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The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center

Safety policy for e-scooters in the United States tends to vary by municipality, and the effects of safety interventions have not been well studied. We reviewed medical records at a large, urban tertiary care and trauma center in Atlanta, Georgia with the goal of identifying trends in e-scooter inju...

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Autores principales: Anderson, Bjorn, Rupp, Jonathan D., Moran, Tim P., Hudak, Lauren A., Wu, Daniel T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507613/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34639579
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910281
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author Anderson, Bjorn
Rupp, Jonathan D.
Moran, Tim P.
Hudak, Lauren A.
Wu, Daniel T.
author_facet Anderson, Bjorn
Rupp, Jonathan D.
Moran, Tim P.
Hudak, Lauren A.
Wu, Daniel T.
author_sort Anderson, Bjorn
collection PubMed
description Safety policy for e-scooters in the United States tends to vary by municipality, and the effects of safety interventions have not been well studied. We reviewed medical records at a large, urban tertiary care and trauma center in Atlanta, Georgia with the goal of identifying trends in e-scooter injury and the effects of Atlanta’s nighttime ban on e-scooter rentals on injuries treated in the emergency department (ED). Records from all ED visits occurring between June 2018 through August 2020 were reviewed. To account for ambiguity in medical records, confidence levels of either “certain” or “possible” were assigned using a set of predefined criteria to categorize patient injuries as being associated with an e-scooter. A total of 380 patients categorized as having certain e-scooter related injuries were identified. The average age of these patients was 31 years old, 65% were male, 41% had head injuries, 20% of injuries were associated with the built environment, and approximately 20% were admitted to the hospital. Approximately 19% of patients with injuries associated with e-scooters noted to be clinically intoxicated or have a serum ethanol level exceeding 80 mg/dL. The implementation of a nighttime rental ban on e-scooter rentals reduced the proportion of patients with e-scooter injuries with times of arrival during the hours of the ban from 32% to 22%, however this effect was not significant (p = 0.16). More research is needed to understand how e-scooter use patterns are affected by the nighttime rental ban.
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spelling pubmed-85076132021-10-13 The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center Anderson, Bjorn Rupp, Jonathan D. Moran, Tim P. Hudak, Lauren A. Wu, Daniel T. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Safety policy for e-scooters in the United States tends to vary by municipality, and the effects of safety interventions have not been well studied. We reviewed medical records at a large, urban tertiary care and trauma center in Atlanta, Georgia with the goal of identifying trends in e-scooter injury and the effects of Atlanta’s nighttime ban on e-scooter rentals on injuries treated in the emergency department (ED). Records from all ED visits occurring between June 2018 through August 2020 were reviewed. To account for ambiguity in medical records, confidence levels of either “certain” or “possible” were assigned using a set of predefined criteria to categorize patient injuries as being associated with an e-scooter. A total of 380 patients categorized as having certain e-scooter related injuries were identified. The average age of these patients was 31 years old, 65% were male, 41% had head injuries, 20% of injuries were associated with the built environment, and approximately 20% were admitted to the hospital. Approximately 19% of patients with injuries associated with e-scooters noted to be clinically intoxicated or have a serum ethanol level exceeding 80 mg/dL. The implementation of a nighttime rental ban on e-scooter rentals reduced the proportion of patients with e-scooter injuries with times of arrival during the hours of the ban from 32% to 22%, however this effect was not significant (p = 0.16). More research is needed to understand how e-scooter use patterns are affected by the nighttime rental ban. MDPI 2021-09-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8507613/ /pubmed/34639579 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910281 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Anderson, Bjorn
Rupp, Jonathan D.
Moran, Tim P.
Hudak, Lauren A.
Wu, Daniel T.
The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center
title The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center
title_full The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center
title_fullStr The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center
title_short The Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries at a Large Urban Tertiary Care Center
title_sort effect of nighttime rental restrictions on e-scooter injuries at a large urban tertiary care center
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507613/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34639579
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910281
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