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Woman flies over handlebars as e-scooter hits gutter in Australia
A woman riding an electric scooter took a tumble as she hit a gutter in Darwin, Australia, on April 3, sending her flying over the handlebars.
DARWIN, Australia - Terrifying video of a woman riding an electric scooter and flying over the handlebars in Australia shows just how dangerous and common e-scooter crashes are.
The moment was caught on CCTV by a local business owner, George Fisher, who said this was not the first incident involving an e-scooter at that location.
"The corner in the video is notorious for an outbreak of e-scooter accidents," Fisher told Storyful.
In the video the woman appears to riding the scooter just before she takes a tumble when she hits a gutter on April 3.
While the video is concerning, it is no isolated incident.
In 2019, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a safety study in conjunction with the city of Austin, Texas.
In all, 936,110 trips that totaled 891,121 miles were observed over the course of the three-month-long study.
A link between use of the scooters and emergency room visits was determined early on, according to the study. "Doctors at local hospitals and local emergency medical services began observing injuries associated with this emerging mode of transportation," the study detailed.
Researchers found that less than 1 percent of the people injured from riding the scooters were actually wearing protective headgear. Thankfully, none of the injured riders died during the study period.
In September 2018, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill stating that electric scooter riders were no longer required to wear helmets by law, but popular e-scooter companies Bird and Lime both urge riders to wear helmets on their websites.
In a separate study published last year, researchers noted nearly 40,000 broken bones, head injuries, cuts and bruises resulting from scooter accidents were treated in U.S. emergency rooms from 2014 through 2018
For the study published in JAMA Surgery, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, analyzed U.S. government data on nonfatal injuries treated in emergency rooms.
"Improved rider safety measures and regulation" are clearly needed, the researchers said.
Media reports have linked the stand-up electric scooters with more than a dozen U.S. deaths within the past few years.
The trend follows the emergence of rental companies in cities around the world that let customers rent scooters through smartphone apps and drop them off anywhere in the same city. Some cities have adopted nighttime bans and other restrictions amid rising injuries and complaints about scooters traveling or parked on sidewalks.
In 2018, a college student in Atlanta faced a near death experience when a vehicle driving nearly 50 miles per hour struck her and her boyfriend.
While no fatalities occurred during these specific studies, they have happened. A woman was killed while riding an e-scooter when she was struck by a car in Cleveland, according to the Associated Press.
"Scooters promote active commuting," could help spur wider public transit use and could lead to less traffic congestion, said lead author Dr. Benjamin Breyer. "We hope to raise awareness that riders should wear helmets and ride safely."
This story was reported from Los Angeles. Storyful and The Associated Press contributed.