Hundreds injured in Melbourne’s e-scooter trial, new data shows

More than 500 people reported being injured – including 17 seriously – in crashes while riding or being hit by a hired e-scooter during Melbourne’s controversial two-and-a-half-year experiment with hire scheme operators Lime and Neuron.

Data obtained by The Age reveals for the first time the number of injured riders and pedestrians recorded after the e-scooter trial was launched across inner Melbourne in early 2022.

The City of Melbourne abruptly cancelled its contract with Lime and Neuron in August 2024, with Lord Mayor Nick Reece saying scooters were “creating havoc” on CBD footpaths.

Lime and Neuron withdrew from the City of Yarra in March last year after the council increased its daily fee to from $1 to $5 per scooter to cover the cost of managing the scheme, but they continue to operate in the City of Port Phillip.

The state government declared the hire-scooter trial a success and legalised both hire schemes and privately owned e-scooters in July 2024. But it refused at the time to release information on the number of crashes and injuries recorded.

Data obtained by The Age via a freedom-of-information request shows Lime and Neuron received 558 reports of injuries involving its scooters across the three local council areas between February 2022 and August 2024.

Of those injuries, 180 people required medical treatment. Sixteen were admitted to hospital for more than 24 hours, and one scooter rider suffered life-threatening injuries. There were no fatal crashes.

Pedestrians and other third-parties hit by hire scooter riders accounted for 37 injuries, including 15 who needed medical treatment and four who were admitted to hospital treatment for more than 24 hours.

The data shows Lime and Neuron also received 4837 complaints about poorly parked scooters and recorded 407 “water vehicles” – meaning scooters that were dumped in rivers, lakes or the ocean.

Lime and Neuron said the injury data showed their scooters were a relatively safe form of transport, considering customers took 9.4 million trips over that period, with 99.994 per cent of journeys ending safely and 0.073 serious injuries reported per 100,000 kilometres travelled.

However, Reece said ending the e-scooter contract was “absolutely the right decision”.

“Too many people were being injured, and we acted to put safety first,” he said. “Unsafe riding and abandoned scooters blocking footpaths created real risks for pedestrians.”

The data does not capture privately owned e-scooters, which have been involved in fatal crashes in Victoria and have become the focus of public concern along with high-powered e-bikes.

Will Peters, head of Asia Pacific for Lime, said that unlike privately owned e-scooters, its devices were speed-limited to 20km/h, insured and operated with public oversight.

“We are proud of the e-scooter service we provided in Melbourne, helping tens of thousands of residents and visitors travel more sustainably throughout the city,” he said.

A spokesperson for Neuron said Melbourne was one of its busiest cities worldwide for e-scooter trips before the City of Melbourne suspended its partnership. “The vast majority of riders were behaving responsibly,” they said.

But for those injured, the harm has been significant and long-lasting.

Adelaide woman Julia Miller suffered a broken shoulder and elbow when she was hit by a Lime scooter rider near the MCG in April 2022. Almost four years later, the 63-year-old still has limited use of one arm and sometimes uses a walker because of difficult balancing and related neck pain.

“It’s been a major impact on my life in terms of everyday function,” she said.

Miller said she was glad to see the City of Melbourne eventually ended the scooter schemes, but said councils should have put more resources into ensuring they were used safely.

“These are big, heavy machines. If you jump on a bicycle you know how to ride it, but anyone can ride a scooter without knowing how to use it,” she said. Miller is pursuing compensation from Lime for her injuries.

Pedestrians hit by hire scooters early in the trial found they were unable to claim on Lime and Neuron’s insurance policies if the rider was not wearing a helmet or breaking other road rules.

Nick Mann, principal at compensation firm Polaris Lawyers, said his firm had received numerous inquiries from people seriously injured by e-scooters. Mann said the insurance policies had improved but still had “critical gaps which are likely to leave people without coverage if they are injured by a rental scooter”.

“We continue to recommend that Lime and other private rental companies should be required to pay to register e-scooters with the TAC scheme to provide better protection for injured Victorians,” he said.

Port Phillip Mayor Alex Makin said he was comfortable continuing to work with Lime and Neuron, with hire scooters providing a valuable service to cover gaps in the public transport network. Makin said there were 31,000 hire scooter trips and five reported minor incidents in December.

“E-scooter usage appears to be unequivocally responsible,” he said.

Makin said safety and amenity concerns had been addressed by Lime and Neuron implementing footpath-riding detection technology, slow-riding and no-go zones and no-parking zones.

“There’s a greater level of comfort with how e-scooters are used in our community,” Makin said. “Hopefully, that serves as a benchmark for if the state government looks at a whole-of-Melbourne approach in terms of what should be implemented.”

Victoria Walks chief executive Sarah Pilgrim said the hire scheme should only be expanded if there were effective measures to keep scooters off footpaths, along with enforceable parking rules, better on-road riding infrastructure, national safety standards and no-fault insurance for injured third-parties.

“When fast, heavy devices are introduced into [footpaths], even a small number of crashes can have very serious outcomes,” Pilgrim said. “When people don’t feel safe in public space, they walk less, and that has serious consequences for physical health, mental wellbeing and social connection.”

The injury data is based only on reports made to Lime and Neuron by riders or third parties, and could include false reports but also may not include injuries that were unreported. Lime and Neuron included the injury data in monthly reports to each council during the trial.

The Age lodged a freedom-of-information request to the City of Melbourne seeking those monthly reports in July 2024. The council agreed to provide the documents but Lime and Neuron took action in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to prevent their release, arguing they contained sensitive commercial information.

During mediation at VCAT, the two companies agreed to release a combined incident dataset.

Transport Accident Commission data shows that across the same February 2022 to August 2024 period, there were 13 road deaths in the Melbourne, Yarra and Port Phillip council areas, all of which were pedestrians hit by vehicles.

Lime and Neuron said “water vehicles” were remotely deactivated and thoroughly tested before returning to service.

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