Head injuries topped the list of emergency room injuries involving electric scooters, yet very few e-scooter riders wore helmets, an observational study found. About 40% of patients treated for two-wheeled e-scooter injuries at two southern California emergency departments had head injuries, but only 4.4% wore a protective helmet. Despite the wild popularity of rental scooters — Bird tallied 10 million rides in its first year — cities have adopted mixed responses to their safety issues. Los Angeles-area emergency departments are at the epicenter of the electric scooter phenomenon.
In their study, the researchers reviewed medical records of 249 emergency room patients who presented with injuries associated with electric scooters at UCLA from September 2017 to September 2018. Patients were an average age of about 34, and 58.2% were male. Only 10 patients (4.4%) were documented as having worn a helmet. Head injuries (40.2%), fractures (31.7%), and contusions, sprains, and lacerations without fracture (27.7%) were most common.
Read more at: https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/headtrauma/77650