“Injuries are the untold part of the scooter trend”
USA - The crash happened in a split second, when a Lime scooter zipped down a busy sidewalk in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood and slammed into 2-year-old Carter Sarmiento.
He went hurtling backward, landing on the cement near Valley Street and Grand Avenue. The scooter rider apologized profusely as Carter’s mother, Siena Sarmiento, picked up and cradled her bruised toddler. It didn’t occur to her to get the man’s name. “We were just walking out of the lobby of our apartment building, and we didn’t think to look both ways, crossing the sidewalk,” Sarmiento said. Injuries are the part of the electric scooter story that hasn’t yet been fully told. No one has an official count, but doctors in many cities are sharing anecdotes about people being sideswiped, brakes failing and riders colliding with cars or hitting pedestrians when they illegally scoot on sidewalks. As the incidents pile up, companies and lawmakers are fiercely debating who should be held liable. The accident trend emerged almost as soon as the motorized scooters dropped onto city streets this spring, said Christopher Colwell, chief of emergency medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. Riders have come in with wounds ranging from broken wrists to potentially fatal cranial bleeding after smashups with cars, he said. Working the night shift on a recent Friday, Colwell saw three injured e-scooter riders. Two had concussions. None had worn a helmet. “There’s a very strong sense from the patients I’ve seen that this is very safe,” Colwell said, noting that he’s encountered dozens of hurt riders, “which suggests there have been hundreds.” Some cities have imposed rules: speed limits in Los Angeles, mandatory insurance and user education in San Francisco, fines for companies whose scooters block sidewalks in Portland, Ore. But not everyone agrees that tighter regulation is the right approach. Last month, California’s State Legislature approved a bill that would lift an existing scooter safety requirement by allowing adults to ride the motorized devices without helmets. Bird, a popular scooter startup, is a major proponent of the bill. Gov. Jerry Brown has until the end of the month to sign it.
“For me it all goes back to personal responsibility,” said the bill’s sponsor, Republican Assemblyman Heath Flora of Ripon (San Joaquin County). He sees e-scooters as a vital tourist attraction for many cities, and helmets as an onerous burden that would deter people from using them. Scooter riders in Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles don’t necessarily use bike lanes even when they have the option. And most cities don’t penalize them for riding on the sidewalk. Although officials in Oakland are crafting rules that would include sidewalk restrictions, some residents doubt the police would enforce them.
(San Francisco Chronicle)