00:00There's one topic we're not talking about enough,
00:04the accidents caused by electric scooters that are flooding cities like Bogotá.
00:10Here at El Espectador we take that issue very seriously,
00:14So much so that we dedicated the cover of the last Sunday edition to it
00:17And we're going to tell you about these accidents with the first available data and the overall picture.
00:23This story begins with Daniel Jaramillo and Dario Hidalgo,
00:26two researchers studying urban mobility and transport.
00:30In 2016 they stopped to look at what was happening on the bike path of Carrera Séptima in Bogotá.
00:36They counted the vehicles, classified them, and also measured their speeds.
00:40Ten years ago, during peak traffic, 244 vehicles passed per hour.
00:4693% of them were bicycles.
00:49This year Jaramillo and Hidalgo repeated the exercise, but obtained very different results.
00:54Now bicycles represent barely half of everything that circulates on the bike path.
00:59The rest are electric skateboards, electric bicycles, and other light electric vehicles like the Muppets.
01:05a kind of small motorcycle.
01:07The speed has also changed.
01:09Bicycles, both mechanical and electric, tended to move at speeds below 30 km per hour.
01:16Skateboards and mopeds, on the other hand, were moving at 30 or even more, on bike paths.
01:22where in theory the speed limit is 25 km per hour.
01:26This is where Jorge Rojas Liébano, head of the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology at the Santa Fe Foundation, comes in.
01:32Bogotá,
01:33and his team.
01:34They are about to publish the first study in Latin America that evaluates the injuries caused by electric scooters.
01:41The researchers delved into the orthopedic emergency data of the Santa Fe de Bogotá Foundation
01:47and they found 190 patients who arrived at the emergency room between 2022 and 2023 after a skateboard accident.
01:55More than 80% of them simply remain silent, without collisions or involvement of pedestrians or other vehicles.
02:02And that's interesting because it helps to understand why these skateboards can be so risky.
02:07When you are riding a skateboard, your center of gravity, that point where we can concentrate the weight of our
02:14body,
02:14It's much higher than when we're sitting on a bicycle.
02:18This causes an electric scooter traveling at 30 km/h or more to brake suddenly.
02:24the body is projected above the skateboard.
02:26It's like a pole.
02:27The bottom part stops, but the top part continues to move forward.
02:32That explains the injuries that Liébano and his team encountered.
02:34100 fractures in 82 patients out of the 190 they analyzed.
02:39Most of it was in the arms, hands, and structures we use almost instinctively.
02:44to try to protect ourselves when we fall to the ground.
02:46They also found dislocations, muscle and tendon injuries
02:50and in some patients head, chest and facial injuries.
02:5433 people needed surgery and 12 had to be hospitalized.
02:59One of them spent 19 days in the hospital.
03:02Despite all this data, researchers believe the phenomenon is being underestimated.
03:07Many people who fall off skateboards don't seek medical help because they believe the fall wasn't that serious.
03:11serious.
03:12As long as cities do not change the way they report these incidents,
03:16It will not be known for certain how much damage these vehicles are causing.
03:20Another question that remains is,
03:22Why can these skateboards and other vehicles go at more than 25 km per hour on a bike path?
03:27Why can't we limit factory speeds?
03:30If you want to know more about this topic, we invite you to read the full article in El Espectador.
