Last year the police in Germany registered over 2,100 accidents with e-scooters, five of which were fatal. Hundreds of people were also injured. Alcohol was often involved.

At the beginning of January, the Federal Statistical Office published figures on accidents with e-scooters for the first time. Accordingly, there were 1,570 accidents involving electrically powered scooters between January and September. The final figures for the full year 2020 have now been published. Accordingly, there were another 600 accidents in the fourth quarter.

According to the Federal Statistical Office in Germany, there are a total of 2,155 accidents with e-scooters in 2020. These included five fatal accidents. In addition, 386 people were seriously injured, 1,907 slightly. For the most part (80 percent) the victims were themselves on the road with one of the numerous e-scooters. The rest are pedestrians or cyclists who were involved in an accident with an e-scooter.

In almost three quarters of the accidents, the e-scooter drivers were responsible, mostly it was a loss of control of the vehicle without anyone else contributing. According to the police, the most common cause (18.3 percent) was alcohol consumption. For comparison: this was only the case for seven percent of cyclists. Driving too fast or improperly using the road or sidewalks is also a frequent cause of accidents.

The accident causes are mostly younger People were, every third was younger than 25 years. Overall, however, e-scooter accidents only make up a small proportion of the general accident statistics. Of the 264,000 personal injury accidents registered by the police in Germany in 2020, only 0.8 percent were accidents involving e-scooters.

However, as pointed out by tagesschau.de, the figures for 2020 are only partially meaningful. In the spring, the corona pandemic meant that there were restrictions on the use of e-scooters. Nevertheless, the statistics are the first to provide an overview for an entire year. After all, the e-scooters were only allowed in June 2019.

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