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.

Comments

No helmets?

[Calydor]

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.

Re:No helmets?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I know of no states that require them for a bicycle.

http://www.calbike.org/bicycling_in_california_sharing_the_road?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7LCp9bip3QIVSI9-Ch0yOQ8vEAAYASAAEgKWFfD_BwE

"Helmets: Bicyclists and bicycle passengers under age 18 must wear an approved helmet when riding on a bicycle. CVC 21212"

There, now you know of one.

Re:No helmets?

[taustin]

You have it backwards. According to the peer reviewed research, at speeds below 35 mpg, helmets are the rider's best friend. Above that, and the weight of the helmet becomes a serious risk of breaking the rider's neck, so the only real benefit is an increased chance of an open casket funeral.

People riding these things should play by the same rules as a motorcyclist.

Re:No helmets?

[bluefoxlucid]

At low speeds, your reflexes can reasonably protect you. 20mph is about that; some of these things can hit 40mph, which is kind of ridiculous.

The helmet doesn't protect against concussion; it breaks where impact would deform the skull. I've seen people break their necks and wake up in the hospital, neck brace for 10-12 weeks, then back on the motorcycle; and I've seen their helmets. Usually, you have to tell people their helmet is no longer safe; in this case, that's not often a problem.

We don't require adult bicyclists to wear helmets here (even though a head impact can kill you easily); we require children to wear helmets. A scooter under 20mph would fall under the same reasoning: if a cyclist wears a helmet, so should you.

Re:No helmets?

[R3d M3rcury]

Helmets don't protect against concussions.

I recently ran across an interesting story...

Back when World War I started, British troops did not have helmets. After a few artillery barrages, the British government bought helmets (from the French) and started producing their own helmets for troops. Soon, all the British troops had helmets.

And the number of head injuries increased!

Well, needless to say, people were quite concerned. What the hell is going on? We got them helmets to keep them safe and it's worse now than it was before!

But not really. See, the number of deaths went down. But the number of injuries increased. Because, let's face it, a 1 mm thick steel helmet when impacted by shrapnel traveling at hundreds of miles per hour is not going to leave the wearer none the worse. But they probably won't die from the encounter.

You're right--bike helmets won't protect against concussions. If you're riding your bike at, say, 20 MPH and you run into a car, you may end up with a concussion. But you will probably survive, which is kind of what we're aiming for here.

Re:No helmets?

[The Original CDR]

People who like to winge about California often have never spent much time in the various parts of California.

I lived in California for all my life. I'm somewhat familiar with the Great Nanny State of California. For example, Los Angeles tried to ban IDE cables because the terms Master and Slave were used. Or San Francisco wanting to ban the Blue Angels from flying during Fleet Week for terrorizing families in neighborhoods. And don't get me started on "ban paper bags, use plastic bags instead" in the 1990's to "ban plastic bags, use paper bags and pay per bag instead" in the 2010's.

Well, yeah...

[Kierthos]

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.

What the article doesn't talk about

[taustin]

is the cause of accidents. They talk about people injured by mechanical failures, and undoubtedly those occur.

But no mention of what percentage is caused by that, what percentage caused by rider error (which is likely rather higher) and what percentage is caused by other drivers (since it's illegal to ride these things on the sidewalk, which means you're in a bicycle lane or on the street). Most motorcycle accidents are cause by drivers of cars who never saw the bike. I suspect the same is true on these toys.

But let's not let facts get in the way of any propaganda! There's money to be made, selling advertising to outrage monkeys.

Fractured patella

[dstyle5]

I wasn't wearing protective equipment a few years back when I got tripped up inline skating, ended up landing on my right patella (kneecap) and broke it into 3 pieces. Prior to this incident I hadn't fallen in over 20 years of skating and was over-confident and stupidly not wearing protective padding. Painful lesson learned...

Needless to say I wear full protective gear after two surgeries, months of physio for my extremely tight and shrunken quads, etc. Mandating a helmet for these type of activities where you are moving on concrete should be a no-brainer. I see dumb people with very small children in my area with no helmets, wobbling on bikes and scooters, makes me cringe.