The CDC reports that millions of workers drive or ride in a vehicle as part of their jobs, and motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of work-related deaths in the United States. All workers are at risk of crashes, whether they drive light or heavy vehicles, or whether driving is a main or incidental job duty. And, the risk of industrial transportation related injury will likely increase according to a new UCLA study of an emerging urban transportation phenomena.

West Los Angeles is the epicenter of the electric scooter phenomenon — Santa Monica was one of the first U.S. cities in which the scooters were widely used — but the vehicles are now available in more than 60 cities nationwide and about a half dozen locations outside of the U.S.

UCLA researchers reporting in the JAMA Network, have found that people involved in electric scooter accidents are sometimes injured badly enough — from fractures, dislocated joints and head injuries — to require treatment in an emergency department.

The researchers examined data from 249 people who were treated at the emergency departments of UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center between Sept. 1, 2017, and Aug. 31, 2018. The study found that about one-third of them arrived by ambulance, an indication of the severity of their injuries.

“There are thousands of riders now using these scooters, so it’s more important than ever to understand their impact on public health,” said Dr. Tarak Trivedi, the study’s lead author, an emergency physician and scholar in the National Clinician Scholars Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

The research, published Jan. 25 in JAMA Network Open, is the first published study on injuries caused by electric scooters. It reports that the most common mechanisms of injury among scooter riders were falls (80 percent), collisions with objects (11 percent), or being struck by a moving vehicle such as a car, bicycle or other scooter (9 percent).

E-scooters can reach speeds of about 15 miles per hour, and it has become common to see them zipping along streets and sidewalks — even though they are intended to be used on streets only — often dodging pedestrians and motorists. Unused scooters are frequently left at the edge of curbs, but they sometimes are abandoned in places where they obstruct sidewalks or block building entrances.

Cities have adopted a hodgepodge of responses to the safety issues posed by the new phenomenon. For example, in August 2018, Santa Monica began a public safety campaign with Bird and Lime, two of the leading e-scooter suppliers. A month later, the city launched a pilot program intended to develop administrative regulations on shared scooters and bikes. (Santa Monica already has a longstanding rule prohibiting bikes and electric devices from sidewalks.)

The authors wrote that the Segway, a two-wheeled personal transporter that was introduced in the early 2000s, and a precursor of the scooters, also carried a serious risk for orthopedic and neurologic injuries.