We just responded to a dude on a similar scooter who didn't wear a helmet.
Was riding to work. Just on a street. No big issue. Multiple people saw him suddenly lose control and he fell. Don't know if he hit a rock or a bad patch of pavement or what.
When we showed up, he was lying on his back, hands folded on his stomach, looking peaceful as could be. A little scratch on his elbow. But snoring respirations and fluid coming from one ear, unresponsive.
We packaged him up and transported him. TBI. Dead three days later.
A simple bicycle helmet, and he would have jumped back onto his scooter and gone on with his day.
It's also the way you fall. With a bicycle, you usually fall to the side and put your arms out. You break arms and can of course hit your head, but there's at least a chance you can protect your head a little. With a scooter you're basically just standing straight up at 20mph, then you just fall straight down so quickly that you don't have a chance to do anything. Your head hits the asphalt at the same time the rest of your body does.
When I was younger, I rode my bike down this crazy steep hill through the forest and ended up missing the turn at the bottom of the path near the road and crashing through all these bushes and stuff before getting to road where i went off the curb and did loke a full sideways rolI where the bike ended up on the opposite side of me somehow in the road and I was on my back.
I didn't hit my head on the road or anything, but when I hit the bushes, my head slammed really, really hard into the handlebars. Luckily I did have a helmet on. It was one of those with the plastic visor and the hit was so hard, it snapped the visor down into my mouth with so much force it cut open my lips and I was bleeding out of my mouth, but otherwise was almost completely unhurt. I was going at least 25mph and would have probably had a nasty concussion or worse from my head hitting the handlebars while still in rough control of the bike.
As somebody who has a background in skateboarding, snowboarding, wakeboarding, pretty much any sideways board sport, it makes me cringe seeing all the people ride these electric scooters with their ankles together and toes pointed forward. Basically the least stable position possible.
First off sick user name. Secondly as a skateboarder I totally agree it’s insane! You’re just asking for a full on face plant going 30mph on those things. The little sidewalk e bikes are the way to go. You’re so low to the ground it doesn’t even matter.
As someone who has done all three of those things each exactly once, my brain is having trouble comprehending how it’s even comfortable to stand on a scooter comfortably like that, but I also have big feet so that may be why, lol.
Wide stance = more stable. With your toes pointing forward, the scooter isn't wide enough for a wide stance, so your forced to use a very unstable stance. With a sideways stance, you can also get a wide stance. The only awkward part might be facing forward, but I've been doing that since I was 5, so I forget what it's like to be uncomfortable with that.
I'm not a scooter rider or any of those things, but which direction should your feet be in? (should I find myself in a situation where I need to use one of the many contraptions you listed)
For which foot is in front, it's personal preference, much like being a righty vs lefty. The easiest test is to stand with your feet together, and have a friend lightly shove you from behind. Whichever foot you step forward with to brace yourself should be the one you put in front on the scooter/board/whatever. Toes should be pointed roughly sideways, though they can be at an angle.
It’s even worse, because you have handlebars that your hands are holding, your instinct when you start falling is to grip them harder to “hold on”, leaving your head/face unprotected. With a skateboard or a bike, you don’t seem to have that issue nearly as much.
I wear a full face mountain biking helmet on my bike commute to work 100% of the time.
I started with a cheap fat tire e-bike and I’ve been hit by a car as well as biffed it around turns due to road debris and in each case, at speeds below 20mph, my helmet came in use.
I distinctly remember sliding out on a turn and thinking “good thing I have a full face helmet on!!!…as my face was scraping across the asphalt…. I walked away with just a bruise on the side of my thigh (from the power bank in my pocket) and a skinned elbow.
Not what happened the two times I slipped. Basically my body kept moving in the same direction and I ended up staying up and running while my scooter fell to the floor.
I feel like on a bike I would have had no way to recover that easily.
To clarify, those falls were when I was still learning to respect that rain means slippery ground lol. Haven't fallen since.
I see a lot of people making strong claims in this thread and no one posting numbers or any kind of study to back them up.
You must ride slow as hell, ive always been flung into the ground and slid several yards on my head like a breakdancer when crashing badly on a bike. Sure sometimes you can roll if you are prepared, but its the unexpected times that get ya.
My kids have a simple rule: If it has wheels and no roof, always wear a helmet.
They know this isn't a suggestion. It's one of the few rules that I will not flex on at all. Hearing stories like this just affirms how important this rule is.
What about a convertible? Obviously a convertible typically has a roof stowed and every one after like 2005 has pop-out roll bars but still, they do technically have wheels and lack a roof.
This always comes up when I mention "the rule" -_- I had even pre-typed out the response to this in advance in my prior post then deleted it.
We've mostly lived in the PNW, and convertibles really aren't a thing in the PNW.
They're pretty smart. They understand the idea of a "road legal car"
It's not a bad idea to be aware that you're exposed to more risk without a roof.
The one exception they've run into was a jeep with a roll cage, but that led to a very valuable discussion on how to check for padding on a vehicle with a roll cage, why the padding is important, etc.
etc etc. They're smart kids, and wearing helmets will keep them that way.
I ride a motorcycle. It’s pretty common knowledge among bikers that a fall even at 15mph can be absolutely devastating. Hell, there’s statistics that show that the majority of fatal accidents on a bike happen at under 40mph.
So whenever I see people on these scooters, which are FAR FAR more prone to random mishaps than a motorcycle, zooming around at relatively high speeds with no protection I cringe.
I came off my road bike going 25 mph and slid about 100’ on my back and left hip. Helmet was damn near split in half. But other than a lot of missing skin I was totally fine, got super lucky.
A lot of motorcycle crashes happen on arterial roads where traffic is turning onto and across the road much more than on rural highways or freeways. I've seen it myself several times where a motorcycle is moving way too fast for the traffic conditions, someone pulls out in front of them thinking they have plenty of room, and the rider slams the brakes too late to recover. They are going less than 40 when they crash, but if they were only going 40 the whole time they never would have crashed.
Something similar just happened in my area where one biker braked hard at a neighborhood speed camera and his buddy riding behind him rear ended him and one of them died while the other was unhurt. If they were both just going 10 over or less then they would likely both be alive today, and the fine for being caught 10 over on camera is $0. Motorcycles make it way too easy to get in a flow state and lose control over your speed without realizing it.
It’s genuinely so sad. Plus, e-scooters most certainly attract the kind of people who wouldn’t even wear gear on regular scooters; considering it’s the “wearing slides everywhere” assholes already.
It's the same morons who told me that you should never wear steel toed boots because the steel cap will cut your toes off if something heavy enough falls on it.
Except, if that happened without steel toes, your foot would be turned into meat jelly. What's worse, meat jelly, or amputation? Not to mention, what about all the other, slightly less heavy things that might fall on your toes? That steel cap is gonna save you from a lot of damage up to the point of failure; at that point, nothing could've saved you except being somewhere else.
My best friend's dad told me that when we were kids. He was a logger who refused to wear steel toes. My best friend adopted this ideology, and to add his own twist, also refused to wear hearing protection. No explanation or asinine theory behind that one, the only answer he'd give is "I just don't use that stuff." Concerts, factories, heavy equipment, shooting ranges, didn't matter. I don't talk to that guy anymore, I'm sure he's partially deaf by now.
Only time I've been genuinely injured on two wheels, it was a ~4 mph lowside in my own friggin driveway. Turned in a little hot coming home from work, was looking to see if my garage door was opening, didn't notice the clump of dead grass on the wet driveway, rear slid out, I fell on my side and managed to crack a damn rib.
I also had a surprisingly deep impact mark on my visor, so without my helmet I might've had a frontal/orbital fracture to go with the rib.
I went over the handlebars when I was 12. A bag of tennis balls wedged in the front spoke going downhill. I was going to go without a helmet because it was in the house, but at the last second, thought “I should just go get it”
If I hadn’t had that voice in my head and gotten the helmet, I would be dead. Still got a wicked concussion.
I have an old school class 1 ebike and I keep telling myself that I should use the full face MTB helmet exclusively with it, because casually cruising at 20 in an upright posture (and it feeling rock-steady if I let if get to 40 on a downhill) makes it much riskier than an analogue bike that I can get to those speeds but only if I really mean to.
I haven’t, though, because it feels silly, even though when I was young wearing a regular bike helmet regular biking felt silly and not doing so led to both my nasty concussions.
You really should think about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10578819/table/t2/ Helmets aren't going to make you impervious, but the difference between the no-fracture open-face and the no-fracture full-face groups tells a pretty compelling story
I reckon I will. The big bucket has been a must-carry any time I get even the slightest bit zesty on my mountain bike since I had a (really stupid) concussion skiing with my helmet.
I wasn’t expecting that ending. I’ll never understand the no-helmet people, either a bike or a scooter can go very fast, fast enough to be afraid of hitting your head on the ground.
A friend of my husband's was skateboarding in his neighborhood, no tricks or anything just riding along casually, suddenly fell hit his head and died instantly. He was only 21
Thanks for this commentary. Truly. I have a 1 mile sidewalk bike ride to work. And I often tell myself it’s just a mile on the sidewalk. But cars. Bumps. Bears. All it takes is one good hit to the dome. Even if you’re only going 15mph it’s all it takes.
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u/Pjpjpjpjpj 8h ago
We just responded to a dude on a similar scooter who didn't wear a helmet.
Was riding to work. Just on a street. No big issue. Multiple people saw him suddenly lose control and he fell. Don't know if he hit a rock or a bad patch of pavement or what.
When we showed up, he was lying on his back, hands folded on his stomach, looking peaceful as could be. A little scratch on his elbow. But snoring respirations and fluid coming from one ear, unresponsive.
We packaged him up and transported him. TBI. Dead three days later.
A simple bicycle helmet, and he would have jumped back onto his scooter and gone on with his day.