Electric bicycle and scooter rentals are the latest craze to give urban dwellers ‘alternative transportation’ to eliminate carbon. Scooters in particular have caused a pandemic of injured riders. Residents in San Francisco detest these sidewalk intruders, and are moving to have them banned. ⁃ TN Editor
As injured electric scooter riders pour into emergency departments around the country, doctors have scrambled to document a trend that many view as a growing public safety crisis.
A detailed statistical portrait of that crisis won’t be available for another year, emergency physicians say, but some early samples are beginning to emerge.
In Salt Lake City — where dockless e-scooters have been on city streets since June — one hospital says it has seen a 161 percent increase in the number of visits involving scooters after comparing its latest statistics with the same three-month period a year earlier.
Between June and September 2017, physicians at University of Utah Health’s emergency room treated eight patients injured by scooters, though each of those were likely people’s personal devices and not the electric fleet vehicles owned by companies like Bird, Lime and Skip.
During the same period this year, that number had climbed to 21, according to Dr. Troy Madsen, who practices at the University of Utah Health’s Emergency Department.
“Most of the patients with these injuries specifically reported that they were riding an e-scooter or a rental scooter,” Madsen said, noting that they ranged in age from 20 to 50 years old and were often injured attempting to catch themselves in a fall. “Interestingly, more than 80 percent of the injuries this year happened between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, which would correspond with the increasing popularity and availability of the e-scooters.”
“It’s worth noting that these were only emergency department visits,” he added. “Patients with more minor injuries may have gone to an urgent care, and the patients we saw were likely those with more significant injuries who required a higher level of care in an emergency department.”
Already a failed experiment?
The hospital reported that nearly half of this year’s injuries were fractures and dislocations of ankles, wrists, elbows and shoulders, as well as several cases of sprains and lacerations. Emergency physicians also treated several head injuries, and multiple patients told doctors they were intoxicated when they were injured and not wearing a helmet.
Emergency physicians noted that their statistics may represent a fraction of Salt Lake City’s e-scooter injuries. University of Utah Health’s Utah emergency department is “fairly close to the downtown area,” where most rentable scooters are located, but there are other emergency departments even closer, Madsen said.
Emergency physicians in a dozen cities around the country have told The Post that they are seeing a spike in scooter accidents. In seven cities, those physicians are regularly seeing “severe” injuries – including head traumas – that were sustained from scooters malfunctioning or flipping over on uneven surfaces as well as riders being hit by cars or colliding with pedestrians.
Some safety experts have raised questions about the gig economy workforce companies like Bird rely on to maintain their growing fleets. The company has posted ads on Craigslist seeking mechanics that say experience is not necessary in addition to providing training for new hires via YouTube videos. Videos posted online show Bird scooters with accelerators stuck in place and with wobbly handlebars and loose brakes.
“I just signed up to be a Bird mechanic,” one mechanic says on camera. “I realized there are a very large amount of scooters with problems.”
Last week, The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office revealed that a 24-year-old man who fell of a Lime scooter on his way home for work this month was killed by blunt force injuries to the head.
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