Transcription:
Staying Safe on Electric Scooters

Prakash Chandran:  With commuting at an all time high and energy conservation in the back of everyone's mind, we've seen the rise of a new type of transportation called micromobility. And on the forefront of that is the electric scooter. Today, we'll be discussing the importance of electric scooter safety with Emma Harrington, Director of Injury Prevention Education for Shepherd Center.

Emma, it's great to have you here today. Let's just start by understanding a little bit more about how Shepherd Center is taking action on electric scooter safety.

Emma Harrington: Thank you so much for having me. So pre-pandemic, we were the wild west here in Atlanta for e-scooters. They were dumped on the streets, the infrastructure wasn't there. And right away, we started to see injuries and we started to see deaths. There were four deaths in our city and hundreds of injuries.

And the injuries, we don't even know how many there really are. They could be grossly undercounted because the data piece is not in place completely yet, so that all of the emergency rooms talk to each other about how many scooter injuries there are. So we started to see it trickling into Shepherd Center as well. And that's when I decided that there's something to be done here. We need to address this need. The data is there to show us that there is an issue. And I applied for a grant through the Governor's Office of Highway Safety, who are wonderful partners of Shepherd Center. And we received the grant to start doing something. And this is a really innovative grant. It's something kind of different. We took different pieces from public health, from evidence-based campaigns to put together what we think might work for our city to address the e-scooter needs and the safety issues surrounding them.

Prakash Chandran: That's fantastic. And I definitely want to get more into that grant, but I wanted to start by asking for those that may not know, why is it so appealing to ride an electric scooter? And also why can it be risky sometimes?

Emma Harrington: Yeah. So honestly, they're really fun, right? Micromobility is new and exciting and it's easy. You can pick up one of these and it's your last mile. And it's super easy. But we are seeing like several risky behaviors happening on these scooters. The first is nobody thinks to wear a helmet. We did an observational study in Atlanta and in Statesboro and looked at helmet use, nobody's wearing a helmet. We're also seeing that first time riders, that is a really tricky issue there. Within the first eight rides, it's when you're most at risk for crashing. They have really small wheels and they go really fast and we don't have many super protected bike lanes in the city where you are separated completely from cars. We're also seeing like collisions with pedestrians, that sort of thing.

The speed, they go fast. They go up to 15 miles per hour if you're on a shareable e-scooter. If you have your own e-scooter, maybe you purchased your own one, that can go up to 20 miles per hour. So that's pretty quick.

We are seeing intoxication as a big issue. So people, I think, see this as a way around when you're bar hopping a way around getting an Uber, but it's not that. You can't get on one of these intoxicated. One recent study showed that 48% of people reporting to an emergency room from e-scooter injuries were intoxicated. And it's not just alcohol, it's drugs. So I thought that is kind of shocking. But if you spend enough time on the BeltLine here in Atlanta, that's not as shocking as you see groups of generally young people bar hopping on scooters. So that's a big issue that needs to be addressed. And the lack of infrastructure, that is a long-term issue, but one that can be rectified when you look at the protective factors.

Prakash Chandran: So one thing I wanted to understand a little bit more is when people are injured riding electric scooters, what are some of the most common injuries that you see?

Emma Harrington: Right. So Shepherd Center is unique in that it's a catastrophic care hospital doing brain and spinal cord injury. So we see the worst of the worst, right? We see severe brain injuries and we see severe spinal cord injuries. Generally though, a lot of e-scooter injuries are showing up to the local emergency rooms, or maybe you're on campus and you're going to the campus health nurse. So those sorts of injuries are minor comparative to what we see at Shepherd Center. So we're seeing traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries caused by e-scooters. Not so much since the pandemic, but that I think will come back full force once we completely open up and all restrictions are lifted.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, still though it was clearly enough of a problem for you to take action to apply for the grant. So let's unpack this grant a little bit. What are some of the things it's enabling you to do?

Emma Harrington: Yes. So when we're in public health, we look at risk and protective factors. So I focused on what we call the protective factors for e-scooter riders. So it's helmets. Number one, that we are trying to push, helmets, getting helmets on heads. And there's so much innovation in helmets that it's super exciting. There's foldable helmets that eliminate the annoyance of having to carry your helmet everywhere. And we're looking at first-time rider education to lessen that really risky gap of the first one to eight rides. Speed reduction is super helpful. On the BeltLine now, there is speed reduction and that is saving people from getting injured. Looking at protected bike lanes and redoing infrastructure that is more pedestrian and micromobility-focused rather than car-centric and just general rider education.

So the grant in and of itself is called Scoot Safe, kind of a cute name. And we have partnered with the Governor's Office Highway Safety among others, and we are doing a targeted digital campaign. So it's three months of targeted digital campaigning, and we're utilizing Google ads among other things. And we are pushing out these safety messages, really focusing on sober scootering, helmet use, reducing your speed, getting to know the scooter before you jump on it.

It's not just young people that are utilizing scooters. It is across the gamut age-wise and it's also across the gamut gender wise. So we are really trying to target a very large audience within these digital targeting messages. We are also doing Scoots Webinar. It's a virtual summit is what we're calling it. It's going to be two days and it's going to be nationwide, totally free to anyone. And we're really utilizing our local experts and our national experts. We will have Virginia Tech and their Helmet and Innovation Lab there as well as Superpedestrian, which is an MIT startup. We'll be looking at the data from Grady through their scratch database. And also having the Atlanta bicycle coalition doing first-time rider education. So that's going to be really our like meeting of the minds and a large piece of our grant.

Another piece of our grant is actually figuring out does this work? So that's where our own data. We'll look at do mass media and digital campaigns actually affect behavioral change? Does it work? So the only other place in Georgia that has scooters is a place called Statesboro, it's a university town. So we picked Statesboro as our control group and Atlanta as our intervention group. All of our digital media marketing is going to Atlanta. And the virtual summit is Atlanta-centric as well. We also have a website that houses all of this great information, all of the resources and the data that we utilized to get the grant in that one nifty place. So we did a whole bunch of observational studies in Atlanta and in Statesboro in the spring. And we will go back again once the grant is finished in September to see if we actually made a difference.

Prakash Chandran: Okay. Yeah, that is incredible. And it is such a data-driven way to approach this. I love it. You know, looking at scootsafega.com, you have a number of different articles. One of them is just around what operators like Bird and Lime can do to help out. Can you maybe speak to this a little bit?

Emma Harrington: Yes. We could not have done this whole campaign without the operators in Atlanta. They have been fantastic partners. A large part of our campaign that I failed to mention earlier is the equity piece in micromobility and what that means for our city. And making sure that with micromobility, with scooters, whether it's your own or whether it's a company, that they're available, there's access they're available and they're affordable, so that it's helping everybody move forward.

So, if you have a personal scooter, there's no limitations, right? For the city of Atlanta, there's a whole application process where they are tracking what these companies are doing to address the equity piece. They're tracking where the scooters are actually located, where the hubs or the nests are, what education they're doing, what safety precautions they are taking.

So it's been a really great partnership and working with them because we both want the same things. We want this to be a mode of transportation that is safer for the public. We want people to understand the risks before they get on these scooters and don't think about it and are in major roadways traveling along.

One of the major issues we're also seeing is tourists coming to Atlanta. And scooters are cool, and they're fun and they're readily available, especially downtown. So we're seeing tourists who don't know our roads, don't know how many potholes we have, and getting hurt fast, especially within the first one to eight rides. So that's another population we've been very eager to focus in on.

But the private scooters, there's risk and protective factors with those as well. The private scooter owners, they have ridden more than eight times. They know what they're doing. They generally know the city. The only people I really saw with helmets on in our observational studies were the people that owned their own scooter and use that as a mode of transportation, like their daily mode of transportation. So that is something significant and something that needs more data around it.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. And just one more point around the operators. One of the things that I've noticed is that you'll see scooters, but they oftentimes won't have helmets attached to them. So what are some of the things that the operators are doing to make sure that people that ride them stay safe, because we did talk about the importance of wearing a helmet every time you ride.

Emma Harrington: Yes. And there are so many different facets to helmets, right? There's access. So can you access a helmet? Then there's the quality of the helmet. So if you look at helmets, you can get a helmet at Walmart for 10 bucks. It's not a great helmet. It might pass some standards, but it's not going to certainly pass the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab standards. So that's a big piece in the equity as well, like you actually have to pay to keep your brain safe. And so money and access and affordability, it all plays into that piece.

So yes, the vendors will send you a helmet generally, if you've ridden one of their scooters. Some of them send it before you ride the scooter, which is probably a better idea, but what is the quality of that helmet? And honestly, I don't know what the quality of that helmet is, but that is something that as a community, we have to look at when we're doing bike rodeos or helmet giveaways, what kind of helmets are we giving our kids? And what standards have they passed and could we be doing better? I think those are all opportunities and areas for improvement. But yes, the helmet piece is huge.

Prakash Chandran: Another piece that I've observed is that it's not just electric scooters, but it's electric skateboards and electric bikes. All of these things are finding their way into the road. More and more people are buying them. So have you ever thought about expanding Scoot Safe to also include these methods of transportation? Because a lot of the safety procedures and things that we've discussed are the same.

Emma Harrington: You know, we definitely thought about it. And the way we looked at it, coming from an ADA standpoint, first and foremost, scooters are a nuisance in the way that they are parked in sidewalks. Wheelchair users who have very little access anyway in the city have now have more access blocked by these scooters.

But we took the fact that this, I think, is the wave of the future. This is how it's going. And that's evidenced by what you just said. Just how many things are now electric. People are getting away from cars and moving towards micromobility. So how can we make this more equitable, available to everybody that needs it, but also safer? How can we inform the riders to keep them safe and keep them out of our hospital?

So, yes, I think. It is the wave of the future. We started off with the very basics of defining what an e-scooter actually is. We didn't even include the seated electric scooters in this study because we wanted to make sure that our approach with this mass media campaign and with our public service announcement is actually going to affect behavioral change before we opened it up to a broader audience.

Hopefully, it will. But if we're wrong and if the data shows that we haven't made any effect, we're going to have to go back to the drawing board and all is not lost. That's a good thing to know, right? It leads to a bigger, broader knowledge base for what works with behavioral change and injury prevention in the e-scooter and micromobility industry.

Prakash Chandran: So Emma, just before we sign off today, is there anything else that you wanted to leave our audience with regarding ways that they can protect themselves or just anything about electric scooter safety in general?

Emma Harrington: Yes. I'd love to encourage everybody to come to our Scoot Safe Summit. It's virtual. You can log in, you can log out. You don't have to stay for the whole thing. It's July 14th and 15th. Registration is free and available at our website, scootsafega.com. We would love to have anybody and everyone there because really, this is a community issue and we're not going to solve it without having the community at the table.

Prakash Chandran: Yes. And I imagine that this also applies to people that don't ride these electric scooters or electric bikes, right? Like what advice might you have for the people that are witnessing this explosion of micromobility, but they don't necessarily ride themselves.

Emma Harrington: Right. I think if you are a car driver, which most of us are, being that these things are flying around you and being aware that while we are a car-centric city, that is changing. And I also think just as a general community citizen or a Good Samaritan, if you see scooters in the middle of a sidewalk blocking access, to please move those scooters. You can also report scooters that aren't parked properly to the companies themselves.

And I think we all have to be patient with this kind of change in our landscape, but I would encourage everyone to get involved. Everyone has an opinion on electric scooters, and I think most of those opinions are valid. But it's the problem solving that we need everyone there to figure out how we're going to make this all work.

Prakash Chandran: Well, Emma, I think that is the perfect place to end. Thank you so much for your time today.

Emma Harrington: Thank you so much for having me.

Prakash Chandran: That's Emma Harrington, Director of Injury Prevention Education for Shepherd Center. For more information about Shepherd Center's Scoot safe campaign, please visit their website at scootsafega.com and make sure to attend that virtual event on July 14th and 15th to learn more about electric scooter safety. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and be sure to check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you.. This is Picking Our Brain with Shepherd Center. My name is Prakash Chandran, and we'll talk next time.