A Rise in Scooters Equates to a Rise in Hospital Visits

If you live in any major city, you have not made it 50 feet without seeing a scooter available to rent with just a click of an app. These scooters are making it convenient for people to zip around town without having to make a trip to return it at the end. Although fun and convenient, with the influx of easily rentable scooters came an influx of trips to the emergency room.

Young adults started coming in with car wreck like injuries, broken noses, wrists, and shoulders, facial lacerations and fractures, and blunt head trauma that could leave permanent brain damage, and doctors began to notice a similarity in these traumas; shared electric scooters.

In Santa Monica, California, where one of the biggest electric-scooter companies is based, the city’s fire department responded to 34 serious injuries involving the scooters in just one summer. In San Francisco, the doctor who runs the ER at a major hospital stated he is seeing as many as 10 severe injuries a week related to these electric scooters.

An interview was then done with emergency room physicians in seven different cities, all of which reported a spike in severe accidents since the shared electric scooters came about. Doctors, former riders, scooter mechanics and personal injury lawyers around all the major cities advise that although the scooters may look like toys, they are inflicting the same degree of harm as any of motorized vehicle on the road, without having to comply with safety regulations.

The three major scooter sharing companies, Bird, Lime and Skip all came out in a statement that they put safety first, with labels and the app itself containing safety information, making their customers upload a driver’s license before unlocking the scooter, not allowing anyone under 18 to ride, and offering helmet options to those who inquire. Despite these claims of ‘safety first’, Bird is currently lobbying against legislation that would require their users to wear helmets.

One of the many people who are currently suing Bird is a 47-year-old who said he was riding his Bird scooter only a few blocks when the accelerator became stuck in place as he pulled up on an intersection which caused the scooter to buck forward and launch his body past the handle bars. He broke in jaw in two places and had blood pouring from his ears, causing him a week in the hospital while he ate all of his meals through a straw.

These scooters can now be seen every few feet in Brickell, Downtown Miami and all along South Beach.

If you or a loved one have been injured by these scooters call and schedule a free consultation with the lawyer at Kaire and Heffernan today.