Tiny Vehicles, Big Risks: A Close Call Calls for Common Sense

It happened so fast.  

It was 5 pm and I was driving home from running errands. It’s January so it was already dark. I was stopped at a stoplight at a well-known 5-way intersection in my town. The walk signal was just ending and the light turned green. 

Just then this kid on a motorized scooter came flying down the road and tried to cross the intersection diagonally. As in, not in the crosswalk, just right through the middle of the intersection. 

He was of course wearing dark colors with nothing reflective. Meantime, the cars who had the green light had revved up and were accelerating.

My heart jumped:

Oh my god. They don’t see him. 

I leaned into my horn, just as the kid swerved away from the oncoming traffic, and the car that had been about to hit him slammed on the brakes. It barely missed him.

The kid zoomed away, unharmed. 

All was well, but I’m still shaking as I’m writing this. 

That boy came within inches of being struck by a car going about 20-25 MPH. That’s not that fast, but kid vs. car is always going to be ugly. 

I remembered back to my medical training. I did a med/peds residency (meaning, both internal medicine and pediatrics in 4 years) at a gritty urban hospital. I’m now having flashbacks to all the horrible kid vs. car traumas we saw. 

There was a boy who had been riding a bike across an intersection, just like this kid. He was from overseas, visiting family. He’d been thrown some distance and hit the pavement hard. His brain swelled and he’d had to have a piece of his skull removed to relieve the pressure. He was intubated and on a ventilator for weeks. His father basically moved into the hospital, slept by his side. They were in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for ages. Almost unbelievably, he had recovered enough to wake up and leave the hospital for a physical rehab. Serious traumatic brain injury, yes, but alive and alert.

Still, I really, really did not want to see something like that happen firsthand. 

These motorized scooters are a new thing and strike me as potentially pretty dangerous, so I did some research to check that hypothesis. 

I learned that these are technically referred to as “micromobility devices”, a term that includes electric scooters and bikes, and hoverboards. As it turns out, there are recent official U.S. statistics on associated deaths and injuries. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission website published the highlights: 

• Between 2017 and 2022, there were an estimated 360,800 emergency department visits related to all micromobility devices.

• Micromobility-related injuries have trended upward since 2017, increasing by 23% every year.

• Children 14 years and younger accounted for about 36% of these injuries (notably, this is double their 18% proportion of the U.S. population). 

• The most common types of injuries included bone fractures, followed by bruises and abrasions. 

• The most frequently injured body areas are the limbs, head and neck.

• There were 233 reported deaths (although they note that reporting is ongoing and incomplete). 

It was interesting that the report made this point: 

“Many micromobility products are small, quick, and quiet, making it difficult for others to spot them.”

Case in point. 

Thankfully neither of my kids have asked for anything motorized, yet. Though technically, they could get hit by a car on any of the non-motorized Things on Wheels that they have: skateboard, bike, scooter. 

I think the lessons are the same, really. It’s all about having common sense.

It’s pretty basic stuff that will save lives: Cross at the signal, stay in the crosswalk, make sure you can be seen.

If the kid today had done any of that, he wouldn’t have been a near miss…. and I wouldn’t have had a heart attack, followed by residency flashbacks.

So, parents of children on any kind of wheels, please remind them:

Cross at the signal,

Stay in the crosswalk,

Make sure you can be seen.

***

Want to see the full report? Check out the Micromobility Products-Related Deaths, Injuries, and Hazard Patterns, released in October 2023 by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).