Scooters launch in Canada amid safety concerns

last September with the arrival of Bird, hundreds of riders and pedestrians have landed in the hospital with injuries ranging from severe gravel rash to knocked-out teeth, ripped out toenails and detached biceps, according to doctors and victims. Last month, three people died while riding scooters in Dallas, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. Lime electric scooters entered the Canadian market for the first time with a pilot project in Waterloo, Ont., earlier this month. At the time, the company said it hoped to roll out the e-scooters to other Canadian markets eventually.

There is no official tally on the number of scooter-related injuries in the country since hospitals code their patients based on the type of injury they are admitted with, rather than what caused it.

But one metric Bird and Lime have been closely tracking is the number of rides their scooters have handled: more than 20 million combined — and growing everyday.

Electric scooters have appeared in more than 100 cities worldwide with the startups aiming to usher in a new, environmentally-friendly era of micro transportation.

After a remarkable one-year ascent, Bird and Lime are now two of the youngest startups to earn unicorn status in Silicon Valley with valuations of $2 billion and $3 billion or more, respectively. The rapid rise of the scooter revolution has been plagued by controversy, complaints and concussions.

Citing fears over public safety, officials in some cities, including San Francisco and Santa Monica, have temporarily banned electric scooters and filed criminal complaints against the companies behind them for operating without a business permit.

Some frustrated vigilante residents have tossed scooters into the ocean, buried them in the sand and even set them on fire.