Published on May 16, 2019
The possibility of electric powered scooters in Seattle will also come with the possibility of numerous personal injuries.
Those unfortunate victims often end up at Harborview Medical Center and doctors at that level one trauma center said they want residents to take better care of themselves as they explore these new alternative ways to travel.
“Because they’re unskilled they don’t really know how to use these devices and they can go pretty fast,” said Dr. Fred Rivara, a pediatrician at UW Medicine‘s Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center.
The Center for Disease Control recently found that almost half of injuries to commuters on rental scooters involve a head trauma, and 15 percent are life altering traumatic brain injuries.
“Forty percent of people had head injuries. One third of them had fractures but only 4 percent were actually wearing helmets. Most of these injuries, 80 percent, were just simply falling off the scooter,” explains Dr. Rivara.
Scooter injuries statistics are often compared to bicycle injuries, but scooters have major differences that could put you at risk. For example, scooter wheels are smaller than bicycles, so encountering rocks or debris could lead to a crash for the inexperienced rider.
Continue reading at King5 News.
Originally written by Amity Addrisi and William Abeyta for King5 News.