Neuron Mobility is the only shared e-scooter operator left in Canberra after Beam Mobility was banned earlier this year. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
A University of Canberra (UC) academic is cautioning the ACT Government on signing deals with any new shared e-scooter operator until local laws are rethought.
Associate Professor of Psychology at UC, Dr Amanda George, said more public data was needed on e-scooter accidents.
“I would personally caution against [considering another e-scooter operator] at this time when there are so many issues and a lack of data. And we don’t know the impacts yet, and I think we need to know that,” she told Region this week.
It comes after the Perth council suspended the hiring of its city’s shared e-scooters, pending investigation, after a 51-year-old pedestrian was killed in a collision on Saturday night (31 May).
The e-scooter rider, a 15-year-old tourist from the UK, was charged with causing death while driving dangerously under the influence of alcohol.
E-scooter injuries also land two Sunshine Coast children in hospital every week, according to a study published this week by the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
Researchers documented 176 e-scooter injuries to children and teens aged five to 15 years of age who presented to the Sunshine Coast University Hospital over 2023 and 2024. It found one in 10 injuries were life threatening or potentially life threatening.
“While working at the hospital we would see a child or teen attend the emergency department with e-scooter injury every few days,” lead study author Dr Matthew Clanfield said.
“The types of injuries ranged from minor fractures and injuries through to traumatic brain injuries requiring a craniotomy.”
A rider abandons his Neuron e-scooter. Photo: Neuron Mobility.
Injury data is hard to find in the ACT because Canberra Health Services says our emergency departments and walk-in centres “do not code injuries by the mechanism of injury, but by the injury itself” (in other words, they don’t record how injuries happen).
But a 2023 study of Canberra Hospital admissions over 15 months, published by the ACT Branch of the Australia Orthopaedic Association, found 623 injuries had e-scooters to blame and 17 per cent of them required surgical procedures.
The largest proportion were broken wrists (43) and clavicle fractures (12), while 13 of the surgeries were classed as “major procedures” requiring hours of reconstruction work and costing tens of thousands of dollars.
Dr George co-authored a more recent study by UC, published last month, which revealed most of Canberra’s e-scooters were being ridden by young people knowingly engaging in risky behaviour, such as not wearing helmets or carrying multiple passengers.
Dr Amanda George warns against allowing another e-scooter operator on our streets until more data is obtained. Photo: University of Canberra.
Her team observed riders over four days across four locations in Civic, Braddon and Lake Burley Griffin, and found nearly half (48 per cent) weren’t wearing a helmet.
“[This] is higher than in other jurisdictions … and it was also a lot higher than in self-reported data we have from other researchers in Canberra,” Dr George said.
After Beam Mobility was banned from the ACT for manipulating data on how many of its purple shared scooters it operated across the city, the ACT Government has been on the hunt for a second provider.
High on the list of those putting in a pitch include Ario, which promises to address many of the safety concerns by employing AI-driven cameras and remote control on its e-scooters.
But Dr George said even this needed to be put on hold until changes were made to the legal framework around e-scooter use.
“From our research, and talking with people who use e-scooters, they definitely identify a range of benefits from their use. However … it is very clear a lot of improvements need to happen to make them a lot safer, not only for the users themselves but also for the broader community.”
E-scooter rules in the ACT forbid anyone under the age of 12 from riding without supervision, but this only applies to private scooters – the minimum age for using a shared e-scooter is 16. NSW and Victoria forbid children under the age of 16 from using any e-scooter, private or shared, but it’s 18 in South Australia.
“Where did the justification for these minimum ages come from and why is it different across different jurisdictions? There’s definitely need for more research,” Dr George said.
Ario is making a pitch to offer three-wheeled shared e-scooters in Canberra. Photo: Ario.
It’s also legal to ride an e-scooter on the road in the ACT, but only if there’s “no footpath, shared path or nature strip next to the road or it is impracticable to travel on one of those areas”.
“But in other places, it’s illegal to ride on the footpath and you need to be on the road,” Dr George said.
“We need justification for existing laws and for those laws to be better communicated. It’s really challenging when every state and territory is doing something a little bit different.”
She said it was a challenge to extract injury data from Canberra’s hospitals and called for a “nationwide consistent reporting mechanism to give the full picture”.
“I would fully support access to that data and making that information publicly available.”
