Sad plea to Aussie parents over deadly e-scooter reality: 'Higher than we expected'
That is the desperate plea from an emergency doctor who has witnessed firsthand how devastating e-scooter collisions can be. Now, Dr Sarah Whitelaw is urging parents not to let their children anywhere near them.
"They end up with lots of soft tissue and facial fractures, sometimes half or all of their teeth missing, and unfortunately sometimes really significant head injuries," Whitelaw told 7News.
Her warning comes after the University of Melbourne (UoM) released shocking data revealing one in three e-scooter deaths in the last five years have been children. Experts believe youngsters' inexperience on busy roads and smaller stature, makes it easier for other road users to miss them.
"The proportion [of child deaths] is much higher than we expected," Whitelaw said.
🛴 As cities axe e-scooters, personally owned ones are in a blind spot
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🥱 'Fed up': City's massive e-scooter call
The number of Aussies dying from e-scooter usage continues to rise as the mode of transport surges in popularity. However, child fatalities are disproportionate to those of adults, and it is something experts desperately want to end.
"We've identified a shocking over-representation of children... the fatalities that involve children, the vast majority of them have occurred in collisions with other vehicles," Associate Professor Milad Haghani from the UoM said.
In the last five years, 30 people have died while using e-scooters in Australia— and 11 of these have been children. Queensland has the highest number of e-scooter tragedies with 15 deaths, while Western Australia and Victoria have experienced six each, NSW recorded two deaths and the ACT one.
Last month a teenager was killed after colliding with a ute in Terang, a town 212km southwest of Melbourne. The fatality occurred only days after 12-year-old Summah Richards was killed in regional Queensland after colliding with another vehicle.
E-scooter regulations vary from state to territory and there are calls to streamline nationwide rules in a bid to reduce the number of deaths across the country, while others want to see children completely banned from e-scooter use.
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