Electric scooters are fun to ride, sending our tender human fleshbags flying along concrete sidewalks at speeds up to 15 miles per hour. What could possibly go wrong?
A herd of scooters downtown. (Photo: Nancy Derringer)
Plenty. But you already knew that.
The Free Press reports on the physical toll scooter injuries are taking on riders, who are visiting local hospitals and ERs with broken bones, scrapes and worse:
Since April 2019, DMC has admitted 18 trauma patients for scooter injuries. The real number of people showing up in the hospital’s emergency room is much higher, said Robert Klever, Medical Director of the Emergency Department at Detroit Receiving Hospital.
Those 18 patients were people who were admitted to the hospital and suffering severe injuries (one admitted under Klever’s treatment had a skull fracture and brain bleed from a scooter accident).
The hospital has actually seen four to five times that number of patients with scooter injuries in the same time frame, people with more quickly fixed issues that don’t require admission.
The scooters have been on Detroit streets for over a year, and at least four companies offer them. There are few if any rules governing their use in the city, and most riders use them on sidewalks, rather than on the street. Helmet use is scarce.
