About one in seven riders of electric scooters in Finland are caught intoxicated when checked on weekend evenings, according to a new police report.
The finding comes as the country also records a general increase in driving while intoxicated.
Campaign
At the turn of August and September 2025, Finnish police monitored riders of electric scooters in Helsinki, Turku, Oulu and Joensuu. The surveillance took place on 22–23 August and 5 September, focusing on late evening hours. Police breathalysed 478 riders, and 70 of them – about 15 per cent – exceeded the legal intoxication limit and received a traffic penalty fee of €200.
In Oulu and Turku, one in five sanctioned riders were also illegally carrying passengers on their scooters. Around 10 per cent of riders in Helsinki, Oulu and Joensuu tested positive for alcohol below the penalty threshold.
The Law
The current law prohibits riding bicycles with a motor or light electric vehicles with a blood alcohol content of 0.5‰ or more (0.22 mg/l in exhaled air). The reform entered into force on 17 June 2025. Since then, police have imposed about 700 traffic penalties for riding while intoxicated. Four out of five penalties were handed out in the evening between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., mainly on Fridays and Saturdays.
Police stress that intoxicated riding remains a significant safety issue across Finland. The objective of the new law is to reduce intoxication-related accidents, injuries, and the burden on healthcare, as well as to strengthen the sense of safety for all road users.
Trend
The findings on scooters coincide with broader police statistics indicating a rise in drink driving. According to Finland’s national survey on driving while intoxicated – carried out since 1979 – around 75,000 drivers were tested in 2025. One in 669 drivers (0.15%) exceeded the intoxication limit, while one in 232 drivers (0.43%) had consumed some alcohol. Between January and August 2025, police recorded 10,385 incidents of driving while intoxicated, up 4.8% from 9,907 in the same period of 2024. The increase is most notable among drivers combining alcohol with narcotics: 819 such cases were registered, 19.2% more than the 687 a year earlier.
Police underline that while intoxicated driving has generally decreased over the decades, recent years have shown a slight upward trend since the coronavirus pandemic.