JOSHUA ALLAN
The 1510 West

Many West Islanders will have noticed a significant increase in the number of e-scooters zipping around their neighbourhoods this year. Their increasing popularity, especially among youth, raising issues of safety and where they should be allowed to be used.

“We are concerned because the popularity is increasing,” said Debbie Friedman, the director of the trauma department at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. “Some of the injuries are life-threatening.”

“We’ve had patients who’ve had severe traumatic brain injuries, facial and dental trauma, abdominal trauma, fractures, lacerations (and) sprains,” explained Friedman, who is also an associate professor at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, as well as director at Health Canada’s injury reporting and prevention program.

She said injuries due to e-scooter use is a growing category of emergencies health officials are seeing

While official numbers won’t be tabulated until the end of summer, she said the number of injuries is “more than six-fold” what it was in 2023. “I can tell you that just in the last two weekends we’ve had a number of serious trauma cases involving e-scooters with pedestrians, with motorists and alone,” she added.

What’s more, the use of these scooters has “skyrocketed” this past year, Friedman said.

The rapid rise in popularity of these electric motorized scooters comes two years after Quebec launched a three-year pilot project to test the use of these devices on public roads. The program outlines the rules for their use, including that riders must be over the age of 14, wear a helmet, and not exceed 25 kilometres an hour. The use of the devices are  permitted on bike paths and on roads with a maximum speed limit of 50 kilometres an hour. Riders are required to obey the same traffic laws as cyclists.

However, there is always the issue of rule compliance. Friedman explained that more than half of the youth hospitalized at the MCH trauma centre who suffered e-scooter injuries this year have been under the age of 14, and a majority had not been wearing a helmet.

Several West Island officials have taken notice of this trend and said to have personally witnessed rules being ignored.

“People are not wearing the proper gear,” said Kirkland Mayor Michel Gibson. “Some are going extremely fast. Basically, it’s a motorized vehicle and it could go to 20, 30 miles an hour.”

“There are some imminent dangers there, because they can go fast,” said Pointe Claire Mayor Tim Thomas. “I’m a runner and a cyclist and I’m out a lot. On occasion, there have been a couple of instances where I thought they were going awfully quickly.”

Both Thomas and Gibson said they don’t believe e-scooters should be permitted on bike paths.

“It’s like putting a car or a motorcycle on the bike path,” Gibson said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The MCH trauma centre has also been calling for adjustments to the provincial pilot project’s rules, asking that the minimum age to use these devices be increased to 16. This would bring Quebec in line with other jurisdictions across Canada and much of the United States that have already implemented e-scooter regulations.

Friedman is also concerned with the fact that, unlike similarly-sized motorized devices like mopeds, users do not need a driver’s licence to operate an e-scooters.

Overall, parents need to understand the risks involved with their children using e-scooters, Friedman said.

“E-scooters are really not a toy. This is not the next best thing to get for the holidays as a gift. It’s a motorized device that’s on the road with cars and cyclists and motorcycles.”