A major part of the problem is that the riders decide that they can ride them anywhere, anyhow. If you ride like you’re riding a bike (inspect the vehicle before riding, use the bike lanes, in the right direction, not the sidewalk, stop at traffic controls, ride within your limits – and wear a helmet), you take away a lot of risks.
Lime actually had a promotion where they sent people helmets. Note that when I’m in Santa Monica for work trips, I very often ride scooters to work and around town, and I enjoy it. And wear a helmet.
The issue isn’t so much the lack of availability of helmets so much as the fact that the scooters don’t come with them. Are you going to throw a helmet into your backpack every day just in case you’re going to take a rental scooter at some point? I used to bike a lot to school back in uni, but that was easy: just buckle my helmet onto my bike when I’m at home, throw it into my backpack for a couple of hours while i’m actually in class.
Totally agree, and I’m super guilty of riding these things without a helmet much too often. I heart transportation shares of all kinds, especially when they have an electrical boost. But at least here in San Francisco there’s a lot of thriftshops around, so it’s often possible to duck into a thriftshop to pick up a helmet if you don’t have one.
That said I sure hope the providers of these things figure out a way to put helmets onto the heads of more of their riders.
I know that’s true for motorcycle helmets, but I think lightweight bicycle helmets should show any crash pretty obviously? I’m not suggesting they’re a good alternative to buying new, but in a pinch I think they’re much better than nothing to get home.
Before anyone waxes too self-righteous about how stupid it is not wear a helmet, you might want to try goggling “bicycle helmet rotational brain injury.”
tl;dr: Traditional bicycle helmets protect well against radial impact, which can produce skull fractures and associated trauma.
OTOH, they are very poor at protecting against, and may even exacerbate, rotational injuries from oblique impacts. Brain tissue subjected to violent rotation can be badly damaged, though such damage isn’t always immediately obvious. The effects can include mild to severe cognitive deficits, seizures, and even death
Ironically, helmets also protect against tearing injuries to scalp tissue, which are rarely serious but often spectacularly bloody. The fragility of the scalp is one of the body’s defenses against rotational injury: oblique impacts tear the scalp tissue and rip loose before the head can be spun violently. A helmet may prevent the bloody scalp wound at the cost of lifelong mental impairment.
Also, note that improved helmets are being designed to help mitigate rotational injury.
NB: I make no recommendation either way. Either way has risks, and users must evaluate those risks and make their own decisions.
But please don’t assume those choices are uninformed. There’s plenty of peer-reviewed research on the subject.
Helmets with protection against rotational injury have been on the market for years.
The most common system used is MIPS, but there are several others at play.
As a former speedskater, I look at that little tiny front wheel, and then at all those idjits standing bolt upright like they’re competing in the French Waiter Olympics or something, and I can’t believe the fuckup rate is as low as it is.
Ha totally agree. And at least one of them makes a scary metal on metal THUNK sound whenever that front wheel hits something. I almost think it’s intentional, as an alarm, warning the rider to take it easy. Not that they do.
I read an article somewhere about Paris outlawing these things from riding on the sidewalk recently, which oddly wasn’t the case before. It cited an interesting study about how something like 60% of the injuries are on the first ride.
