Mounting e-scooter deaths and injures force police to crack down
Police will be empowered to conduct roadside breath testing of e-scooter riders amid mounting concern that lagging regulation is helping drive alarming rates of death and injury.
Police will be empowered to conduct roadside breath testing of e-scooter riders amid mounting concern that lagging regulation is helping drive alarming rates of death and injury.
The four years it has taken to address the drink riding anomaly in Queensland – entry point for rideshare services that kicked off a nationwide boom in e-scooter use and ownership – underlines how lawmakers have struggled to keep pace with the craze.
The toll on life and limb is rising relentlessly, especially among young adults. In Brisbane last Thursday, a man, 37, was killed in an early-morning crash on the city’s southside in the third serious accident this month. It came days after a 19-year-old woman became the first person in Canberra to die when her electric-powered machine and a car collided.
Latest figures show that 952 injured riders have been treated in Brisbane’s two biggest public hospitals since the city embarked on a pioneering trial of rideshare e-scooters in 2018, many for complex and resource-intensive facial injuries or bone fractures.
This equates to nearly a presentation a day at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital on the northside and Princess Alexandra Hospital south of the river, leaving doctors up in arms over the strain imposed on a stressed health system.
Data captured by the Jamieson Trauma Institute shows that nearly 40 per cent of the cases involved people 25-34 years in age of whom 29 per cent were deemed to be affected by alcohol. This rises to 34 per cent of 18-24 year-olds, who were three times more likely to have sustained injuries requiring admission to hospital than those who had not been drinking.
Frustrated police have been unable to crack down when road rules in Queensland and other jurisdictions classify e-scooter riders as pedestrians who are entitled to use footpaths but few roads.
This means they cannot lawfully be breath-tested with the handheld devices used by police in motor vehicle stops. Instead, they must be deemed sufficiently affected by alcohol to be detained and transported to a police station or RBT van for processing on the more sophisticated breath analysis machines used to confirm over-the-limit roadside readings.
The office of Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey confirmed the loophole – applying also to bicycle and horse riders – would be plugged by year’s end as part of strengthened e-scooter regulation and enforcement.
From November 1, speed limits on footpaths would be cut from 20km/h to 12km/h, warning bells or horns made mandatory and fines increased for unsafe riding.
“It’s tragic to see a number of lives lost in e-scooter crashes over the last fortnight and my thoughts and condolences are with the friends and family of those who have died,” Mr Bailey said.
“These tragedies reiterate the importance of riding safely at all times, and in wearing protective gear like helmets on all rides.”
Action can’t come soon enough for Melbourne emergency medicine doctor Sarah Whitelaw, a federal delegate to the Australian Medical Association. She said case numbers had “spiked” this year as life returned to pre-Covid norms.
The injuries could be horrific. “Typically, they’re the sort of thing that happens when someone goes over the handlebars or comes off at speed … quite complex fractures of the wrists and ankles for example,” Dr Whitelaw said.
“We see people losing all their teeth or a lot of them, severe scraping and soft-tissue injuries to the face which for a 20-year-old is particularly significant and will impact the rest of their life.
“And, yes, we are seeing a strong association with alcohol and the time of day when people are having more significant injuries … in the evening and early hours of the morning after they have been out.”
A major concern is the propensity of e-scooter owners to override speed limiters or soup up engines. In Brisbane, where 28,000 privately owned e-scooters dwarf 2000-odd licensed to rideshare services by Brisbane City Council, some have been clocked by police hitting 80km/h.
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