"This is disruptive technology," said Dr. Christopher Ziebell, emergency room medical director at Austin's Dell Seton Medical Center. "But this time the disruption is disrupting forearms, elbows and heads."
Among other things, like ankles and legs.
And trauma surgeons are reporting daily occurrences in hospitals from San Diego to Denver to Austin. Some of these injuries have been life-threatening; others have left people permanently disabled.
A large part of the problem is that these e-scooter renters don't use helmets or other protective gear; the whole idea behind the things is spur-of-the-moment: "Hey, scooter! Cool!" So their concept is to dump these things onto city streets with no regard for human safety. An added bonus: their "user agreements" embedded into the apps place all responsibility for any issues entirely on the rider. Got an $8000 hospital bill for surgeries, plates, and pins after the brakes failed when rolling downhill? Sorry about your luck.
After Brogan's crash, her husband rushed her to the local urgent care. While waiting to be seen by doctors, she got several in-app messages from Lime saying she hadn't ended her ride and was still accruing charges.
"Scooter unsafe no brakes now in emergency room multiple fractures," Brogan wrote back.
Once out of the hospital, she emailed Lime to fully recount what happened. They had a brief back-and-forth in which Lime told her to file a claim for review. Brogan wrote back saying her out-of-pocket expenses totaled about $8,000 and asked if Lime would repay those losses. She said she never heard from the company again.
Lime declined to comment. Some municipalities are now finally moving to eliminate riders from the equation entirely - they just ban the scooters completely. Many others, however, such as Painfully Regressive Portland, take the opposite approach: "Anything goes, folks; no rules, no protective gear, no problem!"
But hey, let's have a conversation about "common-sense gun control".
