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Transportation United States Technology

CDC Says There's an Epidemic of E-Scooter Injuries That Could Easily Be Prevented (cnbc.com) 306

Posted by msmash from the growing-tension dept.
Electric scooters are becoming just as common in many cities as Lyft and Uber cars. While they may be a step in the right direction to improve transportation options, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a surge in emergency room visits due to e-scooter accidents. From a report: The CDC has found that head injuries topped the list of accident-related incidents involving e-scooters at 45%. The study determined that many e-scooter injuries could have been prevented if riders wore helmets and were more careful around cars, according to summary of the study released on Wednesday. "A high proportion of e-scooter related injuries involved potentially preventable risk factors, such as lack of helmet use, or motor vehicle interaction," a preliminary summary of the study said.
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CDC Says There's an Epidemic of E-Scooter Injuries That Could Easily Be Prevented More

CDC Says There's an Epidemic of E-Scooter Injuries That Could Easily Be Prevented

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  • Government to scooter riders: Be careful around cars.

    Government to drivers: we'll set you speed limit extra high and encourage you to drive dangerously though City streets.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 )

      NYC most of the bike riders seem to break every traffic rule there is and then when they get splattered they start crying about how they are some special snowflake class that is better than everyone

      • Selection Bias at play (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:59AM (#58526552)
        A huge proportion of the bicycle user are actually respecting the road rules on street. There was a recent comment which showed that it was 94%+. Now compare that to the proportion of car user which pretend they are safer if they don't respect speed limit (e.g. they think they are entitled to). Or even the proportion burning orange/red light even when those are the proper timing. The issue at play here is you have a selection bias : you remember that bike going through the stop or red light, but you do not remember the 100's which respected the rule, so since the brain concentrate on the exception and possible accident source, you eliminated them. Bottom line comments like yours (not necessarily targeted at you specifically) are anecdotal and due to human selection bias should be ignored. What would be needed is a real study , say for example at a specific intersection, what is the proportion of car burning red light versus bike. If we are going by anecdotial evidence , there is a huge amount of car at the T intersection at my home burning the red light, because the street is 50kmh in a city where it is normally limited at 30 kmh, and the street on the right looks small. Result : when I push to get a red light (light normally stays green permanently) there is no week where an idiot think they can accelerate and go through the orange/red (and it is already green for people on foot) before i stop them for about 60 seconds. Mind you there are as many biker in proportion which probably do the same. But if I get hit by a biker at that light, I have a huge probability to only get injured, if i get hit by a 50 kmh accelerating possibly beyond that, I have a nice probability of getting killed. So my attention bias is naturally on car.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • A huge proportion of the bicycle user are actually respecting the road rules on street. There was a recent comment which showed that it was 94%+.

          Um, no. As I pointed out in my response to that comment [slashdot.org], that was single study in a single city, and was such a statistical anomaly that even the researcher admitted he was surprised by it.

          Reality in large urban areas tends to be less than 50% (Manhattan clocked in at a whopping 20%), which lines up well with the observations of those of us who regularly drive in those areas.

      • NYC most of the bike riders seem to break every traffic rule there is ...

        There are traffic rules in NYC? Who knew?

        The only saving grace is that vehicles are generally moving so slowly (if at all) that the casualty count is minimized. I do agree that bicycle riders in Manhattan seem to be fueled with some powerful mind-altering agent that causes them to believe themselves to be invulnerable and therefore unaffected by the laws of both man and physics.

        I wonder where I can come by some of the stuff they are

    • Government to scooter riders: Be careful around cars.

      Government to drivers: we'll set you speed limit extra high and encourage you to drive dangerously though City streets.

      What? In my city the speed limit is 25 unless otherwise posted. Most streets are not otherwise posted. I don't consider 25 MPH to be "extra high".

  • Scourge . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by indytx ( 825419 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @07:13AM (#58526140)

    I don't know how these are a step in the right direction. Most people using them could simply walk and get some exercise. Meanwhile, the riders don't ride on the street, or when they do the don't follow traffic laws, and those on the sidewalks are dangerous to pedestrians.

    • Re:Scourge . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:18AM (#58526368) Homepage
      Walking is slow and scooters are fast. They turn a 45 minute walk into a 10 minute ride.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Joce640k ( 829181 )

        Yep. Scooter rider here and scooters really expand the radius of the places you can get to in a reasonable amount of time, places you wouldn't normally walk to.

    • With the exception of some of the largest cities. Most American Cities are not well designed for walking, but for cars. Bikes and Scooters are a good option to navigate these cities where you don't need a car. Walking in these cities, with poorly maintained sidewalks (that often just end into a busy intersection) Distances about 2 or 3 miles away from the residential to the commercial districts.

      Much of Americas boom time was coincided with the growth of the automobile. So many of these cities that had po

    • Why don't they walk? Because humans always have, and always will, want personal, non-muscle-powered transportation.
  • Since e-scooters have speeds similar to racing bicycles (25 to 45 km/h), is it right to assume riders have to be more careful around cars? No question you should wear a helmet on an e-scooter with those kinds of speeds, but the usual behavior in the US towards bicyclists ("get off the f***ing road" even though they are legal road users) probably apply to e-scooters too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LQ ( 188043 )
      I ride an e-bike (battery assisted pedal bike) in London. By EU law it's assist cuts out at 25 kph (15 mph). I am often overtaken by e-scooters which are unregulated and illegal on UK roads and pavements (sidewalks). I guess the reduced number of police officers means little or no enforcement.

      • I ride an e-bike (battery assisted pedal bike) in London.

        I don't understand this....

        If you are going to have a motorized bicycle, why not just go get a real motorcycle, and have the added benefits of more speed (keeping you more on par with the cars you are sharing the road with)?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LQ ( 188043 )

          I ride an e-bike (battery assisted pedal bike) in London.

          I don't understand this....

          If you are going to have a motorized bicycle, why not just go get a real motorcycle, and have the added benefits of more speed (keeping you more on par with the cars you are sharing the road with)?

          I've been riding a pedal cycle in London for 46 years. I'm getting on a bit and now need a little push up the hills (about 100W) but still want some exercise on my commute.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          Perhaps you should make an effort to understand this then. It's not complicated.

          e-bikes are still bicycles, you pedal them and get exercise. They are also unlicensed.

          Yes, I understand your question was rhetorical.

          • e-bikes are still bicycles, you pedal them and get exercise. They are also unlicensed.

            Ok thanks...I've never really heard of or seen one before.

            I was under the assumption it was just electric and you didn't pedal it.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Cederic ( 9623 )

              Only if you're lazy and/or have bad knees.

              They can be ridden with minimal to no effort but all of the ones I've seen are fully equipped to operate as a standard mechanical bicycle.

        • Lighter, cheaper to park, works without gas, cheaper to buy, insurance?, licenses, Etc

      • Finally a actual question for /.

        How do we fix LQs e-bike?

        I say 'screaming small block chevy', but I will admit that's my solution for all vehicle related fix questions. Except the ones requiring a bug motor, rat or LS.

        In Yobistan? Perhaps that old 3.5 V8 rover engine.

    • Re:Probably related to bicycle accidents (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Malc ( 1751 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:11AM (#58526342)

      Yeah, I was a bit surprised the other day whilst cycling at 35 km/h when a scooter flew past me. Are those things really capable of handling less ideal situations that a bicycle can? I'm thinking for example of emergency braking, pot holes and debris. Strikes me that scooters are even more vulnerable road users than bicycles, and they probably have less control.

      • All of the major scooter companies in the US use scooters with a maximum speed of 15 MPH (25 Kmh). Obviously, you don't have to go max throttle all the time, and you shouldn't. Downtown, where the scooters are in my city, you're likely to have to stop every block or two. Most of the time, you're approaching an intersection, so the natural thing to do is to tootle along at about twice walking speed.

        Having ridden both, the scooter definitely feels safer than a bike. The foot on the scooter is a few inches o

  • meh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MancunianMaskMan ( 701642 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @07:25AM (#58526184)
    when you ride a bicycle the benefit to your cardiovascular health offsets the risk of life and limb in terms of your life expectancy. With the e-scooter, you don't get that, i guess it's progress.

    now let me get on my bike to ride home, i'm working from home this afternoon.

  • Not a fan of E-Scooters but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @07:27AM (#58526190)

    I'm not a big fan of these scooters/bikes cluttering up pavements everywhere. But by itself this information is pretty meaningless. You know what else increases the risk of a visit to the emergency room? Travelling in a car. Yet motor vehicle accidents are part of a baseline that is apparently acceptable, while the new addition of scooters accidents is some big tragedy.

    All these statistics really show is that we should probably encourage scooter riders to wear helmets, and upgrade infrastructure to reduce scooter/vehicle conflicts. Otherwise for all we know, the scooter riders getting hit by cars might otherwise have been hit as pedestrians.

  • Who should have thought that racing around on small wheels could cause problems? :D

  • An epidemic of e-scooter injuries? (Score:5, Informative)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @07:51AM (#58526276)

    I doubt it [wikipedia.org].

    An epidemic [...] is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

    Last time I checked, injuries are not an infectious disease.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      Wikipedia is not an authority for how a word should be used. Wikimedia Foundation clearly states so themselves. If you would have ever edited a Wikipedia article you would have come across this rule.

      This linking to Wikipedia every time to try to make a point must stop.

    • Grammar problem not a word selection problem. Epidemic as an adjective would be perfectly acceptable. e.g.
      "CDC Says E-Scooter Injuries That Could Easily Be Prevented have reached epidemic levels"

    • Actually last time I checked (just now) the word has more than one meaning as a noun and all the dictionaries agree that an epidemic can either describe an "infectious disease" or a "problem".
      https://dictionary.cambridge.o... [cambridge.org]
      https://www.oxfordlearnersdict... [oxfordlear...naries.com]
      https://www.oxfordlearnersdict... [oxfordlear...naries.com]

      Disregard my other post which also shows epidemic would be usable in adjective form.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mascot ( 120795 )

      And Wikipedia is not a dictionary.

      epidemic
      [ ep-i-dem-ik ]
      noun
      a temporary prevalence of a disease.
      a rapid spread or increase in the occurrence of something: an epidemic of riots.

      It's also worth pointing out that dictionaries do not dictate word usage, they only attempt to document them.

    • Last time I checked, injuries are not an infectious disease.

      Poetic language vs instructional language. Informal language in news articles is the norm these days; certainly, most people understand what was meant.

  • Not a CDC issue (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:25AM (#58526398) Journal

    Just like Republicans refuse to allow the CDC to investigate gun related deaths, people being stupid on scooters is not a disease.

    The CDC has much bigger issues to worry about, issues which the majority of people in this country will ignore because they deal with facts and science.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The CDC is a public health organization. The narrow interpretation of the name doesn't encompass the whole of their charter.

      Also, "disease" is maybe not as narrowly defined as you imagine.

  • ... the better way of teaching people is messing with their pockets.

  • CDC can study scooters but not guns (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:34AM (#58526436) Journal
    By law CDC is prohibited from doing *any* study of gun injuries or gun deaths or collect and make available reliable statistics. That is the law.
    • Good that a federal agency tasked with investigating contagious diseases doesn't suffer mission creep and get into topics well outside its purview. Keep the resources where they were intended instead of wasting them on overtly political ends.

  • It's not an epidemic unless it's got epidemiology. Scooter rides aren't contagious. Just another thing which would better be handled by some other agency, like the CPSC.

  • Scooter riders should be required to wear helmets. People should not ride drunk. People should not ride like assholes. The rental scooters I have seen really need bigger wheels to handle poorly maintained roads. There should be designated parking areas for rental scooters.

    Though, scooters can solve a lot of problems. At 1-2 horsepower, they are energy efficient. Because they are light, they accelerate fast. You don't have to pay a driver to operate a scooters. They solve the last mile problem. They don't take up much. They use less materials and cause less pollution than cars.

    The rental scooter rider is not every electric vehicle owners. I have ridden over 4,000 miles on my old electric scooter. I used to travel from Campbell to Mountain View in less than an hour--while the same trip took almost two hours on light rail. Scooters, gas scooters, and motorcycles offer a lot of freedom for people who are on a fixed or lower income.

    • It's not just the helmet. You can still break your neck or limbs.

      With 8-inch wheels, pneumatic tires, and suspension, cutting into a 5-inch-wide, 1-inch-deep pothole will pitch you forward at 15-20mph and good luck with that. 12-inch wheels are less vulnerable to that.

      The Segway and Xiaomi scooters also can't stop very fast. When I stop on my Ninebot ES4 (yes I own one), I have to lean back as if sitting on a non-existent seat. A stronger brake would be great...but it would also flip the damned thing

  • We have this backwards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Thursday May 02, 2019 @11:44AM (#58527288)

    We're like fish, so used to swimming that we don't realize we're surrounded by water.

    Please note:

    • The vast majority of serious scooter injuries involves a collision with a four wheeled motor vehicle.
    • The vast majority of serious pedestrian injuries involves a collision with a four wheeled motor vehicle.
    • The vast majority of serious bicycle injuries involves a collision with a four wheeled motor vehicle.
    • The vast majority of serious motorcycle injuries involves a collision with a four wheeled motor vehicle.
    • The vast majority of serious four wheeled motor vehicle injuries involves a collision with another four wheeled motor vehicle.

    There's one common element in all of these: Four wheeled motor vehicles, and more specifically, cars and light trucks.

    In comparison, while it's possible that a collision between two pedestrians will result in a serious injury and death, the low speed and low mass makes it extremely unlikely. Even with the higher speeds that cyclists and e-scooters can reach, the low mass tends to limit injuries. Motorcycles can reach much higher speeds, and the single-vehicle collision fatality rate reflects this, but even so, collision involving a four wheeled motor vehicle still accounts for the majority of fatalities.

    Cars, SUVs, and light trucks are capable of high speeds, have large amounts of mass, more limited visibility, and the driving training is minimal (one test, usually taken are a teen or young adult, with no retesting needed for the remaining decades of your life). Automobiles frequently break traffic rules (distracted driving, speeding, rolling through stops, etc) with minor penalties in the unlikely event they are caught. This makes automobiles disproportionately deadly to other road users, including other automobiles.

    We've become so accustomed to driving being the norm that we consider other forms of transportation to be more dangerous, even though the other forms of transportation are less likely to kill others.

    • Include the severity of gun deaths in your argument. However CDC is barred by gun manufacturers from studying the subject.

      • You want something pointless, we know guns poke holes in people and we know how many fatal holes were poked. We know most gun deaths are suicides.

        Let's have the CDC study the race of gun murderers, and we'll find out that two demographics groups are doing most the murders, those that have breakdown in family structure and so have lawless savages with guns roaming the streets.. Clearly almost all the firearm problem in the USA is those two groups, their lack of morals and their illegal guns.

        Ooo, is that to

    • Sources on your assertions? I do not believe them to be true in the cases of scooters, bicycles, and motorcycles.
  • Helmet Rentals!

  • ... and I'm glad you can study and call for corrections for injuries on E-scooters.

    Too bad the gun manufacturers won't let you apply the same forensic analysis of gun violence.

  • The logistics of providing secure, sanitized helmets to people renting scooters on the street doesn't sound very easy to me.

  • A high proportion of e-scooter related injuries involved potentially preventable risk factors, such as lack of helmet use, or motor vehicle interaction.

    First, "motor vehicle interaction" is such a beautiful newspeak way of saying "got run over". That's interacting all right.

    Second, these scooters are motor vehicles.

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