Skip to main content
It's been a little over a week since scooters hit the streets, and doctors at local emergency rooms say Portlanders are riding safely so far.
Related: E-Scooters Are on Portland Streets, and They're Already Getting Mixed Reviews
Spokespeople from Providence Health, Oregon Health and Sciences University and Legacy Health report having seen zero scooter-related injuries in the past week.
"Knowing this would probably come up,I have already checked," Brian Terrett, spokesman for Legacy Emergency Departments, told WW in an email. He says the hospital is "reporting no e-scooter injuries so far."
If Portland's relationship with e-scooters is anything like San Francisco, however, where the rides were recently banned, that number could start to change.
According to a recent report by the New York Times, doctors and researchers in the Bay Area are teaming up to track and study the prevalence of injuries related to scooters.
Dr. Chris Colwell, chief of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times, "I'm quite confident that we were seeing five to 10 injuries from this a week, and I'm probably underestimating that. We saw one or zero a month before the increase in electric scooters."
But Portlanders are so far riding relatively safely.
That isn't necessarily an indicator of responsible scooting, though.
As they have in other cities, Portland's scooters are starting to show up in odd places—like the Willamette River and atop street signs.
Related: Good Job, Portland: Only One E-Scooter Has Been Thrown in the Willamette River So Far
Scooter sighting... pic.twitter.com/hNWdlMAY3p
— Emily Green (@GreenWrites) August 4, 2018
Volunteers and business owners along the southwest waterfront also report seeing frequent reckless scooting along the esplanade, which they worry endangers pedestrians.
Have you seen any wild scooting? Any responsible, commendable scooting? Let us know.