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Abstract
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They’re new and they’re fun. But the urban invasion by ride-share electric scooters has brought a corresponding jump in injuries and hospital admissions.
Electric scooters, or e-scooters, are battery-powered motorized versions of the push scooters popular with kids. They’ve been around for years, but the addition of GPS trackers and wireless connectivity has led to a boom in e-scooter rental and ride-share programs in major cities.
A recent study in JAMA Surgery found the annual number of e-scooter injuries in the United States climbed 222% from 4582 in 2014, when there were no scooter ride-share companies, to 14 651 in 2018, when rentals took off in North America and Europe.
The rate of injuries increased, too, from 6 per 100 000 people to 19 per 100 000 people. Nearly one-third of those injured had a head injury, more than double the rate experienced by cyclists. Annual hospital admissions related to e-scooters also spiked 365% during the same period, from 313 to 1374.
Researchers, city officials and rideshare companies like Bird, Lime and Lyft, attribute the uptick in injuries to the explosion in the numbers of e-scooters dotting urban landscapes and trips riders are making. The US National Association of City Transportation Officials estimates Americans made 38.5 million trips on e-scooters in 2018, surpassing the number of bike share trips.
E-scooter rental pilots are now underway in Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, and cities across Ontario. Calgary’s pilot logged 750 000 trips on Bird and Lime e-scooters from July to October last year, putting the city among global leaders in e-scooter use. According to a mid-pilot report, e-scooter crashes resulted in 33 injuries serious enough to require an ambulance service last summer, but no admissions to intensive care or deaths. The top causes of crashes were speed, losing control of the scooter, and hitting a pothole or a stationary object such as a pole. Only one person who was seriously injured was wearing a helmet.
A broader set of data collected in Calgary last summer found e-scooter crashes led to 671 visits to emergency departments and urgent care centres. About 10% of these cases involved trauma to the head, says Dr. Eddy Lang, an emergency physician involved in the investigation. He says wearing helmets should be mandatory. “It’s definitely safer. Elbows heal. Wrists heal. But a concussion can have serious long-term consequences.” A 2019 study of e-scooter injuries in the US found just 4.4% of injured riders presenting to emergency departments were wearing a helmet ...
Language: en |