Yup, e-scooters are dangerous, study confirms

A new study tracking injuries from riding e-scooters confirms what we all knew: electric scooters can be dangerous as hell. 

Also, nobody wears helmets on two-wheeled vehicles that can go up to 15 mph. 

A study published in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Network Open on Friday observed e-scooter riding in the Los Angeles area (the birthplace of e-scooter sharing) for about a year from Sep. 1, 2017 through Aug. 31, 2018. In that time period, about 250 people ended up in the emergency room.

The most common injury: people’s heads. More than 40 percent of incidents, or 100 people, had some sort of head injury. Five people had serious bleeding in the brain from a scooter crash. Two riders were sent to the ICU — this isn’t just cuts and bruises.

With all those noggins hitting the pavement you’d think more people would wear a helmet. But “helmet compliance” was recorded at only about 4 percent.

The study’s lead author, UCLA emergency physician Tarak Trivedi, a scholar in the National Clinician Scholars Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said he’s seen nearly every bone broken from improper scooter riding. And yet, he rides e-scooters in LA and even encourages their use. 

In a phone call, he said while working in emergency departments in the LA area he started to see more injuries like broken elbows and dislocated shoulders around the same time he started seeing Bird and Lime e-scooters in his Santa Monica neighborhood. 

“It woke us up to the fact that these injuries are serious,” he said. 

Trivedi said the two emergency rooms had 193 bicycle accidents in the same time period, but the study’s doctors can’t pin down an injury rate for e-scooters since the study was only a limited look at all incidents. 

Even so, Trivedi said e-scooters shouldn’t be underestimated. “They have the potential to be dangerous,” he said. “You need to be careful while riding these things.” While they’re also fun, easy to ride, and convenient, there’s extremely easy to injure yourself with. For instance: 92 riders observed came out of their accidents with head injuries. 

“Helmet use is of utmost importance,” Trivedi said after seeing the damage done. California just implemented a new law that allows adults over 18 to decide if they want to wear a helmet while riding an e-scooter. He can’t understand why you’d ride so fast amongst cars, bicyclists, pedestrians, and other scooter riders without protecting your head.

Trivedi said the study members did not work with or reach out to any e-scooter companies during the course of their research. Bird’s director of safety policy and advocacy Paul Steely White said in an emailed statement that the company would like to work with the authors “so that we can have a productive and collaborative conversation that focuses on proven preventative measures and education.”

He called the report “very limited,” and went on to criticize its shortcomings, such as overlooking the big picture of all road injuries and deaths from cars and motorcycles.

“[The study] fails to take into account the sheer number of e-scooter trips taken—the number of injuries reported would amount to a fraction of one percent of the total number of e-scooter rides.  Moreover, the report fails to put e-scooter injuries into context as they relate to the high number and severity of injuries and deaths caused by motorcycles and automobiles,” White wrote.

Beyond the LA area, San Francisco started tracking scooter-related injuries when its pilot program kicked off mid-October with two e-scooter operators, Skip and Scoot. A San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson said 17 injuries have come in since – all from Skip, with two reported as “severe.” Scoot didn’t report any injuries to the transit agency.

In Portland, Oregon, a pilot program closely observed how residents were using e-scooters last year. The city’s transportation department reported 700,000 e-scooter trips during the four-month program. Between July 25 and  Nov. 20, the county reported 176 emergency room and urgent care visits related to scooter incidents. 

The Portland findings look very similar to what the UCLA study found. Broken down, the majority (83 percent) were people falling off scooters. Only one scooter-on-scooter accident was reported. In only six reported incidents the rider was wearing a helmet. In 23 of the 176 incidents, it was explicitly noted the rider wasn’t wearing one. 

In 16 percent of incidents drunken scooting was determined as the cause. (Now’s a good time to remind everyone you can get a DUI for riding a scooter under the influence.)

The scooter-sharing companies don’t want a reputation for providing a dangerous, emergency-room experience, but their efforts haven’t done much to curtail bad practices. Sure, there are helmet giveaways, safety campaigns, and in-app instructions on how to ride properly, but the incidents keep piling up.

Lime said in an email statement, “At Lime, the safety of our riders and the community is our number one priority. That’s why every day we’re innovating on technology, infrastructure and education to set the standard for micromobility safety.”

A spokesperson pointed out that Lime has new scooters to make for an improved (and hopefully safer) riding experience. The company also gave away 250,000 free helmets and put $3 million into a safety education campaign.

As far as helmets, a Lime spokesperson said “Lime supports the [American Medical Association’s] recommendations to further innovate helmet designs and for the industry to continue focusing on safety.”

Spin, which Ford acquired late last year, has a partnership with folding helmet company Overrade Plixi in an effort to encourage head protection while scooting. A spokesperson said safety demos are held in cities where they operate. The next one will be in Boise for Spin’s upcoming launch there.

But the company believes safety goes beyond helmets. Spin says it’s just as much about designing city streets and sharing the road and about maintaining a healthy fleet of vehicles. 

Scoot, which operates motorized mopeds and standing e-scooters, said in an email that they track incidents from riders that come in through the app, website, and social media. Every moped comes with two helmets and the vehicle is put out of service if one is missing. If you’re caught not wearing a helmet, you could be booted off the Scoot platform. 

Ride safely!