Beyond enforcement policies for reducing speeding among young E-scooter riders

Young e-scooter riders are becoming more involved in urban safety risk due to speeding, yet policy instruments tend to address speeding as a compliance issue. This paper investigates a behavior-informed pathway by evaluating the joint effects of emotion regulation challenges, risk-related dispositions, attitudes towards traffic rules and internal control on willingness to speed. Based on the data of an online survey of young riders, the findings suggest that the higher the risk-related tendencies and more permissive attitudes towards the traffic rules, the higher the willingness to speed, and the more internal control, the lower the willingness. Speeding propensity is also associated with difficulties in emotion control, which implies that more emotional and time-driven speeding choices can be made. These associations remained substantively consistent after accounting for socially desirable responding and across key subgroups (e.g., gender and riding frequency). Findings indicate that, beyond visible enforcement, cities can enhance policy operability by incorporating brief, scalable interventions that mitigate risk-taking and impulsivity by providing structured self-regulation/impulse-management training, change permissive rule attitudes by providing norm-correcting and peer-involved messages, and develop internal control skills by including modules in rider education and campus/community programs.