Electric scooters as a silent source of danger in increasing use among young people: a single-center in-depth accident analysis.

BACKGROUND

The reasons for the increase in accidents involving shared stand-up e-scooters in recent years may be the wide-spread use of e-scooters among young people, especially in metropolitan areas with heavy traffic, non-compliance with traffic rules, and insufficient legal regulations. In this study, we analyzed in detail the typical features of rider-sharing e-scooter-related injuries brought to the emergency department of our hospital in the light of current literature.

METHODS

The clinical and accident characteristics of 60 patients with surgical requirements who were brought to the emergency department of our hospital due to e-scooter-related accidents between 2020 and 2020 were analyzed using statistical methods ret-rospectively.

RESULTS

The majority of the victims were university students and the number of victims of the male gender was slightly higher and the mean age was 25.3±13.0 years. Most e-scooter accidents occur on weekdays. Most of the e-scooter-related accidents happen on weekdays and are non-collision type accidents. The majority of e-scooter-related accident victims were in the minor trauma group (injury severity score <9), predominantly had extremity and soft-tissue injuries and needed radiological examination (44 patients, 73.3%), and only eight victims (13.3%) required surgical operation and also all of the e-scooter victims were discharged fully healed.

CONCLUSION

Among the more common collision-free e-scooter-related accidents that have a lower trauma severity score or cause minor soft-tissue injury, mono-trauma occurs more commonly than multisystem trauma; likewise, radius and nasal-weighted monofractures occur more commonly than multiple fractures, according to this study. Besides, effective measures and legal regulations should be put in place to prevent e-scooter-related accidents.