Hawthorne Press Tribune
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 61, No. 6 - February 7, 2019
Inside
This Issue
Calendar of Events.............3
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.......................5
Classifieds............................3
Entertainment......................2
Food.......................................5
Hawthorne Happenings....3
Lawndale..............................4
Legals............................. 4,6,7
Pets........................................8
Weekend
Forecast
Friday
Sunny
61˚/48˚
Saturday
Partly
Cloudy
58˚/49˚
Sunday
Mostly
Sunny
58˚/47˚
The Weekly Newspaper of Hawthorne
Hawthorne Hiring Event Helps
Laid Off Workers Find New Jobs
An aerospace/manufacturing hiring event took place on Jan. 31 at the Hawthorne Memorial Center to assist recently laid-off workers. Attendees networked with employers and gathered important
information to take their next employment steps. Photo Courtesy of South Bay Jobs/South Bay One Stop.
Crash Danger Predictions from
Electric Scooters Coming True
By Rob McCarthy
To no one’s surprise, electric scooters that
showed up last year in South Bay cities
before being banned are sending people to
hospital emergency rooms with an assortment
of injuries. And it’s not only the riders who
get scrapes, bruises and broken bones. The
walking wounded include bystanders, too
-- some of whom are fighting back against
the trendy mode of transportation.
Recent developments have slowed the
introduction of the sleek scooters from
Bird and Lime into Southern California.
More cities have banned them for now, preferring
to take a wait-and-see approach to how
the Santa Monica experiment works. That
South Bay city is the testing ground for what
happens when a new motoring technology that
offers little protection for riders merges into
urban traffic. The introduction has come with
some bumps and bruises, but no traffic deaths.
Nine people who were injured by electric
scooters filed a class-action suit last October
in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It
accuses startups Bird and Lime — as well
as their manufacturers Xiaomi Corp. and
Segway Inc. — of gross negligence, claiming
the companies knew the scooters were
dangerous and deployed them in a way that
was certain to cause injuries.
Two of the plaintiffs were injured by tripping
over scooters left on the sidewalk, according
to the lawsuit. Four were hit from behind
as they walked, including a 7-year-old boy
whose teeth were broken by the force of the
collision, the suit alleges. Another 75 people
reportedly have contacted the law firm about
injuries caused by electric scooters. One man
said he suffered a brain injury.
Bird and Lime argue that vehicles are the
real problem. However, a growing number of
cities disagree. They’ve banned the vehicles
with emergency ordinances or restricted where
scooters can be left. Pedestrian injuries from
tripping over the scooters is a concern cited
by the cities that have told Bird and Lime
to remove their fleets of two-wheelers until
further notice.
Electric scooters -- with their risks to
riders and pedestrians -- came on the scene
last September, and yet already have been
labeled one of the “polarizing technologies” in
transportation in decades. The electric-driven
scooters can reach top speeds of 15 to 20
mph, and they are to be ridden in the street
and not on sidewalks. Helmets aren’t provided
by Lime and Bird, and not surprisingly riders
who crash are susceptible to head injuries,
according to a first-of-its kind analysis by
UCLA doctors.
Fractures and head injuries are commonly
the outcome when a scooter collides with a
vehicle or the pavement. That’s the initial
finding by UCLA researchers after studying
249 injury cases involving the two-wheelers.
Santa Monica is the only South Bay city that
currently allows Bird and Lime to operate in
its boundaries. Riders unlock the scooters with
a smartphone and ride for 15 cents per minute.
Nine in 10 of the injuries were to riders,
though the danger of tripping over a scooter
left on the sidewalk adds to the body count
in emergency rooms, the data showed. The
riders, who often are inexperienced at operating
the scooters and lack helmets, most
often get hurt because they fall. Potholes and
uneven pavement after weeks of rainstorms
will only make the streets more treacherous
ahead of spring break, when college students
descend on warm-weather cities, too.
The UCLA research team did some firsthand
observation of scooter traffic in Santa Monica
and reported that riders weren’t wearing
helmets 93 percent of the time. Protection
against head injuries is clearly needed if
the personal transportation device offered
by Bird and Lime is going to coexist with
vehicle traffic. The 249 injury cases present
a small sample, yet the plastic surgeons at
one Santa Monica emergency room have
seen what happens when a rider is thrown
to the pavement.
One-third of those patients were taken to
UCLA hospitals in Santa Monica or Westwood
in an ambulance over a one-year period
that lasted through September last year. The
work done at UCLA is a foray into a public
health issue that hasn’t been analyzed and
reported until now.
One of the typical scooter-related injuries
to the head is not a pretty sight, according
to Dr. Wally Ghurabi, medical director of
one of the emergency departments at UCLA
Medical Center in Santa Monica. His surgeons
have spent hours picking asphalt out of facial
wounds.“You can break your face, break your
nose, break your facial bones, break your
skull and bleed inside your skull,” Ghurabi
warns about the demonstrated risks to riders.
Patients who made emergency-room visits
or were treated for scooter crashes had a huge
number of head injuries, in the UCLA analysis.
Head trauma put 40 percent of those patients
in the ER. The main cause of those injuries
was a fall. In 80 percent of the reported cases,
the rider tumbled and sustained some injury.
Physicians saw plenty of bruises, scrapes and
broken bones after Bird and Lime showed up
in the South Bay last year.
Riders run into objects or collide with
vehicles at a much smaller rate, about 10
percent, based on the Santa Monica sample.
See Electric Scooters, page 8