E-scooter carousel in Altheim: Young people end in the hospital!

E-scooter carousel in Altheim: Young people end in the hospital!

A dangerous experiment on a playground in Altheim, Upper Austria, ended in the hospital for two teenagers on Monday evening. According to Kosmo tried to quickly turn a 15-year-old girl and a greater boy with an e-scooter. This attempt led to an accident in which both young people suffered moderate injuries in the facial area and on the hands. While the emergency services transported the injured to the Braunau hospital, other members of their group were luckily unharmed.

The incident indicates an increasing problem with e-scooters, which in 2024 already led to 7,500 hospital stays in Austria, which corresponds to an increase of 25 percent compared to the previous year. The most common causes of accidents are excessive speed, lack of attention and risky driving maneuvers. E-scooters have established themselves as popular "trend sports devices" in public, which often leads to a lack of statutory accident insurance protection in leisure areas.

statistics on e-scooter accidents

The situation is not only worrying in Austria. In Germany, the number of e-scooter accidents with personal injury in 2023 increased by 14.1 percent to a total of 9,425 accidents, with the number of fatalities doubled from 11 to 22, such as Destatis reports. Over 80 percent of the people who had an accident were on the go with the e-scooter, and the most common causes of accidents are wrong lane use and alcohol influence.

It is particularly alarming that 41.6 percent of the unfortunate under 25 were old. A large part of the accidents, 60 percent, occurred in large cities, with sole accidents and clashes by cars among the most common types of accidents. E-scooters have been approved in road traffic in Germany since June 15, 2019 and are subject to certain regulations, such as the use of bicycle paths and a alcohol limit for drivers

The context of accident statistics

The rapid growth of the number of users is an essential factor for increasing the number of accidents. According to emobility insider , e-scooter accidents in 2023 make up about 0.6 percent of all traffic accidents in Lower Saxony, compared to six percent in bicycle accidents. In 2023, 151 accidents with e-scooters were registered under the influence of alcohol, a number that should not drop significantly in 2024.

The police continue to observe the situation, especially in view of the increasing number of users and the associated accident statistics. Both in Austria and Germany, the increase in security awareness when driving e-scooters remains a central challenge to avoid such accidents in the future.