I saw a guy break his leg and smash his teeth in a stand-up scooter crash, and I have some thoughts

I don't remember the exact model he was riding, but I am pretty sure it was a Segway scooter similar to this one.

My daughter and I were walking home from Ezell's the other day along NE 45th Street in Wallingford when we saw a guy take a tumble riding a personal stand-up electric scooter.

It didn't look like much at first (content warning: Skip ahead to the paragraph It's been a few weeks..." if you don't want to read injury details). He was going across a crosswalk and up onto the sidewalk. He steered his front wheel up the curb cut, but turned just barely too soon so that the back wheel of the scooter clipped the rising part where the curb ramp transitions up to curb height. The impact sent his reap wheel up into the air, which sent his center of gravity up and forward, which sent his face into the handrail of a short staircase leading to the corner property. He stumbled awkwardly as the scooter when careening away, leaving him lying on the sidewalk.

From across the street and down the block, I fully expected him to get up, dust himself off and keep going. But as we go closer, we realized he wasn't getting back up, so I told my daughter we were going to help. One person walked past him without offering any help, which, come on, people.

Years ago I took a basic first aid class at a spot that just happened to be a block away, so I was prepared to go through the steps I learned. Everyone should consider taking a first aid class. Your workplace may even fund it and/or give you paid time off to take it if you ask since it is in their best interest for employees to have this training. Luckily, when we arrived he was conscious and was already on the phone with 911 to request help. I introduced myself and said I would be there to help until medics arrive. I helped him identify the intersection and corner so he could tell the 911 operator. Once he was off the phone, I tried to be calming and reassuring and told him to stay how he was until medics arrived, which he was going to do anyway. He said he was 18 and that he fucked up bad." He did everything right as an injured person, which made my job a lot easier. His front teeth were cracked and had a new gap from where his face hit the pole. He also said his ankle hurt (his tibia was visibly broken). He called him mom and said he was sorry but that he got hurt. Poor guy. S, if you're reading this, I hope you're healing up. And you can tell your mom that I didn't see you do anything irresponsible.

When the fire engine was in view, I waved them down. They took over and, oof, his leg was seriously broken. I'm glad he didn't try to get up. Then I pointed out where some of his broken tooth fragments were to one of the medics, who picked them up. I corroborated his story to them and then they said they didn't need anything else so we left. I was very proud of my daughter for being so patient and giving us space to work through his needs. On the walk home, we talked about being a helper and what to do if you are the first to see someone who needs medical attention. Some of what you learn in a first aid class can't really be done by a 3rd grader, but they can definitely learn how to alert adults who can help.

It's been a few weeks since this happened, and I just can't get over how easy it was for him to crash so badly. Sure, you can crash a bike if you hit a curb awkwardly, but not this easy. He wasn't going very fast (maybe 8 mph max), and he didn't miss the curb cut by much. He was also riding what appeared to be a reasonably nice scooter made by Segway/Ninebot with some suspension on the front wheel and maybe a little suspension on the back wheel (I don't remember the exact model), and he was riding in what seemed like a reasonably responsible manner. Sure, electric scooters are not allowed on sidewalks in Seattle, but he wasn't going super fast or trying to do tricks or passing people closely. 45th has no bike lanes and can be a scary street to ride on, so it's understandable to me why someone might choose the sidewalk even if it is illegal.

Since it happened, there are two points that I can't shake and so I need to get them out here. These points are not fully baked, but this is where I am at the moment. I would love to learn more or be corrected if I am wrong or incomplete about any of this.

Stand-up scooters have a core design flaw

For shared micromobility companies, stand-up scooters are more popular than bikes seemingly because the form factor is more inviting to many people. Of course some people just like them better, but there is something intimidating about a bicycle to some people who have never ridden a bike or haven't ridden since they were kids, and scooters seem to have less of this barrier. You can see this play out in user data. Lime's scooters get chosen more often than the bikes.

But the stand-up scooter has a center of gravity issue that seems very difficult or maybe even impossible to solve. Every body is different, but a standing person's center of gravity is typically somewhere near the navel, which puts it far above most of the scooter's weight. A scooter's center of gravity is probably somewhere near a rider's feet. When a person and scooter are in motion together, the person's moving body represents most of the momentum. So if the scooter were to suddenly stop or change direction, the scooter cannot arrest the body's forward movement. The scooter's handlebars are located high above the scooter's center of gravity, which is itself no match for the body's weight and momentum. Unless the rider dramatically shifts their center of gravity down and back by crouching (I'd classify this as a skilled maneuver), they are falling off that scooter. When they fall, their feet will briefly follow the scooter while their upper body will just keep moving forward because there's nothing to stop it.

On a bicycle, one of the most dangerous types of crashes is an endo in which the front wheel stops so fast that the rider's momentum carries them over the handlebars. People are very vulnerable to head and neck injuries from these kinds of crashes, which is why they are so dangerous. However, endo-type crashes are relatively rare because the design of most bicycles puts the rider's center of gravity closer to the bicycle's center of gravity and further back (I am oversimplifying here since there are also other design factors at play and am probably messing up some of these dynamics descriptions as I am not an engineer and I got a B in high school physics. Feel free to correct me in the comments below). The fact that pedals rotate also helps riders arrest their forward motion by putting force into a part of the bike and is far below the center of gravity. The result is that you can slam on the brakes pretty hard without actually flipping all the way over the handlebars. This turns many crashes into misses.

Stand-up scooters by their basic form leave people's bodies vulnerable to crashes in ways that bikes do not. I am fairly certain that if someone biking hit a curb with their rear wheel the way the injured scooter rider I saw did, they not only would have been safe but may have barely even noticed.

This has led me to wonder how many of these scooter injuries we are seeing are from similarly small rider errors. I'm mostly talking about solo crashes where a car is not involved. Folks see alarming numbers of scooter injuries from emergency room data and then probably picture in their heads someone they saw riding recklessly, but how many of those injured are actually people like the guy I saw who wasn't doing anything egregiously wrong but just made a tiny little misjudgement that sent them tumbling face first? I hope that there are people studying how scooter crashes happen and working to come up with solutions because scooters are not going away and injury trends will continue happening until something changes.

What is the state of scooter culture?

For all the scooters in use, they don't really have a corollary to bike culture, which I am defining in as nebulous a way as possible. When you start to ride a bike, someone who is more experienced than you, usually a friend, family member or coworker, will likely introduce you to some basic concepts that are very important. For example, avoid the streetcar tracks! Also, if there's no bike lane then ride like a car." I remember learning this one from a friend when I started biking in the city, and it's not necessarily obvious enough that a new rider will do it automatically. I was told that it is safer to ride in the street than on a sidewalk because cars are more likely to see you, and that when you're riding on the street you should ride as though you are just another car rather than trying to squeeze to the side of the road where you become vulnerable to all kinds of hazards. You have as much a right to travel on the street as anyone else. Obviously, not every person gets the same introduction I did, but informal lessons like these happen all the time. There are also organized lessons through organizations like Cascade Bicycle Club that teach riding skills through adult classes as well as a large in-school bicycle education program, though the majority of new adult riders learn on the fly.

Scootering hasn't really merged into bicycle culture, and I'm sure an anthropologist could write lengthy research paper about why (please do I want to read it!). I am surely part of that because I am not personally interested in riding scooters, so I rarely cover them on this blog. But the result may be that there's aren't as many cultural norms and informal peer-to-peer education around scooter use. I completely understand why someone would feel uncomfortable scootering on a busy street in mixed traffic like 45th Street, and yet there may be even more hazards on the sidewalk as my guy found out the hard way. Are scooter riders passing around knowledge about things like why it's actually safer to ride in the street or how to avoid scooter-specific hazards that may not be obvious? Bicycle culture predates everyone living today, it gets passed down and modified generation by generation, and we likely take much of it for granted. From a generational perspective, electric foot scooters are brand new.

Electric scooter riders should do some organizing. There's space and a need for folks to advocate on behalf of scooter riders, and not just from the perspective of for-profit companies. Scooter riders deserve safe streets that work for them, and they deserve scooter designs that prioritize their safety. Scooter riders also need safe riding information that comes from peers, not the government. These kinds of things get buy in when they come from fellow riders who are looking out for each other rather than safety warning from an app or stern messaging from a local government, hospital or police department. Bike orgs should be open to helping a scooter org even if they are not themselves interested in scooters. The modes share so many of the same needs, including quality bike lanes, that they are natural allies.

If you know of any groups of resources for scooter riders, leave them in the comments below.