The Good News/Bad News For E

A new study that looked at how restricting e-scooters to a top speed of 10 mph encourages riders to ... [+] use the sidewalk and can have both pros and cons for riders and pedestrians.

Electric scooter (e-scooter) use has proliferated grown across in this country, and with it, so have injuries and citizen complaints. To address these safety issues, many towns and cities are implementing low speed limits, but doing so tempts more riders to use the sidewalk, and that's a problem — it could result in more harmful crashes with pedestrians.

That is the main take-away of a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit financed by the insurance industry, that looked at how restricting e-scooters to a top speed of 10 mph encourages riders to use the sidewalk and can have both pros and cons for riders and pedestrians.

"Our results show that restricting scooters to low speeds offers a trade-off," Jessica Cicchino, the Insurance Institute's vice president of research and the study's lead author, said in a statement. "At slow speeds, riders are more likely to choose the sidewalk over the road. That puts them in less danger from cars but could mean more conflicts with people on foot."

For the study, researchers compared rider behavior in Austin and Washington, D.C., which set speed limits at 20 mph and 10 mph, respectively. In both cities, e-scooter riders strongly chose to ride in bike lanes where they were available. Where there were no bike lanes, according to the report, in D.C., which has one of the lowest speed limits in the nation, riders were 44 % more likely than Austin riders to choose to ride on the sidewalk, and were also likely to use the sidewalk where sidewalk riding is prohibited.

D.C. riders were more likely to favor the sidewalk even though vehicle traffic was heavier at the 16 Austin observation sites and there were many more pedestrians and cyclists at the 16 D.C. sites. But generally, riders in both cities tended to choose the sidewalk when motor vehicle traffic was heavier.

The study focused on commercial share programs, as neither city is able to require speed limits on privately owned scooters. Researchers said a 15 mph maximum is common across the country, noting that some companies restrict their e-scooters to that speed even where it is not required by law.

There's little evidence sidewalk bans are any more effective elsewhere, the report said. Even so, two-thirds of U.S. communities are considering them or have them in place, according to a 2022 survey by the Behavioral Traffic Safety Cooperative Research Program. Some municipalities are considering banning e-scooters from all or specific roads. For example, a pilot program in Denver barred e-scooters from riding in lanes where the speed limit for motor vehicles was greater than 30 mph.

Future technology has the potential to provide alternative solutions that would better ensure safety, researchers said. For example, some e-scooter companies are deploying systems that can detect when their e-scooters are on sidewalks that could be used to apply separate speed restrictions for sidewalk riders or completely prevent sidewalk riding in some locations.

But for now, "slowing down the fastest sidewalk riders should help prevent crashes and reduce the severity of injuries when e-scooters hit pedestrians," Cicchino added, noting that when bike lanes were available in both D.C. and Austin, they were preferred by e-scooter riders, according to the recent study.

"The clear preference for bike lanes also gives communities another reason to focus on expanding their bicycle networks."

For more information about the research, click here.