Accidents with e-scooters and bicycles are different. E-scooter drivers are more likely to have drunk accidents. Many fall on their heads.

Patients who had an accident with the e-scooter or bicycle and were admitted to the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf are part of a study that ran from June 2019 to June 2020 and has now been evaluated .

In the retrospective study, accidents with e-scooters and bicycles were recorded and analyzed in terms of demographics, accident mechanism, diagnostics, injury patterns, emergency care as well as operations and inpatient stays.

According to the study, 89 people had an accident with an e-scooter. 435 cyclists served as a comparison group. E-scooter accidents often occurred at night (37 versus 14 percent) and 28 percent (cyclists: 6 percent) of those involved were under the influence of alcohol. The injury patterns are also very different. 54 percent of the e-scooter drivers suffered a head or face trauma with some severe head (14 percent) or facial injury (16 percent). Fractures of the upper extremity were more common than fractures of the lower extremity.

In the vast majority of e-scooter accidents, the cause was a fall without any further details Specification (79 percent). Collisions with other road users were significantly less common among e-scooter drivers (2 percent) than among cyclists (18 percent). For e-scooter drivers, the head and face as well as the upper extremities are particularly badly affected body regions. Therefore, from a medical point of view, wearing a helmet is strongly recommended. There is no legal obligation.

In Germany, the police registered a total of 1,570 accidents with small electric vehicles from January to September 2020, according to the Federal Statistical Office . Seven people were also killed. 269 ​​e-scooter users were seriously injured, 1,096 slightly.

The authorities also put these numbers in relation to accidents with bicycles. In the first nine months of 2020 there were around 73,293 accidents with personal injury across Germany. 351 people were killed. 14,128 were seriously injured, 59,633 slightly. In both cases there is likely to be a significant number of unreported cases because not every accident is recorded by the police.

The author of the article is Michael Linden.

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