AUSTIN — (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN) Experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are descending on Austin to study a new public health concern — dockless scooters.
Officials with Austin Public Health and Austin Transportation departments are working with three CDC epidemiologists, who will conduct the nation’s first-ever study of the patterns associated with dockless scooter crashes and how to prevent them.
“The scooters are new, so we don’t know all the things about factors related to injury and the severity of injuries,” Dr. Philip Huang, health authority and medical director for Austin Public Health, told the American-Statesman. “It’s just a new problem to try to get a better understanding of what is going on, what are some of the dangers and what we might try to do to prevent injuries.”
The epidemiologists will begin conducting interviews next week, focusing on 37 EMS calls and 68 scooter injuries reported over a 60-day period, from Sept. 5 to Nov. 4. Data collected will be used to educate city officials as they work to adopt new scooter rules. The epidemiologists will administer a questionnaire to the people who were injured, looking for patterns related to injury severity, frequency and any factors that might have played into scooter crashes, Huang said.
This story originally appeared on the Austin American-Statesman. To read the full article, click here.