As electric scooters proliferate around the globe, many people are showing up in emergency rooms with serious injuries.
FILE - In this May 28, 2019, file photo, a man on a scooter passes a parked scooter along the Mission Beach boardwalk in San Diego. As electric scooters have rolled into more than 100 cities worldwide, many of the people riding them have ended up in the emergency room with serious injuries. Others have been killed.
As stand-up electric scooters have rolled into more than 100 cities worldwide, many of the people riding them are ending up in the emergency room with serious injuries. Others have been killed. There are no comprehensive statistics available but a rough count by The Associated Press of media reports turned up at least 11 electric scooter rider deaths in the U.S. since the beginning of 2018. Nine were on rented scooters and two on ones the victims owned.
Fed up with the thousands of scooters flooding Paris streets, Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced new regulations Thursday limiting the number of scooter operators and imposing a 5 mile-per-hour speed limit in areas with heavy foot traffic. The city has already imposed a 135 euro fine on anyone who rides scooters on sidewalks.
Bird, one of the largest scooter-sharing companies, dropped its scooters on the streets of Santa Monica, California, in September 2017 and within a few months riders were showing up at the emergency room, according to Dr. Tarak Trivedi, an emergency room physician in Los Angeles and co-author of one of the first peer-reviewed studies of scooter injuries. The following year, Trivedi and his colleagues counted 249 scooter injuries, and more than 40% were head injuries.
That was the case when Drew Howerton, 19, hopped on a Lime scooter on a whim last October in Austin. He recalls signing a waiver that said he should wear a helmet, but he didn’t have one on him.
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