Hospital staff are treating increasing numbers of young patients with life-altering injuries after accidents involving e-scooters
Anyone living in an urban area will have noticed a rise in the number of electric scooters on the roads and footpaths in cities and towns across the country. There has also been a rise in the number of collisions involving scooters, jumping by 36% from 310 in 2023 to 422 last year. That trend seems to be worsening with 260 collisions reported in the first six months of this year.
Dr. Raymond Carson is a consultant in rehabilitation medicine at the National Rehabilitation University Hospital, Associate Clinical Professor at UCD and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at the RCSI. He joined This Week on RTÉ Radio 1 to discuss how these collisions can have devastating results. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full below).
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The increasing accident stats are quite stark year on year, notes Carson, but it's the type of injuries which is most concerning. "We are seeing more and more people getting hurt often with very severe injuries and it's a case of having to help people to pick up the pieces and move forward in often difficult situations. Injuries occur across a spectrum, and the lucky ones who fall onto the road may escape with cuts and bruises, perhaps broken bones.
"But at the other end of the spectrum, we're seeing people with severe head injuries and spinal cord injuries. I work on a brain injury unit where I look after people who are recovering from brain injuries in particular. The patients we see are the most severely affected and often have very altered lives as a result."
These brain injuries which Carson is seeing come in range in severity from mild concussion to much more serious outcomes. "At this end of the spectrum, there are more significant effects on both the body and brain function. People can have a loss of power in their muscles. They may have severely compromised mobility, and they may have severe cognitive problems, memory, concentration, behavior and so forth."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, is road safety training needed to ride an e-scooter?
Carson says riding a scooter is far riskier than riding a bike. "Riders of scooters are among a category of road users called vulnerable road users. In the case of scooters, the very machine itself is built for failure. When you think of a narrow platform on top of small wheels ridden by a rider who is standing already, the recipe is there for catastrophe. These are vulnerable machines, but when you think of the increased power and speed many of these devices have - there's a UK manufacturer of a turbocharged device, which is reportedly able to achieve speeds up to 160 kilometers an hour - it's a recipe for disaster."
He says they're seeing an increasing number of younger people come in with injuries from e-scooter accidents. "There was a survey carried out by the Road Safety Authority, which looked at the profile of injuries and demographic profile of people involved in these accidents. One of headline points to emerge was that the majority of scooter riders appear to be a younger cohort, the 18 to 35 age group, and males, young men in particular, who are the most common users of these machines.
"This would be born out by the patients we treat at the NRH. Very often the consequences can be lifelong, and that is the sad reality for these people. Obviously with ongoing treatment and rehabilitation, we hope to ensure that people can make the best possible recovery, but sadly, it's an incomplete recovery in many, many cases."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, new e-scooter legislation introduced
The law states that e-scooter riders must be at least 16 years old, not allowed to travel more than 20 kilometers an hour or allowed to carry passengers or use footpaths. Of course, many people will have seen those laws broken so would enforcement result in less accidents?
"If those rules were enforced, we would see a reduction in the frequency and severity of the injuries sustained", says Carson. "Whether we are pedestrians, car drivers, motorcyclists or scooter riders, we all have a collective responsibility to mind each other and to observe the rules of the road. While the gardaí are doing great work in detecting instances where scooters are used illegally, I think the most important plank here is education and prevention."
The majority of young men who are coming in with these injuries haven't been wearing a helmet
Carson also believes it's time to make helmets mandatory for e-scooter riders. "I think it's a great surprise that it isn't. There's a large body of international research, which has looked at the wearing of helmets, amongst cyclists, and obviously we're extrapolating from those studies.
"But again, the big headline findings here are that wearing a helmet when riding a bicycle or an e scooter can reduce the risk of serious head injury by up to 60%, and the risk of death can be also greatly reduced. It's such a simple thing to do, and yet it isn't being done. The majority of young men who are coming in with these injuries haven't been wearing a helmet."
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
