Electric scooters are increasingly part of the crowded urban landscape, but a UC San Francisco study has found a major surge of injuries related to scooters, particularly among young adults.
Electric scooters are increasingly part of the crowded urban landscape, but a UC San Francisco study has found a major surge of injuries related to scooters, particularly among young adults.
The number of scooter-related injuries and hospital admissions in the United States grew by 222 percent between 2014 and 2018 to more than 39,000 injuries, while the number of hospital admissions soared by 365 percent to a total of nearly 3,300, according to the study.
Nearly a third of the patients suffered head trauma – more than twice the rate of head injuries to bicyclists. About a third of the e-scooter injuries were to women, and people between the ages of 18 and 34 were the most often injured for the first time in 2018.
The study appears Jan. 8 in JAMA Surgery.
“E-scooters are a fast and convenient form of transportation and help to lessen traffic congestion, especially in dense, high-traffic areas,” said senior and corresponding author Benjamin N. Breyer, MD, a UCSF Health urologist. “But we’re very concerned about the significant increase in injuries and hospital admissions that we documented, particularly during the last year, and especially with young people, where the proportion of hospital admissions increased 354 percent.”
Read more at University of California - San Francisco
Image by Kristof Topolewski from Pixabay
