Electric scooters are here to stay. What are cities doing to keep communities safe?

From KERA News:

Compact, affordable and simple to operate, electric scooters are becoming increasingly prevalent across the country – including North Texas.

Since rental programs made their first debut in late 2017, e-scooters have soared in popularity as a carless transportation option. These devices populate the streets of urban areas, college campuses and, more recently, neighborhoods, according to local residents and police.

Today, over 130 cities across the country are served by rental e-scooter systems, including Dallas and Plano. Many more see personally-owned electric scooters roam the streets.

E-scooters are a part of a rising trend toward micromobility, or transportation using small, low-speed electric devices like e-bikes. And as this trend continues, it’s unlikely these devices will disappear anytime soon. But some North Texans have begun to worry about the safety risk they may pose to their communities, especially among kids.

How safe are electric scooters?

Across the country, reports of electric scooter-related injuries and fatalities are increasingly common, many of which involve children. In Chicago, two teens died in separate traffic accidents in March and April while riding rental scooters. In May, a 13-year-old in Orlando, Florida died after his scooter crashed into a pickup truck.

Dr. Anna Suessman, director of Medical City Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Emergency Department in Dallas, said she frequently sees children come in with electric-scooter related injuries.

“It usually stems from small wheels, high speed,” Suessman said.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends that children aged 9-12 do not ride devices that go faster than 10 mph — but some scooters on the market can reach speeds as high as 25 to 28 mph. More severe injuries tend to occur at speeds of 20 mph or higher, she said.

Suessman said she sees injuries that range from scrapes, cuts, burns and broken bones, to more severe injuries like concussions, skull and facial fractures, internal bleeding, and even traumatic brain injuries.

Head and facial injuries are mostly seen in riders who weren’t wearing helmets, she said. She also sees more severe injuries in instances where more than one passenger rides a single scooter, which most scooters are not designed for.

Suessman said she’d like to see stricter enforcement of local regulations and for families to better understand the risks that unsafe use of these devices can pose to their children.

“I don’t want them to see what I get to see every day, but I want them be aware that the risk a lot of times for these types of equipment do outweigh the benefit of that fun because it’s fast and it is not body protected like you would be in a car,” Suessman said.

A patchwork of local regulations

Texas’ statewide regulations on electric scooters are minimal. State transportation code, which defines motor-assisted scooters as self-propelled devices with gas or electric motors, prohibits their operation on streets or highways with posted speed limits above 35 mph and permits operation on bike paths and sidewalks.

Otherwise, regulations are left up to local municipalities. In North Texas, this means regulations vary widely from city to city.

Some cities, like Arlington and Dallas, have implemented city-wide speed limits and slow or no-ride zones. Many require children to wear helmets, like Colleyville and McKinney. Some only allow children to ride on bike paths on sidewalks, like Plano, while Frisco prohibits riding on sidewalks entirely.

Other cities, like Fort Worth and Garland, have no local ordinances regulating electric scooters and simply follow state law.

Don’t see your city on the map and curious about your local regulations? Plug your city name + “Code of Ordinances” into a search engine, or contact your city’s police department.

But in recent months, community safety concerns seem to span the Metroplex, regardless of local ordinance.

Stefan Hearst, who has lived in Little Elm since 2002, said he has recently noticed children in his neighborhood riding electric scooters at high speeds without following traffic laws or paying attention to their surroundings.

“I usually call that a P-I-E situation, which means a situation that we can all easily know that is predictable, P, inevitable, I, and eventual, E, that something tragic is going to happen,” Hearst said. “And it unfortunately sometimes does happen.”

Little Elm city ordinance prohibits children from riding motor assisted scooters on all roadways within the city, except on bike paths and sidewalks. It also requires children to wear helmets.

Megan Lescallett, assistant chief of police, said the Little Elm Police Department receives reports of unsafe electric scooter use several times a day.

While violations are considered Class C misdemeanors and subject to a fine, Lescallett said the department prefers to educate before enforcing the law.

She said the department is currently developing an educational information flyer outlining the city’s scooter and e-bike laws — which are designed to look like a “pseudo citation” that kids must take home to be signed by a parent or guardian.

“We wanted to try and figure out an innovative approach to address the issue instead of just enforcing or citing people (which) usually sometimes, especially with children, doesn’t fix the issue.”

In situations where education alone is not effective, Lescallett said police may take additional actions like issuing a citation or impounding the scooter.

Hearst said that rather than an issue with police enforcement, the problem stems from parents not understanding the regulations in place and the gravity of danger their children are at risk of while riding e-scooters.

“They’re just taking it too lightly,” he said. “They’re just hoping nothing will happen.”

Frisco resident Azfar Saeed said he brought up the issue of electric scooters at a Frisco town hall after noticing similar behavior in his neighborhood in recent months. He said children ignoring traffic laws while riding electric scooters is “creating a very hazardous situation” in his community that is putting people’s safety at risk.

Frisco city ordinance prohibits minors without driver’s licenses from riding motor-assisted scooters on any public way or property, except on bike paths. Scooters are banned in parks and on sidewalks, and all minors must wear helmets.

Like Little Elm, the Frisco Police Department is also using education as its primary approach to mitigating unsafe use of electric scooters, spokesperson Ryan Thomas said. He said the department is focusing on social media outreach and educating students through school resource officers to help people understand the laws.

In 2025, Frisco had eight motor vehicle crashes that involved electric scooters out of 1,947 total crashes, Thomas said. This year, seven have been recorded.

While Thomas said the department is aware of concerns about unsafe e-scooter use posted on social media platforms like Nextdoor and Facebook, few complaints are actually reported to the police. Of 1,756 traffic complaints the department has received since January 2024, only 23, or 1.3%, were related to electric scooters, he said.

Thomas said he encourages residents who notice an issue to call it in or fill out the department’s online complaint form to report it so police can better understand the scope of the issue, ensure their data is accurate and allocate appropriate resources for enforcement.

Education, enforcement or infrastructure?

As the founder and executive director of advocacy group Dallas Urbanists, Hexel Colorado has lived without a car in Dallas for over four years and primarily uses micromobility devices, like e-bikes and e-scooters, to get around.

Colorado said kids growing up in car-centric cities are missing education on how to safely navigate roads outside of a vehicle.

One solution to this, he said, is organizing more regular bike to school events, where kids are encouraged to ride their bikes to school and learn how to interact with the street outside of a car.

“Just having that regular expectation, that cycle of cycling, it gives that opportunity for kids to learn how to navigate,” he said.

Colorado said he thinks local efforts to enforce electric scooter regulations, like issuing citations, are only a “Band-Aid solution” to improving safety because law enforcement staff are a limited resource. Instead, he thinks cities should focus their budgets on improving infrastructure to make our streets safer for micromobility users permanently.

He said rising injuries are not a result of kids being dangerous, but rather an issue with the streets not being safe. Cities using the safety of kids as the “gold standard” will make our communities safer for everyone — including the elderly, disabled and intoxicated, he said.

“If they kind of treat it as, ‘Okay, how can we make this environment as safe as possible for kids, even if they’re on a scooter?’ It really makes it safe for everybody,” Colorado said.

But how can cities accomplish this?

Colorado said cities need to develop more physical infrastructure around micromobility, like protected bike lanes that feature barriers, rather than just painted lanes.

Beyond physical infrastructure, Colorado also said building social infrastructure is an important step to improving safety. This starts with cities investing in private micromobility retailers that provide a place where people can talk with experts about what scooter, or other micromobility device, is the safest and smartest choice for them or their child before purchasing.

Adding infrastructure like protected bike lanes may inconvenience motor vehicle users, but cities must make an effort to keep children safe, he said.

“There’s always going to be pushback, but you can either choose to inconvenience and disappoint some people or to protect and keep other people safe,” he said. “Convenience versus safety is the real trade-off that cities have to have the courage to take.”

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