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The popularity of e-scooters from billion-dollar companies like Uber, Lyft, Lime and Bird have created a new health scare, according to the Centers for Disease control.
Since electric scooters began populating streets of some of the country's biggest cities last year, there has been a surge in emergency room visits for fractures, dislocations and head trauma, the CDC found in a study that will be released at the Epidemic Intelligence Service conference in Atlanta on Thursday.
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.
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According to the CDC study, the most common wound after head injuries involved upper extremity fractures at 27%, followed by lower extremity fractures at 12%. The study, which lasted nearly three months, found the e-scooter injury rate was 14.3 per 100,000 trips.
The median age for people injured was 29. The majority of injuries occurred on the street, with 29% connected to first-time riders and 18% involving motor vehicles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @05:07PM (7 children)
Millennials... the generation that thinks it is smart to ride e-scooters without a helmet because their YouTube influencers tell them it's not cool to wear helmets. Vote Pewdiepie!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @05:28PM (6 children)
Close... It is more like millennials who never learned any real world skills other than posting on social media sites. When I was a kid we never wore protective gear to ride a bicycle, it wasn't even available then. I never knew of anyone getting an injury worse than a scrape from a bike crash. Then came the helmet, elbow and knee pad rules. Soon after that, if a kid fell off his bike in grass it meant a trip to the emergency room and trauma counseling. And those people grew up to become the parents of the millennials. They had no chance with those parents.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 05 2019, @05:54PM (4 children)
I came up in the same time period as you -- totally feral, no safety gear -- and I agree with your sentiments about over-protection. That said, kids back then did bash their brains falling off bikes, it's just that since it is actually a pretty rare occurrence the chance that you or I would ever be impacted personally or know someone personally impacted was extremely small. There has to be a middle ground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @06:03PM (3 children)
I hurt myself several times on a bike. Cracked my nuts on the center bar, scraped my leg when I fell off. When I first saw helmets, I wondered how someone would fall on their head unless being hit frontally by a car. Never rode in a racing attitude.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @06:33PM (1 child)
Me too .... until a dog run full speed into my front wheel out of nowhere, when I was going 30km/h ... you know, one of these idiotic border collies. 1 second later, I was flying sideways an fell sideways scrapping some parts... only later did I see my helmet got cracked.
So yeah, imagine what you want. The world may just surprise you with things you can't imagine. That's why there are helmets. That's why doctors see head injuries from idiots not wearing helmets are the leading cause of death and serious injury on bikes and related things.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @06:56PM
If only so many idiots didn't ride their bike without a flagman ahead and with ultrasonic whistles to scare dogs away, so many injuries that people still suffer through their helmets could be avoided.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @01:03AM
And nothing was lost.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 06 2019, @05:12PM
All the kids who died from traumatic brain injuries aren't around to tell us about them.