While e-scooter popularity grows, helmet safety lags behind

LimeBike scooters for rent on the corner of F Street and Front Street in downtown San Diego on March 1, 2018.
Photo credit Eduardo Contreras/San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS/Sipa USA

KYW Newsradio’s Medical Reports are sponsored by Independence Blue Cross. 

By Dr. Brian McDonough, Medical Editor
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Electric scooters are gaining in popularity, but according to emergency room physicians from around the country, they are leading to an increased number of fractures, and they can be deadly with reports of cases of traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. 

These have occurred when people were not wearing helmets. The scooters are short-range vehicles that basically consist of a narrow platform on which the rider stands with one foot in front of the other, and a waist-high rod with handlebars for steering. 

While people riding bicycles have been made aware of the importance of bike helmets, there are many who do not understand the necessity of doing this when riding scooters. 

In California, there is now an additional concern where a bill to remove the helmet requirement for riders 18 and older was signed into law.