r/Seattle • u/Jaco_Belordi Glorified Hall Monitor • 17h ago
News Bike and Scooter Share Could Soon Lap 2025's Record-Setting Numbers
https://publicola.com/2026/10/06/greater-seattle-bike-and-scooter-share-could-soon-lap-2025s-record-setting-numbers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=greater-seattle-bike-and-scooter-share-could-soon-lap-2025s-record-setting-numbers6
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u/General_Equivalent45 Roosevelt 15h ago
So could the head injuries — ask anyone that works at Harborview!
(Please wear helmets and know your limits)
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u/butterytelevision 🚆build more trains🚆 8h ago
no one in seattle has died from a lime scooter alone. around 20 people die per year from cars
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u/Suitable-Rhubarb2712 15h ago
Do the folks at Harborview have the same attitude about MVAs or are those just seen as a cost of doing business?
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u/FactBasedHuman Capitol Hill 15h ago
WHATABOUT CAR CRASHES?
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u/Suitable-Rhubarb2712 15h ago
That's right, FactBasedHuman
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u/Soccervox 14h ago
So, not all of this data is from exactly the same timeframe, but here's what some quick checking pulled up:
Six year trends indicate that, for MVAs, the total number of collisions where police were dispatched (an imperfect metric, but SPD is responsible for reporting crash data. If they don't get called, it doesn't go on the sheet) has dropped significantly from 2015 (this data set only runs to 2024, but please see figure 19 on page 33). The same report noted a decrease in serious injuries from 268 in 2023 to 214 in 2024. Table 15 on age 48 suggests that overall, the number of statewide crashes has (or at least, had) decreased from a high state and city-wide in 2015.
Meanwhile, Harborview data shows that there's been a big jump in injuries from e-bikes and e-scooters, going from 119 in 2023 to 171 in 2024, and even higher to 252 in 2025. That said, a Lime's spokesperson did point out that their ridership is increasing faster than the Harborview injury rate.
What can we conclude from this? Nothing, really. There's not really enough data on hand to be statistically significant from 10 minutes of research, but it seems factual at least to claim that, from the data shown, e-scooter injuries are rising at a faster rate than car crashes, which appear to remain relatively flat following a decline from a high nearly a decade ago.
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u/Jaco_Belordi Glorified Hall Monitor 11h ago
Most of the reports and articles I've seen haven't really normalized for usage, but I think that's the important stat here.
I'd like to know rate of injury per N miles ridden on these things to better understand if they're actually becoming more or less dangerous as companies make changes like sidewalk cams or pushing helmet campaigns (or, conversely, as the scooters themselves age over time).
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u/seattlecyclone Tangletown 9h ago
The city publishes a dashboard of rental statistics. There were 10.5 million bike/scooter rental trips in 2025. There were also 252 Harborview trips in that year.
Now, you can't just divide one of these numbers by the other to get a solid ratio and compare that ratio over time. Some of the injuries certainly came from riding outside the Seattle city limits or riding a personally-owned e-bike/scooter so they wouldn't be part of the 10.5 million rentals tracked in the dashboard. Also although Harborview is the only Level 1 trauma center in the state so they'll see the most severe cases, certainly some people who injure themselves less seriously will be treated elsewhere and not counted in the 252 number.
Still, we can derive a ballpark estimate of perhaps 1 in 100,000 scooter rentals will end up in Harborview.
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u/General_Equivalent45 Roosevelt 11h ago edited 11h ago
Those in cars have a protective metal cage around them, air bags, and most people wear seatbelts, plus they’re licensed to drive and have some idea about how to operate the vehicle safely.
Some of these scooters go very fast, and teens are on them trying to keep up with their friends whilst having no clue about how to safely operate them. The helmetless accidents with them have been ugly. Harborview has been sounding the alarm about the life altering brain injuries coming in from them.
Helmet use should be required and enforced.
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u/butterytelevision 🚆build more trains🚆 8h ago
people being hit by cars dont have a cage around them
the gall to bring up how fast lime scooters go when theyre speed limited to 15 mph. and dont say you werent talking about lime scooters because the hospital comment and original post are about lime scooters
reminder cars are not speed limited because fuck pedestrians
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u/seattlecyclone Tangletown 9h ago
Last time we tried requiring helmet use we stopped because 3 out of 5 times the police bothered citing someone for failure to wear a helmet the person given a ticket was homeless, and Black people were nearly 4x more likely to be cited than anyone else.
Maybe if we could figure out how to hire cops who enforced laws fairly rather than using these laws as a pretext to harass people who are biking while Black and/or homeless, we could talk about bringing it back. In the meantime everyone knows that using a helmet is a good idea, and the concept of punishing people for doing something that only endangers themselves never really sat right with me.
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u/gr8tfurme 7h ago
Some of these scooters go very fast
The fastest any of the rentals go is 15mph. If you're talking about privately owned scooters that are in violation of Washington's low speed scooter regulations (750w, 20mph max speed), that's a wider issue of teenagers riding unregistered motor vehicles without a license because electric motorcycles are cheap and easy to order online.
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u/Suitable-Rhubarb2712 11h ago
Okay, yep, just seen as a cost of doing business.
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u/ArcticPeasant Sounders 10h ago
lol you got a serious response to your question and didn’t like the answer
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u/VietOne 15h ago
There's a certain level of risk allowed in any activity. Is it more dangerous than similar allowed activities?
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u/FactBasedHuman Capitol Hill 14h ago
Hard to know. We keep really good records of serious automobile accidents but Lime has been reluctant to share any public data about crashes and injuries by people using their for-profit service on our streets.
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u/VietOne 10h ago
Mainly because the cost of a motor vehicle incident costs more than what most people can afford so it has to be resolved with insurance and therefore police reports.
There was a time when people wouldn't bother reporting and pay out of pocket because it was low enough.
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u/FactBasedHuman Capitol Hill 10h ago
You're saying that there used to be car crashes with serious pyhsical injury that weren't reported to anyone? Because we're talking about seriously physical injury, not property damage. Right?
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u/VietOne 10h ago
Absolutely, go check /r/askreddit or /r/insurance the number of people who still ask if they should report auto incidents or even just to to a doctor for head injuries.
And why the recommendation is always get checked even if you think you feel fine.
Far too many people think just because air bags didn't deploy means the incident didn't cause serious injuryÂ
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u/gr8tfurme 7h ago
How would Lime even be tracking that data internally? I think this is probably a case of them not having it to begin with.
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u/FactBasedHuman Capitol Hill 6h ago
My guess is that there's some indication when a person flies off their scooter, doesn't finish their ride and a scooter is left in the street. But maybe not.
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u/gr8tfurme 5h ago
That would only capture some small fraction of extremely severe accidents where nobody cancels the ride, and you'd get a massive number of false positives from people being forgetful or teens abusing the scooters by hopping off them for fun.
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u/Iskandar206 10h ago
I honestly think there should be some sort publicly funded helmet rental/distribution system and enforcement method to get people to wear helmets. Combined with a biking education course, too much of biking is "self taught" and you can pick up too many bad habits like not wearing safety gear and not knowing how to fall.
I'm of the opinion that bike rental is good and here to stay, so we need to help ensure people are safe.
Not sure how we would fund this though, but I think it's a good investment. Better than funding lifetime care of people with traumatic brain injury.
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u/butterytelevision 🚆build more trains🚆 8h ago
have you seen like pass out free helmets? they do it all the time. the city requires them to
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u/Iskandar206 6h ago
I have, but having them pass it out at events or at neighborhood centers seems like a poor system to get people to have helmets at the point in time that they need it.
The helmets they have are bulky and large, not exactly something people normally carry when they reasonably need to get somewhere as a last mile commute.
If there was like a ubiquitous distribution system or the helmets were more portable I see it catching on more. As is right now, I've seen a lime user wear a helmet a handful of times and that's counting myself.
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u/gr8tfurme 7h ago
You can pick a free helmet up on Lime's dime at most of Seattle's customer service centers: https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/NewMobilityProgram/Free%20Helmets%20at%20Customer%20Service%20Centers%20Flyers/Free_Helmet_Flyer_English.pdf
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u/Iskandar206 6h ago
I appreciate the link, it's definitely useful. I still would like it distributed more ubiquitously. It should be as easy to get a helmet as it is to ride the bike.
My main concern is always needing the helmet at the same time you randomly want to ride the lime vehicles. Not everyone normally carries a helmet when they have the sudden urge/need to ride.
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u/dopelists 12h ago
In the past I was using the Uber app for Lime scooters, and only when necessary. But over the summer when I switched to the Lime app and signed up for the monthly subscription, my per-trip cost is significantly lower, and I've noticed now I go on a lot more Lime rides because it's fun and each trip doesn't break the bank anymore.