A nine-year-old from the village of Arnakija, in Skopje's Saraj municipality, is in the emergency centre with serious injuries. He was riding an electric scooter. At the junction where a service road meets the Skopje - Tetovo regional route, he was hit by a Ford with Skopje plates, driven by a 67-year-old man from the same village.

The police have every number. The time - around 14:30. The date - 28 July. The vehicle, the registration, the driver's age, the initials. What is missing from the bulletin is the more interesting part: what a nine-year-old was doing on an electric scooter at the exit onto a highway.

The answer isn't with the family. Electric scooters reached the Macedonian market far faster than they reached Macedonian law. They are sold as a toy, ridden as a vehicle, and when they meet a car they behave like neither. There is no age limit anyone actually checks, no helmet requirement anyone actually enforces, and not a single street in Saraj where the boy could have ridden safely.

A service road spilling onto a regional route is a classic killing point in Macedonian traffic. Drivers on the main road drive as if on open highway. Anyone pulling out of the side street has a few seconds to judge it. Add a scooter with a silent motor that accelerates faster than a bicycle and the picture is complete.

Who checks the safety, and who just writes the bulletin?

An inspection was carried out, measures are being taken for the full clarification of the case. That is the formula we read after every crash. Clarification means establishing who is at fault - the driver or the child. It means nothing at all about why the junction has no traffic light, why there is no pedestrian crossing, why scooters are ridden on regional roads.

The boy is fighting in hospital. The neighbour who hit him will probably face court. And the next child on the next scooter at the next service road will be treated as one more line in a police bulletin - until someone decides that the infrastructure and the rules are also part of the „full clarification”.