Australian state and territory governments have largely resisted calls from doctors for tighter regulation of electric scooters, despite a spate of accidents that caused serious injuries and deaths.
Last month, three people died while riding e-scooters, doubling the number of fatalities since 2018, when the first rental scheme was rolled out in Queensland.
Moustafa Abou-Eid, 28, lost control of a scooter on a speed bump in Pascoe Vale in Melbourne on Sept. 22, 19-year-old Laura Wallace died when the scooter she was riding collided with a vehicle in Canberra on Sept. 26, and a 37-year-old man died three days later after losing control of his scooter on a Brisbane street.
Photo: AFP
Neither Abou-Eid nor Wallace were wearing helmets when they crashed.
Queensland police are still investigating the fatal Brisbane crash.
Abou-Eid was riding a private scooter, which are increasingly popular and easy to purchase, despite being illegal in some states, including Victoria.
Photo: Reuters
Cities including Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart are trialing the use of shared e-scooters, while Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory allow privately owned and shared e-scooters with regulations.
Sarah Whitelaw, an emergency medicine representative of the Australian Medical Association, said doctors were concerned about the increase in fatal head injuries.
“It doesn’t sound like many, but when you look at the increase, what we are worried about is that number compared to previous years,” Whitelaw said. “We need to see a decrease in the number of grieving families.”
Emergency departments around the country have seen a spike in injuries this year, she said.
“They’re different to injuries you would get from roller-blading or playing a team sport,” she said. “They are injuries that require months and months of rehab.”
The association has called for a database of deaths and injuries, a public health campaign on rider safety, limits on the time of day they can be ridden and uniform regulations across the country.
Whitelaw said it was important to shift the culture so that people understood the dangers as they do with motorbikes and bicycles.
“Most of us wear bike helmets not because it’s illegal not to, but because we understand why you have to put one of them on,” she said. “It might save your life.”
The response from state and territory governments to the rate of serious accidents has so far been limited.
New rules are to apply in Queensland from next month, allowing “personal mobility device” riders to wear either an approved bicycle or motorbike helmet.
“In addition, a broad public education campaign will begin from late October focusing on helmet compliance, with riders reminded to wear a helmet or be fined,” a Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Australian Capital Territory government said a three-strike rule targeting multiple acts of noncompliance had been used since March to “better protect riders and others who use our roads and paths.”
The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the local government would consider tightening regulations further in the light of last month’s fatality.
“This matter was referred to the coroner and it is too early to make assumptions about the manner and cause of death until the coroner’s investigation is complete,” they said.
A spokesperson for the Victoria Department of Transport said there were stringent laws in place to ensure safety.
The spokesperson would not say whether the death of Abou-Eid would change the parameters of an ongoing 12-month trial of Victoria’s e-scooter hiring scheme.
“The purpose of the e-scooter trial is to assess the benefits and risks of e-scooters to better understand whether they can be safely regulated within the broader transport mix,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the New South Wales government said there had been no recorded injuries within the locations allocated for its trial scheme — the western Sydney parklands and the botanic gardens at Mount Annan — and said more locations would be announced before the end of the year.
There is no national database that captures the rates of injuries relating to e-scooters, but data from several jurisdictions shows the most common infringement enforced by police relates to riders not wearing helmets.
In Queensland, that offense made up 5,581 of the infringements handed out since 2019, compared with 1,281 for riders being on prohibited roads and 331 for traveling at more than 25kph.
Of the 487 fines handed out in Victoria between December last year and August, 142 were for riding on footpaths, 139 for not wearing a helmet and 80 for taking a passenger.
Queensland University of Technology professor Kirsten Vallmuur has been researching e-scooter injuries. She has looked at almost 1,000 e-scooter-related presentations across three of Brisbane’s biggest hospitals and found that young men were most likely to be involved in accidents.
There were growing concerns private riders could hack their scooters relatively easily to go faster than the speed limit, she said.
“One of the things is shared schemes have a speed limit on them. They can’t go over 25kph,” Vallmuur said. “With private scooters, there’s more ability for the riders to turn off the speed limitation. Sometimes it’s as easy as flicking a switch.”
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