Children’s Safety on Wheels – The New York Times

They included more concussions, including severe head injuries, Dr. Griffin said, and more leg injuries. “People think, oh, it’s just a scooter,” he said, and they don’t take the risk seriously, but the center of gravity on a scooter is much lower than it is on a bike, and “there’s nothing that’s keeping you on the scooter.”

Studies have shown parents are less likely to enforce helmet rules for children riding scooters, he said in an email; perhaps because “parents do not perceive scooters as being as dangerous as bicycles; however, our study showed that not to be the case as 10 percent of injuries in our study were concussions, which is comparable to what is reported for bicycle injuries.”

Motorized scooters, available for rent in cities all over the United States and around the world, raise the stakes by increasing the speed. So far they are not permitted in New York City, but there is a bill under consideration that may change that.

[Read more about the issue of scooters in New York. | Read an editorial on scooters.]

I was in Paris last week where electric rental scooters whiz between the cars, swooping through crowded intersections, veering onto the sidewalk when that helps them move faster. Nobody wears a helmet.

It was absolutely terrifying — I kept thinking I was about to see a crash, and the riders, maneuvering on their slim vehicles, seemed even more vulnerable than bicyclists. Yes, they look suave and insouciant, but shouldn’t they have to follow traffic signals? Shouldn’t they be wearing helmets?

Sure enough, Paris, which has at least 12 different companies competing to rent e-scooters, now has a law making it illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalk as of September, and laws limiting scooter speeds. There have been lots of accidents with scooters striking pedestrians, in one case breaking the arm of the pianist at the Paris Opera.

E-scooter rentals were introduced in Salt Lake City in 2018, and Dr. Troy Madsen, an emergency physician at the University of Utah School of Medicine was one of the authors on a study published in May in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, which looked at scooter-related injuries seen in the adult emergency room before and after the advent of the e-scooters.