How safe are Lime scooters? Government agencies say they have no idea

The Spokane City Council has written two sets of safety laws for electric scooter riders.

Anyone riding a personal electric scooter has to wear a helmet. Anyone riding a Lime scooter does not.

It’s a distinction that many observers have called hypocritical, but City Council members have defended it and pointed out that Lime prevents its customers from recklessly speeding.

Lime throttles its scooters with automatic speed limits that users can’t override, unless they’re going downhill. The company caps its scooters at 7.5 mph when they’re in Kendall Yards, Riverfront Park, portions of the Centennial Trail and on Gonzaga University’s campus. Riders can’t exceed 15 mph in the rest of the city.

It’s unclear if Lime scooter riders in Spokane suffer head injuries at disproportionate rates. Local data on Lime scooter safety is difficult to find, if it exists at all.

Spokane Police Department spokeswoman Julie Humphreys said law enforcement received 111 Lime-related calls for service between May and late July.

But Humphreys said the police department’s staff doesn’t have time to sift through the data to try to find whether any of those calls were connected to an injury. She also said she didn’t know how often Spokane police officers have issued citations to people riding personal scooters without a helmet. The Spokesman-Review in 2019 reported that the police department issued 36 citations in 2018 to people who flouted the city’s helmet law.

The Spokane Fire Department said it doesn’t track scooter injuries or collisions. Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, the region’s largest hospital system, said it could probably figure out how many people have required medical attention for Lime-related injuries, but couldn’t provide data in time for this story.

The Washington State Department of Transportation said it doesn’t track scooter collision or injury data, and deferred to the Washington State Patrol. The Washington State Patrol said it doesn’t track that data either, and deferred to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

Washington Traffic Safety Commission Communications Manager Erica Stineman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Russell Murphy, Lime’s global communications director, said only 0.02% of scooter trips result in a reported incident, and only a fraction of those end in serious injury.