Is e-cycling safer than e-scootering? Comparing injury risk across Europe when vehicle-type, location, exposure, usage, and ownership are controlled
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2025

Introduction: Recently, e-scooters have proliferated worldwide. Municipalities have been struggling with regulating e-scooters due to public concerns that the injuries from the new crashes outweigh the health and environmental benefits of micromobility use. Indeed, several studies have reported crash risk for e-scooters 4 to 10 times higher than that for bicycles. Method: We had unprecedented access to crash and exposure data collected in 2022 and 2023 from a rental service of e-scooters and e-bicycles in seven European cities. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study to compute injury rates and incidence-rate ratios for each city while directly controlling for geography, ownership, and exposure (measured in three different ways). Results: We analyzed 686 e-scooterist and 35 e-cyclist crashes. Injury rates were higher for e-cyclists than e-scooterists in most of the cities, for all exposure measures. Further, the incidence-rate ratios indicate that the injury risk was 2.5–10 times lower for e-scootering than e-cycling. Conclusions: E-scootering may not be riskier than cycling as several studies have claimed. In fact, by exploiting technology to control for location, exposure, ownership, and usage, our analysis shows that e-scooterists experience lower crash rates than e-cyclists. While our analysis has some limitations and cannot be considered conclusive evidence, taking location, usage, ownership, and high-resolution exposure into account—which our analysis did contrary to previous studies—is crucial for a more accurate comparison among (micromobility) transport modes. In general, our research suggests incorporating geofencing and GPS-derived exposure metrics in future safety assessments. Practical application: The results and methodologies presented in this paper may help urban planning of rental micromobility services within cities.

E-scootering safety

Cycling safety

Crash injury

Micromobility

Injury rate analysis

Författare

Rahul Rajendra Pai

Chalmers, Mekanik och maritima vetenskaper, Fordonssäkerhet

Marco Dozza

Chalmers, Mekanik och maritima vetenskaper, Fordonssäkerhet

Journal of Safety Research

0022-4375 (ISSN)

Vol. In Press

Säker integrering av micromobilitet i transportssystem

Trafikverket (2022/32014), 2022-11-01 -- 2025-10-31.

Drivkrafter

Hållbar utveckling

Ämneskategorier (SSIF 2025)

Transportteknik och logistik

Farkost och rymdteknik

DOI

10.1016/j.jsr.2025.06.015

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Senast uppdaterat

2025-07-01