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Scooter Use is Rising in Major Cities. So Are Trips To the Emergency Room. (washingtonpost.com)
They have been pouring into emergency rooms around the nation all summer, their bodies bearing a blend of injuries that doctors normally associate with victims of car wrecks -- broken noses, wrists and shoulders, facial lacerations and fractures, as well as the kind of blunt head trauma that can leave brains permanently damaged. The Washington Post reports: When doctors began asking patients to explain their injuries, many were surprised to learn that the surge of broken body parts stemmed from the latest urban transportation trend: shared electric scooters. In Santa Monica, Calif. -- where one of the biggest electric-scooter companies is based -- the city's fire department has responded to 34 serious accidents involving the devices this summer. The director of an emergency department there said his team treated 18 patients who were seriously injured in electric-scooter accidents during the final two weeks of July. And in San Francisco, the doctor who runs the emergency room at a major hospital said he is seeing as many as 10 severe injuries a week.
[...] As the injuries pile up in cities across the country, the three largest scooter companies -- operating under the names Bird, Lime and Skip -- have seen their values soar as they attempt to transform urban transit, following the successes of ride-hailing and bike-sharing companies. The scooter start-ups have attracted massive investments from Uber, the prominent technology venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and Alphabet, Google's parent company, with some analysts estimating that some of the privately held companies might be worth more than $1 billion. Responding to The Post, all these companies said safety is a priority to them, but at least Bird is also lobbying against legislation in California that would require users to wear helmets, the paper reported.
[...] As the injuries pile up in cities across the country, the three largest scooter companies -- operating under the names Bird, Lime and Skip -- have seen their values soar as they attempt to transform urban transit, following the successes of ride-hailing and bike-sharing companies. The scooter start-ups have attracted massive investments from Uber, the prominent technology venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and Alphabet, Google's parent company, with some analysts estimating that some of the privately held companies might be worth more than $1 billion. Responding to The Post, all these companies said safety is a priority to them, but at least Bird is also lobbying against legislation in California that would require users to wear helmets, the paper reported.
They must WANT their customers to be brain damaged if they're actively lobbying against requiring the most basic of safety gear for a scooter.
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I started seeing rental scooters in the area a few years ago, but they've really taken off here in the last year or so.
And most of the time I see people on these things, they're not wearing the provided helmets. Or they're riding double on them (occasionally triple). I've even seen some scooter riders flat out ignore stop signs and stop lights, and a couple who were driving on the sidewalk.
I saw one guy who clearly didn't know how to operate the scooter cut a wide turn, and sideswipe a concrete barricade. The helmet popped out of the wire cage on the back of the scooter (of course he wasn't wearing it), and he kept going down the street. I called after him, but either he didn't hear me, or he ignored me. And then he turned onto a much busier street.
Honestly, I'd feel bad for them, but instead I feel bad for the people who are going to be in accidents with these thundering idiots.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.