00:02When Father Tan Fern was struck in Perth CBD by a drunk driver of an e-scooter and killed,
00:08the city's council was quick to take action.
00:11It suspended rideshare e-scooters indefinitely and other local governments followed suit.
00:17Now, a study from Royal Perth Hospital has examined e-scooter injury presentations following the ban,
00:23revealing a sharp decline.
00:24In the 12 weeks before rideshare e-scooters were banned, 105 people presented to the hospital's emergency department with e
00:32-scooter injuries.
00:33Eight of those injuries were categorised as major trauma.
00:37Twelve weeks after the ban, just 39 people presented to the ED with four considered major trauma.
00:44I think it's great food for thought in terms of what kinds of regulations or limits or controls we could
00:50put in place in the future
00:51so that we can try and reduce unnecessary or avoidable injury for people using e-rider balls.
00:58While Royal Perth Hospital did not want to comment, the study's authors noted their research provided valuable data for hospital
01:05planning and city governance,
01:07noting that local regulations can rapidly influence the burden of e-scooter injuries presenting to the hospital.
01:14Last year's state parliamentary inquiry into e-rider balls highlighted a lack of injury data,
01:19and its chair hopes the study will prompt the government to act more swiftly.
01:23This just adds further fuel or further information for our committee to just keep the pressure on the government
01:31and make sure that the work we did as a committee is actually followed through.
01:37Dr Claydon says the research makes the risks clear to all.
01:41We're seeing significant injury, you know, spinal injury and brain injury,
01:45and sometimes really catastrophic injury that permanently impacts someone's life or wellbeing.
01:53A state government spokesperson says it's implementing supported recommendations in Parliament's Ride Safe report,
02:00but didn't want to respond directly to the RPH study.
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