Head injuries and fractures affect e-scooter users as more and more data arrives

If you use an electric scooter, you must wear a helmet. This is the main message to remember from a study by the Austin Department of Public Health and the CDC, published this week. The data, collected this fall in Austin, Texas, revealed that one in 5,000 turns resulted in an injury, 48% of which resulted from a head injury. A total of 190 motorcyclists were injured during this period. only one was wearing a helmet.

Depending on where you live, you will either be completely unaware of electric scooters without a dock, or completely sick of them. Like shared bikes without a dock that often precede their arrival, they represent one of Silicon Valley's brilliant ideas for solving short urban journeys (micromobility) by appearing on sidewalks overnight, in mass. This has certainly been the case here in Washington, where it can be difficult to walk more than a few feet in certain areas without stumbling on a Lime scooter, Uber or the others. But like many of the bright new ideas in Silicon Valley, they are not without risk.

In January, we presented a study in Los Angeles that revealed a high rate of head injuries and low helmet use among injured scooter drivers. This research examined scooter injuries found in two emergency departments of UCLA during a 12 – month period. In contrast, this new study looked at a much shorter period in 2018 – from September 5 to November 30 – but cast a wider net, using both the county's emergency medical services reports and the data from nine regional hospitals.

160 confirmed cases and 32 probable injuries related to the electric scooter have been identified. The vast majority of the wounded were the scooter rider; only one pedestrian and one cyclist were injured by an electric scooter. The researchers contacted the 190 injured scooter riders and were able to interview 125 of them so that the study would allow them to better understand the specificities of their crashes. (The remaining details of the remaining 65 injuries were based on medical records.) Just over half of the injured runners (55%) were men and just under half (48%) were between 18 and 29 years old.

Experience driving a scooter seems to be a factor; one third were injured during their first ride on a scooter, and 30% had driven more than once but less than ten times before.

This study actually revealed a higher head injury rate than in the Los Angeles study 48% overall. But multiple wounds were common. 70% were also injured in the upper limbs and 55% in the lower limbs. More than a third (35%) fractured a bone and 19% more than one, not counting fractures to the fingers and toes.

Injuries result from a wide range of scenarios. 55% were injured on the street, but 33% on the sidewalk. 16% of injuries involved another vehicle, but only 10% were caused by a collision with another vehicle. An equal proportion of injuries (10%) involved braking, and 7% resulted from hitting an inanimate object such as a street lamp. Injuries were more common on weekends (39%) and between 18 hours and 6 hours (39%). But only 29% reported having used alcohol within 12 hours of being injured. 37% blamed excessive speed and 19% felt that the malfunction of a scooter was at the root of the problem.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 38% said they would do an electric scooter again in the future.