Highway Code

Scooters with compulsory insurance, licence plate and helmet for all

Upcoming amendments to the Highway Code also include a ban on driving outside towns, in pedestrian areas and on cycle paths

by Sara Calì and Maurizio Hazan

12 November 2024

3' min read

Key points

Bans in town and out
Mandatory helmet
Mandatory licence plate
The insurance obligation

3' min read

More and more electric scooters on the road, more and more accidents and scares, especially for pedestrians. So the bill to amend the Road Code, which should get the final OK from the Senate next week, brings a squeeze. With new bans and obligations.

Bans in town and out

One of the main changes introduced is the reinstatement of the ban on leaving town centres, which had been abolished three years ago due to what seemed an oversight that had never been remedied until now.

But, beyond this corrective, there is a real squeeze: in the new regulation there is a limitation of use only on urban roads with a speed limit of up to 50 km/h. This means that circulation on cycle paths and in pedestrian areas is excluded.

The helmet requirement

Until now, only minors had to wear helmets. With the amendments to the Highway Code, the helmet requirement will affect all drivers (i.e. everyone who takes a seat on a scooter, since it was and remains forbidden to carry passengers). Thus, even those over 18.

Mandatory number plate

After years of discussion, the obligation for scooter owners to affix an adhesive, plastic-coated, non-removable identification sticker, printed by the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, to their scooters has also arrived.

For the time being, it is not possible to say more: timeframes and procedures, for new specimens and also for bringing those already in circulation up to standard, will have to be laid down by decree of the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, after consultation with the Minister for the Economy and Finance.

The insurance obligation

Connected to the licence plate obligation is that of compulsory insurance for third-party liability, included in the new paragraph 75-vicies-quinquies of subsection 1 of Law 160/2019: scooters with predominantly electric propulsion 'may not be put on the road unless they are covered by insurance for third-party liability as provided for in Article 2054 of the Civil Code'.

Hence the express reference to the regulation of the insurance obligation of the insurance company provided for in Article 122 et seq. of the Private Insurance Code (Cap).

In addition to the obligation to insure on the part of the owner, there will therefore be an obligation to contract on the part of all the companies currently operating branch 10, which will therefore have to equip themselves with products and tariffs capable of responding to any request for quotation that is proposed to them.

The reference to the compulsory discipline, without any - albeit perhaps opportune - specification of a compatibility clause (of the type "if and insofar as applicable") indicates that the entire regulatory set of the Cap is operative, making it, for example, unquestionable that the injured third party can avail himself of direct action; for the purposes of which it will be necessary to understand in what terms to integrate the database of insurance coverage (with specific reference to the details of the "registration" mark).

But some real doubts may arise with regard to other provisions: for example, with regard to the operation of the guarantee in relation to areas where the scooter cannot and must not circulate or be stationary.

Obviously, the obligation to cover scooters even within private areas remains in place. The matter will also be governed by Article 170 of the Cap (prohibition of bundling), in relation to which the insurance company will not be able to offer customers exclusively third party liability cover combined with other ancillary guarantees: the owner of the scooter must be free to purchase only the compulsory third party liability cover, which the company must therefore also have in its catalogue in a 'stand alone' version.

This, however, will not preclude insurance companies from proposing to their customers, in the context of an adequate profiling of the target market and the needs of each individual insured, policy solutions that combine third party liability with, for example, protection against theft or, above all, driver accidents. This latter combination, which we could define as entirely virtuous, if we consider the greater severity, for the driver of a scooter, of the risk of being injured (even seriously) compared to the risk of causing damage to third parties.