Electric scooters send roughly 14 to 27 riders to the emergency room for every 100,000 trips, depending on the year, making them riskier per trip than driving a car but comparable to cycling. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission tracked 233 deaths linked to micromobility devices (e-scooters and e-bikes combined) between 2017 and 2022. That’s a relatively small number given millions of rides, but the injuries that don’t kill riders can still be serious: broken wrists, fractured collarbones, concussions, and facial lacerations.
Injury Rates Are Dropping but Still Significant
Denver’s public health department has tracked shared scooter injuries since 2019, offering one of the clearest pictures of how risk has changed over time. In 2019, the city recorded 27 emergency department visits per 100,000 scooter rides. By 2024, that number had fallen to 14 per 100,000. The decline likely reflects a combination of factors: better scooter hardware, improved city infrastructure, and a growing base of experienced riders who’ve moved past the wobbly first-timer phase.
Still, 14 ER visits per 100,000 rides means that if you ride a shared scooter regularly, the cumulative odds of an injury trip start to add up. Someone taking a scooter to work five days a week would accumulate over 500 rides in a year.
What Gets Hurt Most Often
A scoping review published in the journal Injury Prevention analyzed studies from multiple countries and found a consistent pattern. The upper extremities (wrists, forearms, elbows, shoulders) were the single most injured body region, showing up as a top-three injury site in 12 out of 13 studies. The head was next, appearing in 11 studies, followed by the lower extremities in 10. Chest and abdominal injuries were uncommon by comparison.
This pattern makes intuitive sense. When a scooter stops suddenly, whether from hitting a pothole, a curb, or a car door, riders pitch forward. The instinct is to break the fall with outstretched hands, which is why wrist fractures are so common. Riders who don’t catch themselves, or who are thrown sideways, tend to hit headfirst. The small wheels on most e-scooters (typically 8 to 10 inches) are far less forgiving of road imperfections than bicycle wheels, making sudden stops more likely in the first place.
Head Injuries and Helmet Use
Head injuries are the leading cause of death and long-term disability from scooter crashes. Helmets reduce the likelihood of brain injuries by 65 to 88 percent and cut the risk of severe brain injury by 75 percent. Despite this, helmet use among e-scooter riders remains extremely low, partly because rental scooters don’t come with one and partly because riders tend to view short trips as low-risk.
Speed plays a direct role in head injury severity. Research from the European Transport Safety Council found that reducing collision speed from about 15 mph to roughly 9 mph decreases the risk of head injuries to pedestrians by up to 49 percent. Many cities now cap rental scooter speeds at 15 mph, but some private scooters can reach 25 mph or more, dramatically increasing the forces involved in a crash.
Where Crashes Happen
You might assume that riding on the sidewalk is safer than sharing a lane with cars. The reality is more complicated. A study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that nearly 3 out of 5 injured e-scooter riders were hurt while riding on the sidewalk. About a third of those sidewalk injuries happened in places where sidewalk riding was already prohibited.
Sidewalks present their own hazards: uneven pavement, pedestrians stepping into your path, curb cuts, and driveway crossings where drivers aren’t looking for fast-moving scooters. However, the IIHS also found that riders injured in motor vehicle travel lanes sustained more severe injuries than those hurt on sidewalks or bike lanes. In other words, sidewalk riding leads to more frequent but less severe crashes, while road riding leads to fewer but worse ones. Bike lanes and multiuse trails appear to be the safest option when available.
Alcohol and Risky Conditions
Alcohol involvement is lower than many people assume but still a real factor. A national analysis of 2019 e-scooter injuries found that alcohol was associated with about 8 percent of cases. Drug use accounted for roughly 1 percent. While 8 percent may sound modest, alcohol-involved crashes tend to be more severe because impaired riders have slower reaction times and are less likely to wear helmets or ride cautiously.
Other common contributing factors include riding at night (reduced visibility for both riders and drivers), wet or uneven road surfaces, and inexperience with a particular scooter model. Rental scooters vary in their braking feel, acceleration response, and handlebar sensitivity, and jumping on an unfamiliar model without a test run increases crash risk.
Battery Fires: A Small but Serious Risk
Lithium-ion batteries power virtually all e-scooters, and when damaged, improperly charged, or used with faulty equipment, they can overheat, catch fire, or explode. The New York City Fire Department reported more than 250 e-bike and e-scooter battery fires between 2022 and 2023, up from just 13 in 2019. Nineteen deaths were linked to micromobility device fires nationally between January 2021 and November 2022.
The risk factors are specific and largely avoidable. Fires are most commonly associated with damaged batteries (from crashes or drops), cheap or counterfeit chargers, leaving a battery charging overnight, and overloaded electrical circuits. If you own a private e-scooter, using the manufacturer’s original charger, avoiding charging in bedrooms or near exits, and replacing any battery that has visible damage or swelling are the most effective precautions.
How to Reduce Your Risk
The single highest-impact thing you can do is wear a helmet. A 65 to 88 percent reduction in brain injury risk is enormous for something that costs $30 and fits in a backpack. Beyond that, practical steps matter more than most riders realize:
- Ride in bike lanes when possible. They offer the best balance of fewer crashes and lower severity.
- Check the scooter before riding. On rental scooters, squeeze the brakes, check tire firmness, and wiggle the handlebars to make sure nothing is loose.
- Avoid riding at night without lights. Many scooter fatalities involve low-visibility conditions.
- Stay off wet surfaces. Small wheels and thin tires lose traction quickly on wet pavement, painted road markings, and metal grates.
- Skip the scooter after drinking. The same impairment that makes driving dangerous applies at 15 mph on two small wheels with no seatbelt or airbag.
Electric scooters are not uniquely deadly compared to bicycles or motorcycles, but they concentrate risk in ways that catch riders off guard. The small wheels, the upright stance, the lack of any protective structure around your body, and the ease of hopping on without any training or safety gear all combine to make casual riding riskier than it feels. The good news is that injury rates have been declining as infrastructure, regulation, and rider experience improve. The bad news is that most of the remaining risk falls on the individual rider’s choices.