I suspect that scooters have similar risks as bicycles, more dangerous than cars for non-lethal injuries, less dangerous for lethal injury. And nearly all lethal injury, like 99%, directly related to cars and trucks. Cars are more lethal to drive on a highway than bikes are to ride on city streets. I bet scooter are basically the same, the biggest risk is automobiles.
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Oh no, a new cheap and efficient method of green travel accessible to the masses! Better spin some fear propaganda to kill that
I would love to see an age distribution for these injuries, because I see food delivery workers in Toronto every day who are riding scooters with completely disregard for their own life. It's just non-stop the most dangerous, dumb shit, and I'm like... do they just not realize the danger? Or do they need to shave every second off that delivery and constantly cut corners to make a living wage?
So I just heard on the radio this morning that youth injures from scooters are up 60% over last year.
I live in Albany, NY. I commute on an eBike, in the road, with a helment and follow the traffic laws. My bike even has brake lights and turn signals. Now that school is out, I'm seeing kids and teens riding eBikes and eScooters without protective gear, out in the road not following traffic law at all. I've had a few near misses where I almost hit them on my eBike because they are running red lights. It pisses me off so much because they aren't just endangering themselves, they are endangering me. A part of me wants regulation, but the other part of me knows that regulation is just going to increase the cost of using small, speed capped eVehicles. (Many of these scooters and bikes have motors where the top speed is 20-30 MPH.) I am not stopping to administer aide to anyone hurt riding an eVehicle that openly breaks traffic law.
But what's the injury rate for scooter km's travelled?
We use that to obfuscate car injuries, why do scooters get a different treatment.
Base jumping off an EUC obviously safer.
We use [injury rate / kms traveled] to obfuscate car injuries
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Automotive lobbyists. That's why killing someone drunk driving a car is manslaughter not murder. Scooter lobbying is probably pennies to the dollar of automotive lobbying.
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Scooters don't have odometers making data collection difficult. Similar vein, scooter accidents and injuries are less likely to be reported or linked back to scooters than to cars.
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Given cars go significantly farther than scooters that likely makes the output number not very useful and possibly harmful from a marketing standpoint. 1/10,0000kms for cars vs 1/100kms for scooters is not appealing.
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Scooters are still new. There probably isn't enough data yet. Right now a lot of scooter roll outs are in their pilot phase or recently completed it.
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Scooter injuries have significantly more/different factors. I friend of mine needed elbow surgery because he lost balance due to a combination of wind, being tall, catching on a tree branch, losing control, side walk disrepair, and bad luck hitting his elbow on a concrete barrier. And he was sober.
I think the statistics are still cooking.
I don't disagree; my point is that these statistics are coming out woth an agenda behind them, whem the total number of annual scooter injuries is half that of car fatalities (2k) alone. And two orders of magnitude smaller than car injuries (119k).
We brush off the massive carnage as daily business (I guess 5x daily) but stress some electric scooters.
We've got jurisdiction's, like Ontario, actively trying to remove safety features for vulnerable road users, and this messaging is part of that endeavour.
If you're saying the automotive industry is stymieing such statistics, than I fully agree. I think that incentive is a stronger argument than my other speculations.
However I do believe scooters need to be regulated more.
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Speed limiters. I've seen people going 60kph, passing cars in the bike lane. With no helmet.
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Mandatory insurance & licencing. But make it like fishing licenses where its relatively easy/cheap, you're informed of the rules, sign a contract you'll adhere to them, and then if you get caught without it or contravening it you're fined heavily.
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Separate mixed use infrastructure. Nothing against bike lanes... but we need to separate cars and non-cars.
Scooters definitely need more regulations. My experience as someone walking in a city with them hasn't been very positive.
They've been frequently tossed on the ground after their use. It's a rental, and people don't care what happens to it because it's not their problem.
They frequently block curb ramps for wheelchairs. Sometimes it's even the company putting them there (all lined up nicely, just to block the way). Sometimes it's just people tossing a scooter there after use.
My partner uses a wheelchair so scooters have been a pain in the ass for them.
Safety wise there are problems. The scooter app will tell you to wear a helmet and never ride on the sidewalk (to cover their asses) but no one wears a helmet on them.
A scooter rider hit my partner, then a stationary car once. At another time a scooter hit me and knocked me over (they were speeding down the sidewalk late at night).
But "stupid drivers" also applies to bikes, and cars. And the potential for harm with an F-150 is a lot greater than a scooter
My scooter has an odometer. I've travelled 1593 km over a year and a bit. I've had about 4 near-misses which resulted in little or no injury and 1 serious accident that resulted in a bad but not severe injury (hematoma and long-lasting muscle strain, I didn't go to the doctor but I suspect it might've been a low grade tear). The bad accident was me crashing into a fence, because I got distracted by dogs.
I think I'm a bit more clumsy than the average rider, but y'all can have my data to start the research.
I am not in favour of car-centric transportation but cars very rarely explode and burn your house down when you sleep. Electric scooters come with a whole different set of hazards compared to cars, but yes, injuries per km does help to add context.
To play devil's advocate:
Do you have a clothes dryer in your home? A stove/oven, rice cooker, air frier, oil fryer, etc?
Those cause more house fires than anything else. E-scooter house fires are extremely rare, and usually only as a result of using non-certified batteries and chargers.
It's almost unheard of to have a UL certified e-scooter or ebike catch fire.
The problem is that non-CSA approved batteries and chargers are being sold in Canada with absolutely no regulation.
If you look at fires per unit sold the scooters and bikes are probably an order of magnitude higher than stoves and dryers.
Sounds like you have nothing against escooters, you just have an issue with under-regulation for battery safety
If electric scooters catch fire, that's something that needs regulations to fix, but it doesn't mean that cars are better.
also, Didn't know that Scooters and IDF shared strategies
The scooters aren't trying to burn down Palestine, they are just giving up on existence and hoping to take their oppressors with them.
oppressors?
we are their gods, we created them, feed them, control every aspect of their existence.
them setting themselves aflame to kill a god is way more epic than what your described
What is a god, if not an oppressor?
almost the ultimate oppressor, the greatest one is a person's inner self, tethering to a reality no one consented to be in
That's why we keep anything powered by electricity outside of the house. Who knows when a gameboy could catch fire and explode and burn your house down???
Har har, the issue is the joules of energy stored in the battery and how quickly it can be discharged. A pair of AA batteries store the same energy as ~5grams of TNT but they can not release it all at once. An electric scooter or bike battery stores the equivalent energy to a large car crash and can release it in seconds due to the chemistry and construction.
Who is hurting these poor scooters
Big Oil! The bastards!
Watched some twat riding a rental scooter down a busy road. He pulled out his cell phone and started looking at it. He immediately lost control and went flying, eating pavement with his face. This is not surprising.
On the upside, I'd rather this twat ride a scooter where damage is mostly limited to himself, than drive a car and injured others instead.
Agreed. I still wouldnβt want to be run over by someone on a scooter. Thatβs a lot of kinetic energy being transferred for anyone even remotely adult sized.
I've been hit by 3 scooters (I don't know of they were electric or not) 2 bicycles, 2 cars, and 1 trucks so far this lifetime.
Now, I do weigh north of 100kg, so im a thick target. But, in 5 of those crashes I had no injuries, and the hitter had no to minor injuries. In 3 of those crashes I've had minor to major injuries, and the hitter had no idea I even existed. I'll let you devine which were which.
Anyway, the solution is more tarmac in the Commons dedicated to slow speed vehicles, preferably that isn't carved out of the <5% we dedicate to pedestrians.
Anyway, the solution is more tarmac in the Commons dedicated to slow speed vehicles, preferably that isn't carved out of the <5% we dedicate to pedestrians.
Sorry I'm confused, does this part mean you have been hit while driving a slow speed vehicle (I assume like a mobility scooter)?
Or have you just had the worst luck ever and been hit that many times as a pedestrian?
I've been hit as a pedestrian that many times.
I don't have bad luck, I've just walk a lot in the last 40 years; 2 of the scooter and one of the bicycles happened on pedestrian streets and the riders were making eye contact with me. Guess they though I would move. They thought wrong and didn't account that I stable base when about to get hit.
The last scooter hit was in a blind corner, but low speed, so I was able the hug the guy to stop him from falling (skill I learned on the blind corners of the LG metro stop when two trains roll in simultaneously). The last bicycle hit has someone riding on a sidewalk assuming I'd move onto the road for them while jogging. I didn't move for them, and they miscalculated the physics of about 300N the edge of their handlebars.
For the cars, one was a driver hopping a curb, knocking me into a park. Cop said they wouldn't follow up because I didn't have a plate. One was a car turning right on red when I had a pedestrian walk signal, cop said RtOR is legal so I should have been looking out for the car. Last one was a plow pick-up backing into a crosswalk (and me) to turn around; while I had a plate and a witness that time, cops said their investigation couldn't confirm the truck hit me, I might have just slipped on the ice.
You'll also notice that 5/6 low speeds i could have avoided, but chose not to, while i had 0 agency in all three car collisions.
The carving space out of the Commons part means we should be segregating bikes and scooters from pedestrians, but at the cost of car space, not sidewalk.
That's wild I'm sorry that's happened to you so many times and that the cops have been so shitty about it. Thanks for the explanation.
I'm big, so id rather it happen to me than someone else.
Either way, will be out of the gene pool soon.
I donβt know how it is in canada but here in colombia i hardly ever see scooter users wearing helmets. It doesnβt surprise me that they injure themselves a lot.
They don't like wearing helmets moving at speeds where they should be wearing a motorcycle helmet.
Its a mixed bag here, but many people do not. Commuters usually do, but people riding for fun or not going long distances don't tend to. On my commute I see a lot of people with actual motorcycle or dirtbike helmets though, which I hope to get one day since I only have a bike helmet.
When I visited Mexico City earlier this year I was horrified to see people riding scooters with no protection through the insane traffic there. People there don't even stop for pedestrians, I cant imagine how dangerous it'd be to ride a scooter or bike.
I've sustained 25km/h injuries on my arms and legs from my ebike... I try to never go without my helmet while riding, and when I do I limit myself to 15kph.
A fall at 0 km/hr can do the same brain damage as a fall at 30 km/hr.
I took a dive off a bike on to concrete face first and the thing I remember most distinctly was the sound it made.