For personal injury lawyers in New York and other bustling cities around the country, electric scooters are very much a hot topic of conversation. This is because we are beginning to see something of a rise in the number of personal injury claims by those who have been riding an electric scooter. There are a number of reasons as to why we are seeing such a boost in these claims, and here are some of factors behind that.

Pandemic Issues

Something which we cannot ignore is the impact which the pandemic has had on these kinds of statistics. During the peak of the pandemic between 2020-21, there were far less cars on the roads going to quarantine measures, and that of course saw so many statistics around injuries and accidents drop. Even when we factor this in however we are still seeing a rise in scooter injuries, but we have to consider the impact which this has on the statistics.

Lack of Road Knowledge

One of the biggest concerns which many have around scooters is that you don’t have to have any road knowledge in order to ride one. Whilst those who drive motor vehicles have to pass tests, those on scooters do not. Now some may say that cyclists also don’t have to pass a test, but they have much more control over their vehicle than someone on an electric scooter, and this is often why we consider them as being safer. When scooters use our roads, they should know what is expected of them by the law, but so many don’t.

Driver Behavior

Something else which we are seeing a great deal of is drivers who are not behaving in the right way when it comes to these scooters. Because they are quite small we see a number of cases where drivers have failed to check their blind spots, and end up colliding with a scooter.

Uncertainty on the Roads

There is a lot of uncertainty from scooter riders as to where exactly they are allowed to go. In some cases they think that they can ride the sidewalk, in others they try to go on the road and this confusion really doesn’t help anyone on the road at all. By rights the scooter riders should be on the road following the same rules as a cyclist, or on in the cycle lane if there is one available.

Scooter Behavior

Not all personal injury claims which are made by scooter riders mean that the driver of a car has been responsible. In fact in a number of cases we find that it is the rider of the scooter who in fact has caused the collision. Many scooter riders are guilty of snaking through traffic when they shouldn’t, and this is the perfect example of how they can be responsible for an injury.

This is something which will have to be monitored closely and we can expect to see some change in the law for those who ride scooters through our city streets.