E-scooter accidents on the rise in Alberta

They provide a fast way to commute in densely populated areas, but they’re also leading to more visits to the hospital.

Scooter accidents are on the rise in Canada and Alberta is among the top jurisdictions seeing an increase in crashes.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information is out with new data showing hospitalizations for scooter accidents among children have surged, up 61 per cent between 2022 and 2024. Adult women saw a similar increase, with adult men seeing a 22 per cent increase.

Pamela Fuselli with injury prevention advocacy organization Parachute says following a few steps such as wearing a helmet, not having multiple people ride the same scooter at once, and limiting e-scooter usage to 16 and above, reduces the risk of accidents.

She says since e-scooters are still relatively new to most people, it’s hard to regulate them.

“It takes skill to develop the ability to control the scootersm” says Fuselli. “This is emerging, we are still trying to get that level of bylaw and regulation in. So it’s a work in progress.”

Calgarian Ian Baker used to ride a scooter, but that changed three years ago.

“While I was playing soccer I broke my ankle a while back and when I was in the osteo ward literally everyone else who was in there had hurt themselves in a scooter accident,” he says.

One of the shared scooter operators that run in Calgary is Bird, who say as more and more people hop on their devices, accidents are expected.

“It actually might sound like the numbers are growing, but it’s actually in terms of the share of the micromoblity industry getting much more better,” says Bird’s head of government partnerships Austin Spademan.

The company says through features such as speed limiting based on location, wide tires on vehicles, and better education, they’ve been making headway. 

“Our incident rate is just 0.0012 per cent of total trips, which is actually a 33 per cent improvement over that previous year, and it’s our fifth consecutive year of improvement with regards to safety,” says Spademan.

But for some, they won’t be riding one anytime soon.

“Honestly, that experience in the hospital turned me off of them,” Baker says.