Story by: Vishnu Rajamanickam, Staff Writer @ FreightWaves

The German police had a field day marshalling people around at the world’s largest beer festival Oktoberfest, mediating in nearly 2,000 altercations at the 16-day event. Held annually in the months of September and October in Munich, Germany, Oktoberfest witnesses 7 million people every year, who consume over 7.5 million liters (~2 million gallons) of beer.

Though mild road skirmishes have always occurred in the area surrounding Oktoberfest, this year saw the entry of e-scooters that added to the complexity. Throughout the length of the event, e-scooters were stopped en masse by the police as people under the influence drove them recklessly. Of the 414 people who were caught driving intoxicated, 254 e-scooter riders lost their automobile driving licenses on the spot.

Understanding the impact of e-scooters on such a large-scale event, the city of Munich had imposed several restrictions on the movement of e-scooters in the vicinity of Oktoberfest, setting up large no-ride and no-park zones around the festival grounds.

“Many see e-scooters as toys and unfortunately too often they’re ridden while drunk. In order to avoid this and to not tempt anyone, we city administrators, police and also rental companies want to keep e-scooters far away from the Wiesn (Oktoberfest),” said Thomas Böhle, Munich city administrator in a statement.

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Source and credits: freightwaves.com / Vishnu Rajamanickam   /  iTrucker  / Mario Pawlowski