‘We’ve never seen this’: e-scooter accidents can cause rare injuries

Electric scooters have taken over the streets of big cities. The advent of this new mode of transport has led to injuries that were rare or even almost non-existent before, says François Rannou, head of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Cochin hospital in Paris, and a guest on BFMTV on Wednesday.

very unusual injuries

“The typical injuries we see are fractures of both forearms, it’s still very unique,” ​​he says, stressing that his service doesn’t account for head injuries.

Because normally, according to him, “the lesions are often unilateral and when they are bilateral they are asymmetrical. But they are never symmetrical lesions (…). In the car you can have that in the lower limbs but in any case, at the level of the upper limbs, we have never seen that “. He specifies that in six months his service has treated two people for this type of injury.

These injuries are very different from those caused by bicycle accidents, which mainly affect the wrists, clavicles and “the head, in 90% of cases.”

The hospital’s physical medicine and rehabilitation department has also recorded an “explosion” of electric scooter-related accidents, as have scale statistics showing an increase “of more than 600%” in the number of these accidents in the period 2019-2022. An increase that explodes before the “decline” of traffic accidents involving “cars, scooters, motorcycles, pedestrians.”

Two profiles: executives in their fifties and young people

Le professor François Rannou identifie par ailleurs deux types de blessedés pris en charge dans son service: “Il ya des patients qui ont plutôt la cinquantaine, qui sont des cadres et qui ont choisi d’utiliser la trottinette pour se déplacer au travail. Et il Already a deuxième catégorie, ce ne pas du tout les memes: ce sont des jeunes, voire des très jeunes. .

“Getting around with a motorized vehicle is not a game,” he says.

For the doctor, the use of a resistant helmet (not only bicycle) and protections for the wrists must become mandatory. He believes that scooter riders should take a cue from some users who choose to wear “motorcycle helmets” and robust gear to protect themselves from the serious and sometimes fatal accidents that this mode of transportation can cause.