Severe e-scooter crashes rise in Estonia this summer

Severe e-scooter crashes have increased in Estonia this summer, ERR reported. An 11-year-old boy recently died from head injuries sustained in a fall, while hospitals say scooter-related injuries have become part of their daily workload.

Last week, North Estonia Regional Hospital treated the boy for severe neurotrauma, but doctors were unable to save him. While a neurosurgeon was operating on him, another child arrived at the emergency department with a scooter-related injury and an open femur fracture, said Peep Talving, head of the hospital’s surgical clinic.

The hospital also treats less serious scooter injuries. It recorded about 400 such cases last year. Head injuries accounted for 42 percent, while injuries to the upper limbs, including hand and metacarpal fractures, made up about 40 percent. Fractures accounted for approximately one in four cases, and around 2 to 3 percent involved severe brain injuries, Talving said.

At the emergency department of Tallinn Children’s Hospital, at least one child involved in a scooter accident has arrived every day this summer. The most serious cases have one factor in common: the rider was not wearing a helmet.

“The most serious cases for us are patients with head injuries, because the way people fall from scooters means they land face first. The same applies to children. The head is the first thing to be injured,” said Kristo Peetris, head nurse at the hospital’s emergency department. A helmet cannot prevent accidents, he said, but it would reduce the number of life-threatening head and brain injuries.

Although rental scooters are also involved in accidents, privately owned scooters are responsible for more serious injuries because they travel at higher speeds. Young people also share videos online showing how to modify scooters to travel faster than permitted on streets.

“We are aware of this, and we see it in traffic supervision. Very often, there is no need to modify the vehicle because it was already purchased as a light vehicle or means of transport that is prohibited in traffic,” said Sirle Loigo, head of traffic supervision at the Northern Prefecture.

Police statistics do not show an overall increase in scooter-related incidents. Nearly 600 traffic violations by light-vehicle riders have been registered this year.