When a City Council committee advanced in April a measure lifting the ban on electric scooter rides between midnight and 5 a.m., a Chicago Department of Transportation official pointed to an analysis that showed e-scooter-related accidents dropped over the last two years.
About 28 out of 100,000 rides resulted in injuries and a visit to the emergency room during the pilot program phase between 2019 and 2020, Assistant Transportation Commissioner Sean Wiedel told the Committee on License and Consumer Protection.
That number was down to 14 injuries per 100,000 trips, Wiedel said in April.
Six months, later however, Sun-Times reporter Mary Norkol was told updated figures aren’t available “as CDOT does not have data specific to crashes or injuries related to shared scooters.”
But studying the safety risks of e-scooters should not be limited to pilot programs, especially when statistics show the number of the two-wheeled vehicles on the city’s street are increasing as more residents opt for the low-cost, low-emission ride for short-distance travel. If CDOT is looking to improve e-scooter safety, as it says it will, that plan should include monitoring deaths, injuries and probable emergency department visits in the long run.
Lyft, which operates Divvy rental scooters, and Lime and Spin, the only companies operating rentals in Chicago outside downtown, should also be required to share any figures with the city.
This collective data can assist in shaping policy and determining whether more education campaigns are needed for e-scooters riders, as well as motorists, cyclists and pedestrians who use the city’s roadways.
Anecdotally, experts, including the chair of emergency medicine at Advocate Illinois Masonic, told Norkol more people operating e-scooters are getting hurt.
The victims themselves can attest to that reality as well. Bridgeport resident Marie-Claire Ching, who owns a Segway e-scooter, was not only hit by a car once but twice in a month last year.
The few national studies out there confirm their experiences.
E-scooter injuries across the country rose by 45% each year between 2017 to 2022, according to a University of California San Francisco study published over the summer.
The research, which also focused on electric bikes, found that e-riders were older — in their early to late 30s — and tended to eschew helmets. E-scooter riders were more likely than conventional scooter riders to suffer internal injuries following an accident.
“As micromobility vehicles become more embedded in our daily lives, understanding and addressing the safety challenges they pose is critical,” said Dr. Benjamin N. Breyer, a UCSF professor and lead author of the study.
It is hard to spin it any other way.
Chicago doesn’t have to take the route that Paris took in 2023 when it banned rental e-scooters after they were deemed too dangerous in spite of tighter restrictions. But the city can’t afford to ignore the accident trend.
It doesn’t hurt to remind e-scooter riders that they should wear helmets, keep off the sidewalk and keep their speed at 15 mph. Like cyclists, they should also stay in bike lanes and, in their absence, stick to the right side of the road.
Drivers and cyclists should also follow the rules of the road. And pedestrians crossing the street should put down their phones and turn down their ear buds or headphones. Vigilance and awareness are essential for everyone’s safety.
As the traffic landscape evolves, compiling data on new modes of transportation shouldn’t be an afterthought.
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