Fed: More breaks from scooters than bikes

AAP General News (Australia)
04-16-2004
Fed: More breaks from scooters than bikes

By Kylie Walker, National Medical Correspondent

SYDNEY, April 16 AAP - More children break their arms riding foot-propelled scooters
than bicycles, emergency department doctors report.

And most of the scooter riders injured are unsupervised and not wearing protective
gear such as helmets and knee pads.

Primary school children are the most likely group to suffer scooter-related injuries,
emergency doctors Christina Fong and Natalie Hood said in the latest issue of the journal
Emergency Medicine Australasia.

The two doctors looked at children passing through the Monash Medical Centre's emergency
department over 18 months, finding 1.3 per cent of the 5,000 trauma injuries involved
scooters.

They found 42 per cent of the scooter riders who showed up for treatment had arm fractures
- about the same as for skateboard riders and rollerbladers.

By comparison, only 23.5 per cent of bicycle riders sustained such injuries.

"This has implications for scooter design, age recommendations, adult supervision and
technique training," the researchers said.

"Whether scooters are regarded as a recreational device or a mode of transport, the
fact still remains that young children use them in public places, unsupervised and without
protective gear."

Only 17.7 per cent of the scooter riders who came in to the hospital had been wearing
protective gear such as helmets, knee pads and elbow pads, Dr Fong said, and adults had
been supervising play in about one-quarter of the cases.

All but six per cent of the accidents reported occurred on a footpath or private road
such as a driveway.

"Young children are easily distracted, they don't know any road rules and they have
little fear of danger - maybe they should have scooter lessons and be taught a few basic
road rules," Dr Fong said.

"They're treating scooters as toys rather than transport. But even on a footpath you
cross roads and there are cars backing out of driveways."

Dr Fong intends to study children's head injuries next.

AAP kbw/jnb/jlw

KEYWORD: SCOOTER

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