Association of scooter-related injury and hospitalization with electronic scooter sharing systems in the United States

We used interrupted time series (ITS) analysis to determine whether e-scooter shares' introduction in September 2017 increased serious scooter-related injury across the United States.

Using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, we queried emergency department visits involving motorized scooter-related injuries from January 2010-December 2019. Cases originating where e-scooter shares launched between September 1, 2017-December 1, 2019 (intervention period) were considered exposed. The first month of launch (September 2017) was chosen as the time point for pre- and post-intervention analysis. The primary outcome was change in hospitalizations following scooter injury in association with the month/year launch.

This analysis includes 2754 unweighted encounters, representing 102614 estimated injuries involving motorized scooters nationwide. Hospitals within 20 miles of e-scooter shares also experienced a significant monthly increase of 0.24 scooter-related injury hospitalizations/1000 product-related injury hospitalizations ([0.17,0.31]) compared to a non-significant change in hospitalizations of 0.02 [-0.05,0.09] for control hospitals.

An increase in serious motorized scooter injuries coincides with e-scooter shares' introduction in the US. Future works should explore effective polices to improve public safety.