E-scooters remain largely unregulated and a road safety issue.

The latest official statistics reveal that deaths involving e-scooter collisions have trebled year-on-year.

Twelve recorded fatalities in the past year have been directly related to the increasingly popular transport.

Provisional data, published by the Department for Transport (DfT) for the year ending June 2022, shows that collisions involving e-scooters increased by 38%.

Numbers rising

E-scooters were involved in 1,349 collisions in data ending June 2022. This compares to 978 in the year ending June 2021.

The small wheeled scooters are not the most stable, especially at any great speed. This probably has a significant influence on the fact that 346 incidents involved only one e-scooter (single vehicle collision). This compares to 200 in the year ending June 2021.

In total, there were 1,437 casualties in collisions involving e-scooters in 2022, compared to 1,033 in the previous year.

Injuries

Of the casualties in the collisions involving e-scooters, 1,095 were e-scooter users. This is up from  811 in the year ending June 2021.

Twelve people were killed in the collisions (11 of whom were e-scooter riders). In comparison, four died in the year ending June 2021.

The DfT estimates there were 429 seriously injured and 996 slightly injured casualties. The year ending June 2021 had 288 and 741 respectively .

Most common types of injuries sustained were classed as ‘slight severity’. However, the fourth, fifth and sixth most common type of injuries are different type of fractures and head injures. These are considered as serious injuries.

Capital and beyond

A third of all reported casualties were registered by Metropolitan police, compared with around a fifth of all casualties involving any vehicle.

While the remaining e-scooter casualties were spread across the other police forces, higher numbers were recorded in areas where there is an official ongoing trial.

Government trials are taking place in 30 areas at present. However, police recording of incidents generally does not record whether incidents are privately owned e-scooters or part of an official trial.

There were also more male than female e-scooter-user casualties, especially among those aged between 10 and 39.