Scooters can be a fun, trendy, and convenient way to get around. In recent years, their growing popularity has given rise to them becoming a staple of many communities around the country. Because of their efficiency and relatively cheap costs, using scooters as a mode of transportation can be a viable and eco-friendly solution to your everyday travel needs. While there are many ways to define a scooter, they are typically looked at as a lightweight two-wheeled device that can vary from very small to a larger motorized vehicle that can be taken on major roadways.
In today’s electronic and on-demand world, there has been a major rise in the number of e-scooters available in cities. These scooters, typically going under the name brands of Lime or Bird scooters, are placed all around major cities and can be activated with a debit or credit card. Once activated, the person is left up to their own devices to ride it with little guidance from the scooter companies or local governments on where to ride it safely and legally. As a result, as one would imagine, this has resulted in quite a few accidents.
Due to the lack of training or thorough warnings that come with these scooters, many victims can end up injured as a result. The way we see it, safer precautions need to be put into place on both sides. With drivers not being trained to drive with these scooters in the general vicinity of the road, there is a lot of room for mistakes to be made. Regardless of the reasons for the accidents, it doesn’t make them okay. If you’ve found yourself injured while riding a scooter and you think another party might be responsible, it’s important to reach out to an experienced injury attorney.
In a 2019 study released by the Center For Disease Control, it’s been shown that head injuries are the most common injury that results from these types of e-scooters. In fact, head trauma makes up a whopping 45% of injuries occurring on these trendy modes of transportation. Even on regular, “road-safe” scooters, head injuries are very common because riders often don’t wear helmets. When a person riding a pint-sized scooter comes into contact with a regular-sized motor vehicle, the results can often be deadly. When you’re riding something with so little protection, it’s easy to see how things can go wrong in a hurry.
Due to the precarious nature of being on a scooter, it is not uncommon for victims to be flung from the scooter after hitting an obstruction in the road, hard braking or colliding with another object. Without any protection and with a whole world of things to run into, it’s easy to see how head injuries can be common. Scooter companies and local governments have a responsibility to ensure that these handy transportation tools are used safely and properly. Likewise, other drivers have a responsibility to treat scooter riders with the same caution and care as they would any other road vehicle. If you’re hurt by the negligence of another party in any capacity, it’s important that you receive compensation for your pain and suffering.
People need to be more careful in every sense of the word. If drivers were more careful and companies were more careful with their products, then accidents like these would not continue to be on the rise. This is especially true because of how severe some of these accidents turn out to be. If people insist on being negligent, then victims will continue being hurt at the hands of the incompetent. According to that same report by the CDC, the next most frequent injury that is reported besides head injuries are fractures of the upper body’s extremities. The next most common are fractures of the lower extremities like your legs. The study found that the injury rate was around 14.3 out of every 100,00 trips. While the odds you’ll be injured on a scooter are relatively low, it’s important to note that the numbers are on the rise.
A closer look at the accidents revealed that it is primarily younger adults who are getting injured more frequently, with the average age of the victim being 29-years-old. As for the circumstances behind the accidents themselves, the report stated that 29% of the injuries took place in instances involving first-time riders, and 18% of the accidents had some involvement with motor vehicles. These numbers are simply too high. If a product is going to put the younger population at a higher risk of being injured, then the parties responsible when their products cause injuries.
With the rise of scooter-related accidents and fatalities, it’s important that riders know where they stand when it comes to their rights to compensation. You shouldn’t be held responsible for your injuries when you’ve been put in harm’s way by another party, especially one who endangered your life when you were just trying to get around like everyone else. Here at Blase Inzina Injury Attorneys, we stop at nothing to seek justice for those who need it most.
If people would exercise more caution by wearing helmets and always staying vigilant on the roadways, there’s no doubt that these injuries would become less frequent. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that with more cars on the roads and more scooters riding around than ever before, there is always going to be a high risk of injury. When cars aren’t involved, it’s up to the companies to properly protect their clients by educating their users and requiring certain safety measures such as helmet use. It is also up to the riders to properly exercise caution when riding these new trendy vehicles.
Here at Blase Inzina Injury Attorneys, we’ve handled scooter accident cases for the last 15 years, long before the advent of e-scooters, and in that time we’ve been able to help countless clients get the recognition they deserve. The devastating nature of these accidents needs to be taken seriously and it needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis when it comes to the level of compensation you may receive. The only way to know whether you may qualify for compensation is to reach out to a team that will be in your corner from start to finish. Together, we can help you get back to normal. To find out more about what we can do to help, give us a call today at (337) 347-7177. We’ll fight for you.