Will rising e-scooter accidents spark insurance changes?

Most municipalities don’t require electric scooter (e-scooter) riders to be licensed or carry insurance, although that may be changing.

But accident rates for e-scooters — which use small motors in place of riders propelling themselves forward with one foot — are increasing across Canada, says new data from the Hospital Morbidity Database, which is managed by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

It finds injuries in Canada experienced by people riding e-scooters rose 32% from 375 in 2022-2023 to 498 in 2023-2024.

E-scooters account for half of total scooter-related injuries, according to a CIHI spokesperson. The institute’s data set finds injuries requiring hospitalization for all scooter types (both manual kick scooters and electric) grew 22% in the studied periods — from 810 in 2022-2023, to 992 in 2023-2024.

Legal experts who’ve spoken with CU on this topic over the past three years note e-scooters remain a grey area from an insurance perspective. While websites that sell the vehicles often link to third-party websites that sell insurance, it’s not possible to quantify how many e-scooter buyers actually purchase insurance.

Related: Lax e-scooter insurance spells trouble for Canadian municipalities

Looking at hospital visits following accidents, Canada-wide data from CIHI finds men more frequently experience injuries requiring hospital treatments after a fall from an electric scooter in both 2022-2023 (267) and 2023-2024 (325).

By contrast 114 women were injured badly enough in falls from e-scooters to need hospital care in 2022-2023, and 182 made hospital visits for e-scooter accidents in 2023-2024.

Looking at age groups in the 2023-2024 data sets, men aged 31-45 (92) are most likely to be hurt badly enough to require a hospital visit, followed by those aged 46-64 (77), 18-30 (63), 65-84 (48), 5-15 (34) and 85 and over (11).

Related: Whose insurer pays when e-scooter drivers crash?

For women, frequency of accidents leading to hospital visits fell in a slightly different age brackets, with those 18-30 being most likely (51) to be sent to hospital, followed by those aged 46-64 (42), 31-45 (38), 65-84 (26), 5-17 (19) and 85 and over (6).

Regionally, Ontario became the foremost province where an e-scooter accident was likely to send a rider to hospital, rising from 92 in 2022-2023 to 154 in 2023-2024. Alberta also saw a large increase from 117 in 2022-2023 to 143 in 2023-2024. Quebec saw a rise from 46 accidents that sent riders to hospital in 2022-2023 to 63 in 2023-2024.

Related: Who’s on the hook if e-scooter riders hurt pedestrians?

Trends were more stable in British Columbia, which saw just four more accidents in 2023-2024 for a total of 88, while Manitoba saw only 15 accidents in 2023-2024 — five more than 2022-2023. And e-scooter accidents leading to hospital treatments fell in New Brunswick from seven in 2022-2023 to zero in 2023-2024.

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Increasing accident rates raise concerns for insurers, since anecdotal evidence shows e-scooter riders frequently don’t carry insurance and injuries incurred by riders of both manual and e-scooters can often be traumatic.

Phil Porado

Phil, an award-winning journalist with over 30 years of experience in financial topics, has been managing editor of Canadian Underwriter for more than three years.