The police reports are filled with face-first crashes into the ground — and some iconic high-plains flora.
On the evening of March 24, a scooter rider cruising along a sidewalk near Denver “struck a large tumbleweed,” forcing the Spin scooter to a stop and pitching the man over the handlebars, according to a police report.
The cause was bizarre, but the crash was typical: An encounter with a relatively innocuous obstacle sent a scooter rider hurtling headfirst, resulting in two broken teeth.
“People are going over the handlebars, and they don’t have helmets,” said Chuck Temple IV, who has reviewed dozens of scooters for his full-time business, electric-scooter.guide.
Scooters are causing a lot of injuries, and increasingly, their design is getting the blame. With small wheels, riders can be bucked by relatively small potholes, cracks or even stripes of paint on the road, Temple said — an idea echoed by emergency room staff at Denver Health and transportation experts. In fact, some studies indicate that scooter riders may be injured 10 times more often than bicyclists.
It’s just one of several safety concerns, along with unsafe riding and a lack of scooter rules enforcement, as the city prepares to launch a permanent scooter program in the wake of its first documented scooter death.
Tiny wheels
The typical electric scooter has wheels about a third the size of a bicycle’s. That means they’re more likely to be jarred by obstacles, sending the rider flying forward.
“Larger wheels allow you to go over bumps or over holes, or over cracks,” said David King, assistant professor of urban planning at Arizona State University.
He gave the example of trying to ride a small-wheeled scooter over a curb lip into a parking lot: “If you hit it at the wrong angle at 18 mph, that can be catastrophic,” he said.
Denver Health emergency physician Eric Lavonas said he sees scooter-related injuries daily, ranging from scratches to broken bones and traumatic brain injuries. They’re more frequent than bike injuries, he said, and he blames small wheels too.
One of the most popular early models — the Segway ES-2 — uses 8-inch solid rubber tires because they’re cheap and low-maintenance, but they are slippery in the rain and can even lose stability while riding over road paint, Temple said.
For comparison, the typical bicycle has pneumatic, or air-filled, tires nearly three times a scooter tire’s size.
The companies are beginning to make changes:
- Razor’s new self-designed scooter has a seat and 16-inch pneumatic tires.
- Lyft has replaced most of its fleet with the Segway-Ninebot MAX, which has 10-inch pneumatic tubeless tires.
- Spin also began deploying the MAX in Denver this month.
- Lime’s “3.0” model expands its wheels to 10-inch solid tires.
- Bird replaced its Denver fleet with the Bird Zero, which has 9-inch “semi-solid pneumatic tires,” according to The Verge.
But the city’s laws only set basic requirements. The scooters must have lights and reflectors, and they can’t exceed 20 mph or 100 pounds.
Spokeswoman Heather Burke said the city could consider stricter requirements. “No final decisions have been made for the ongoing program, but these options are still on the table for commercial operators,” she wrote in an email.
The city will publish statistics on scooter crashes in the coming weeks, but it won’t have any analysis of individual companies’ records. Denver police have responded to 51 crashes involving scooters since June 2018, and not all crashes are reported to police.
First-time foolishness
It takes just a few minutes to find a scooter, unlock it with a mobile app and start riding. And riders usually don’t have helmets for those spontaneous journeys.
“A lot of the accidents happen in those first few rides,” said Nick Williams, deputy chief of staff for Denver Public Works.
In fact, a Centers for Disease Control study of scooter crashes in Austin, Texas, found that 29% involved first-time riders, and fewer than 1% of the riders wore a helmet. The injury rate was 14.3 per 100,000 trips.
That injury rate is about 10 times higher than the rate reported for bicycles in a separate study.
Denver is interested in launching a public education campaign to be funded by the scooter companies, Burke said, but there are no details yet. The companies themselves also are trying to stem the safety criticism with education campaigns, classes and helmet giveaways. For example, Lime is hosting “First Ride” training sessions Aug. 25 at East High School at 12 and 2 p.m., including free helmets.
Poor riding and sidewalk squabbles
Scooters, like bikes, are a sore subject for some pedestrians. A city study found that 44% of scooter riders took the sidewalk, even when a bike lane was available.
Martha Linder, 69, said she and her husband were injured trying to get out of the way of two scooters on the sidewalk of Larimer Street. As they dodged to the left, the couple fell to the ground.
“And then I heard the smack, unfortunately, when his head hit the concrete,” she said. Her husband was not seriously injured, but she suffered a broken tibia.
“It’s just darn dangerous on the sidewalk these days, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “Now I won’t be walking for a while.”
A new law could help. Currently, scooters can ride on the sidewalks in some situations. A new proposal before the Denver City Council would eliminate most of those exceptions, making the law easier to understand and enforce.
So far, though, police officers are “primarily focusing on education rather than enforcement,” wrote Doug Schepman, a spokesman for the Denver Police Department.
Scooter crashes have resulted in 12 citations of scooter riders related to crashes, according to Denver police. Local courts also reported six citations for riding in the wrong place, whether it’s sidewalks or the 16th Street Mall.
“When is the city going to take enforcement seriously?” asked Gary Van Dorn of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition.
At a recent debate hosted by Streetsblog Denver, he noted that scooters that block sidewalks are a problem for people with disabilities. An employee of The Denver Post also was injured recently when she tripped over a scooter on a sidewalk, breaking both her shoulders.
“I think a lot of the opposition would dissipate if you had enforcement of the kind of law that’s currently on the books,” Van Dorn said.
Users often are asked to submit a photo of their parking spot to the services. But, at least for Lyft, those images aren’t generally used to penalize misbehaving riders. Instead, a Lyft crew might simply move the errant vehicle, according to Patrick Quintana, a market manager for the company.
The city, which has collected $128,250 in permit fees from the scooter companies, will install 13 bike and scooter parking corrals this month.
What’s next?
The companies have reported nearly 6,000 rides per day and about 2.7 million miles since the program launched last summer. The average ride is 1 mile.
“Based on what we’ve seen over the last year, it’s a mobility option we’d like to keep exploring, but I think there are going to be adjustments and there has to be adjustments,” Williams said.
Denver Public Works is preparing a permanent new program to allow the dockless services in Denver. Combined with the new law before the council, the program will set the expectations for how the companies themselves operate in Denver.
The devices have their fans, too. Mobility advocates argue that better bike lanes will make the streets safer for cyclists and scooters alike. And the companies pitch themselves as a replacement for automobile trips and a step toward more sustainable transportation.
But John Tinnell, a University of Colorado Denver professor, has urged caution in allowing private companies to capitalize on public space. At the recent forum, he asked the city to publish more detailed information about each company’s record.
“We need to start pitting scooter companies against one another on our terms and conditions,” he said. “Who has the best safety record? Who has the least amount of improperly parked scooters?”
And King, the ASU professor, said scooters are only the beginning.
“I don’t think scooters with small wheels are going to be much more than a niche,” he said. The startup Revel already is offering electric, dockless mopeds in New York City and Washington, D.C. Future scooter iterations could be larger and heavier, perhaps with windshields or more wheels, King suggested.
