. "The fact that the current generation of parents is traffic uneducated and ignorant is a consequence of the fact that, when they went to school, to a driving school, they did not receive certain knowledge."
"We do not have an appropriate traffic education and upbringing program, neither in kindergartens, nor in primary and secondary schools. Traffic is the leading cause of death in the population between the ages of 15 and 29. When we consider all causes - both natural and violent. We have the fact that the number of children killed grows rapidly from the age of fifteen, which is the period when children leave primary school," he says.
"Since 2009, we have had a law that mandated the Ministry of Education to include traffic education and upbringing in the curriculum. That's 16 years. We failed to properly educate and educate 16 generations. Sixteen generations times an average of 70.000 people. How much better educated and aware road users would be. That would also be felt," he says.
New measures in Vranje
The Council for Traffic Safety in the territory of Vranje has adopted measures for increased control of traffic safety. As they stated, the number of cyclists, motorcyclists and scooters on the territory of the City increased in the summer period.
The Movement for the Reconstruction of the Kingdom of Serbia (POKS) in Vranje sent an appeal to ban the use of electric scooters and scooters for minors in urban areas.
"In the past period, we have witnessed an increasing number of incidents on the streets of our cities, where inappropriate speed, ignorance of traffic regulations and insufficient awareness of the dangers lead to serious injuries, both to the drivers of scooters and scooters, as well as to pedestrians," explained POKS.
An electric scooter is otherwise considered a light motor vehicle. Its permanent nominal power of the electric motor does not exceed 0,6 kW, the maximum design speed does not exceed 25 km/h and the unladen weight does not exceed 35 kg.
The driver must wear a buckled safety bicycle helmet and a fluorescent vest, and if he does not have a vest, he must be illuminated or marked at night and in conditions of reduced visibility.
As a rule, the scooter should be ridden on a bicycle path, a pedestrian-bicycle path or a bicycle lane. The driver must then not move at a speed higher than 10 km/h and must be careful towards pedestrians.
If there are no such paths, then we can use the road, in the streets where the maximum permitted speed is 30 km/h. If he is 18 years old, then he is allowed on the streets where the speed limit is 50 per hour.
