Shared Streets, Rising Risk: E-Scooter, E-Bike, Hoverboard, and Pedestrian Safety in Seattle — A 2018–2026 Data Analysis

This is our analysis of e-scooter, e-bike, hoverboard, and pedestrian safety in Seattle. It draws on national CPSC and Washington Traffic Safety Commission data and Harborview Medical Center reporting, and — as its main data source — our own original analysis of Seattle’s raw SDOT crash records.

Injuries from e-scooters and e-bikes have grown more than five times over in the past four years at Seattle’s only Level I trauma center — the region’s top hospital for the most serious injuries. Some of these crashes have been fatal. Harborview Medical Center treated 29 riders hurt on e-scooters or e-bikes in 2020. By 2024, that number had grown to 163 — a reported 37% jump from 2023, according to Harborview. Our own analysis of SDOT’s crash records adds another piece of the picture: at least 5 deadly crashes involving scooters between 2020 and 2025. We cover that data in more detail later in this article.

This trend isn’t just local. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, released a new national report in April 2026 that covers data only through 2024. The report found e-scooter ER visits rose 35.79% from 2023 to 2024 — the most recent year-over-year numbers available. E-bike visits climbed even faster, up 57.45% over the same period.

To understand what’s driving that increase, we studied national, state, and Seattle-area injury data. We also looked at the safety rules Washington lawmakers and Seattle’s Department of Transportation changed — and didn’t change — in 2026. Here’s what we found.

Key Findings

• E-scooter ER visits rose 35.79% in a single year. CPSC‘s newest national safety report counted about 79,300 ER visits linked to e-scooters in 2024. That’s up from 58,400 in 2023, with 38 deaths. E-bike ER visits rose even faster — up 57.45% to about 59,200, with 97 deaths.
• Seattle’s own numbers are climbing just as fast. UW Medicine hospitals treated 273 e-scooter riders between 2021 and 2023, up from just 9 riders in the program’s first two years. Harborview Medical Center tells a similar story for e-scooters and e-bikes combined: 29 injuries in 2020, versus 163 in 2024 — a reported 37% jump from 2023.
• Micromobility deaths have grown 27 times over since 2017 — faster than injuries. CPSC’s data shows national micromobility deaths rising from 5 in 2017 to 135 in 2024, a 27-fold jump, versus roughly 4 times for ER visits over the same years. Yearly death counts are small nationally, so the year-to-year trend bounces around more than that headline number suggests.
• Hoverboards are overwhelmingly a kids’ device. CPSC’s national data shows 68% of hoverboard ER visits are riders aged 5 to 14 — almost 5.7 times that age group’s 12% share of the U.S. population. That’s the biggest age gap we found in this analysis.
• Most injuries are falls, not crashes with vehicles. 87.6% of documented e-scooter injuries come from falls, not crashes with vehicles. That means sidewalk conditions and rider skill matter at least as much as traffic does.
• About 1 in 4 Seattle e-scooter crashes involve a pedestrian. Of 405 Seattle crashes coded as scooter-related, 2020–2025, our own analysis of SDOT’s police records classifies 103 of them (25%) as “Pedestrian” crashes — rising to 135 (33%) by a second, independent count. This is the first data in our analysis that measures pedestrian safety directly, instead of just rider injuries.
• More riders explains most — but maybe not all — of the rise in injuries. Average daily e-scooter and e-bike rides in Seattle rose 42% in 2024, to more than 14,500 rides a day, while Harborview’s combined injury count for both devices rose 37% that same year. Those numbers are close enough that much of the increase likely comes from more people riding, not necessarily more danger per ride.

Table of Contents

1. What Counts as “Micromobility” — and Why the Legal Definitions Are Changing
2. How Fast E-Scooter and E-Bike Injuries Are Rising
3. Who’s Getting Hurt — and Who’s Dying: Age and Sex Patterns by E-Scooter, E-Bike, and Hoverboard
4. Seattle vs. the Nation: Same Trend, Rising Faster Locally
5. What’s Actually Causing E-Scooter Injuries
6. Pedestrian Crashes in Seattle: The Bigger Picture
7. Pedestrian Impact: How Often Scooter Crashes Involve a Pedestrian
8. E-Scooter Injury Severity: Common Injuries vs. the Most Serious Ones
9. E-Bike and E-Scooter Battery Fire Risk: A Different Kind of Danger
10. Washington E-Scooter Laws: What Changed in 2026, and What Didn’t
11. The Road Ahead: Closing Seattle’s Liability Gap
12. Our Sources and Methods
13. Frequently Asked Questions

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What Counts as “Micromobility” — and Why the Legal Definitions Are Changing

Key takeaway: Senate Bill 6110 caps legal e-bikes at 750 watts and 20 mph (28 mph with pedal assist), effective June 11, 2026. House Bill 2095, which would have shifted the burden of proof onto drivers in pedestrian and cyclist crashes, passed the House 53–44 — then died without a Senate vote.

“Micromobility” is the term regulators use for small, low-speed electric vehicles: e-scooters, e-bikes, and self-balancing devices like hoverboards. An e-scooter is a stand-up scooter you ride on a small deck between two wheels powered by a throttle instead of pedaling. An e-bike is a regular-style bike with an electric motor that assists your pedaling, or in some cases can power the bike on its own. Meanwhile, a hoverboard is a small, motorized platform with no handlebars – you stand on it and balance by shifting your weight while sensors keep it upright. This matters because Washington law treats each type differently. In 2026, those rules changed.

Senate Bill 6110 became law on March 23, 2026, and took effect June 11, 2026. It closed a gap in Washington’s e-bike definition. A two-wheeler is no longer a legal e-bike if it can go faster than 20 mph on electric power alone, with no pedaling. It’s also not a legal e-bike if it’s built to be easily modified past these limits:

• Motor power: 750 watts
• Class 1 and Class 2 top speed: 20 mph
• Class 3 top speed: 28 mph, with pedal assist

Faster devices like these — sometimes called “e-motos” — now fall into a gray area. A state work group is studying how to regulate them.

Separately, there’s a legal idea called presumed liability. It’s common in parts of Europe and in a few U.S. states. Under this rule, a driver in a crash with a pedestrian or cyclist must prove they weren’t at fault, instead of the injured person having to prove the driver was. Washington tried to adopt this rule in 2026 with House Bill 2095. It passed the House 53–44, but the Senate never voted on it. We’ll come back to this below — it’s a big reason why “who’s liable” is still unclear in Washington.

How Fast E-Scooter and E-Bike Injuries Are Rising

Key takeaway: E-scooter ER visits rose 35.79%, and e-bike visits rose 57.45% nationally in a single year (2023 to 2024). Seattle has no official scooter-death count, but our own analysis of police crash records finds at least 5 fatal scooter-related crashes from 2020 to 2025.

The CPSC published a new report in April 2026 called Micromobility Products-Related Deaths, Injuries, and Hazard Patterns: 2017–2024. It's the most current federal count of how often these devices send people to the ER. Chart 1 above shows what it found:

E-scooters. ER visits jumped to 79,300 in 2024, up from 58,400 in 2023. That's a 35.79% rise. 38 people died.

E-bikes. ER visits jumped even more — to 59,200 in 2024, up from 37,600 in 2023. That's a 57.45% rise. 97 people died.

Hoverboards. This is the only device where visits went down. Visits fell 20.90%, to 10,600 visits. Growth and risk are moving to scooters and e-bikes instead.

All three devices combined. About 698,500 ER visits and 533 deaths si nce 2017.

Seattle's numbers follow the same trend. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission's most recent e-scooter report found UW Medicine hospitals treated 282 e-scooter patients between 2018 and 2023. However, only 9 of those came in the program's first two years. Between 2021 and 2023 alone, the count was 273. The report links that jump directly to the November 2020 launch of Seattle's shared scooter program. Injuries reported at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle's only Level I trauma center, show the same kind of jump for e-scooters and e-bikes combined: 29 riders hurt in 2020, rising to 163 in 2024. That's a reported 37% jump from 2023, according to UW Medicine spokesperson Susan Gregg. 

One thing is still missing from the local picture: a full, official count of scooter-related deaths. In 2025, Seattle Fire Department told KUOW that e-scooter death data wasn't ready yet. A different city dataset partly fills that gap. Police crash records show at least 5 deadly crashes coded as scooter-related between 2020 and 2025, using Washington's legal definition of stand-up scooters like those from the top companies that rent out e-scooters and e-bikes, Lime and Bird. This count is still probably too low. It depends on how the officer at the scene classified each crash. There's no dedicated box to check for "shared scooter." That means the injury numbers in this article likely understate how many people were actually hurt — on top of the other data gaps we explain in the Sources and Methods section below.

Who's Getting Hurt — and Who's Dying: Age and Sex Patterns by E-Scooter, E-Bike, and Hoverboard

Key takeaway: 68% of hoverboard ER visits involve kids ages 5–14, even though they make up only 12% of the population. Micromobility deaths increased 27 times since 2017, from 5 to 135, while ER visits rose about fourfold.

The same CPSC safety report also breaks down who gets hurt, and who dies, by rider sex and age (Chart 3 for injuries, Chart 5 for deaths). Both patterns look different depending on the device.

Injuries skew male overall. 63% of all micromobility ER visits are male, versus 37% female. That gap grows wider for e-bikes specifically (78% male). But hoverboards go the other way: 45% male and 55% female. It's the only device here where more women than men get hurt.

Hoverboards are overwhelmingly a kids' device. We compared CPSC's age data against U.S. Census population numbers for the same age groups. Our analysis revealed the biggest gap: 68% of hoverboard ER visits involved children ages 5 to 14, rising to 72% when children under 5 are included. Yet, children under 15 make up only 18% of the population. 

The 5-to-14 age group alone accounts for nearly 5.7 times its expected share, given its 12% share of the Census population. That's a very different pattern from e-scooters or e-bikes, below. 

E-scooters show a milder, different-shaped pattern. CPSC data shows 26% of e-scooter ER visits are riders aged 15 to 24, compared to a 13% Census share for that age group. That's a real over-representation among young adults — but nothing close to the hoverboard pattern above, which remains the biggest age gap in CPSC's data.

E-bikes skew the other way, toward working-age adults. 35% of e-bike ER visits are ages 25–44 (versus a 27% Census share), and another 27% are ages 45–64 (versus a 25% Census share) — both a bit higher than you'd expect. E-bikes also have the lowest under-15 share of any device here, just 9% against an 18% Census share for that age range. Riders 65 and older make up a smaller share of e-bike visits (10%) than their 17% Census share. So even though e-bikes skew toward working-age adults, they don't skew toward the oldest riders either.

Deaths appear to have grown faster than injuries since 2017 — but with counts this small, that comparison swings easily from year to year. As Chart 4 above shows, CPSC counts deaths directly, instead of estimating them from a hospital sample the way the ER-visit numbers above are built. By that count, deaths have climbed sharply: all micromobility deaths rose from 5 in 2017 to 135 in 2024. That's a 27-fold increase, versus roughly 4 times for ER visits over the same years (37,300 to 149,100). These are separate growth figures, not a direct comparison of rates. Because annual deaths are relatively low, small changes can significantly affect the percentage. For example, deaths fell slightly from 137 in 2023 to 135 in 2024, while ER visits continued to increase.

Deaths skew more male than injuries do — except on hoverboards, again. Of the 533 micromobility deaths CPSC counted from 2017 through 2024, 422 (79%) were male, and 86 (16%) were female. That's a wider gap than the 63%-to-37% split in ER visits above. Sex was undetermined for the remaining 25 deaths (5%) — a category CPSC doesn't track in its ER-visit data. The male skew holds for e-scooters (79%) and e-bikes (82%) on their own. But hoverboards flip it, just like they do for injuries: 11 of their 17 recorded deaths (65%) were female. That's a small enough sample that one or two cases can swing the percentage a lot.

Seattle vs. the Nation: Same Trend, Rising Faster Locally

Key takeaway: Seattle's e-scooter/e-bike injuries grew a reported 37% in a single year (2023–2024) — close to the national 35.79% year-over-year rate. The 30-fold jump from 2018–2020 to 2021–2023 looks far more dramatic, but it's mostly a low-base effect: Seattle's shared-scooter program hadn't really launched yet during the earlier window.

Chart 6 shows the year-over-year picture. Nationally, e-scooter ER visits rose 35.79% from 2023 to 2024. That's the most recent year-over-year number in CPSC's report. Seattle's own trend tells a similar story, over a longer stretch of time. Harborview's 2024 count for e-scooters and e-bikes combined shows injuries climbing a reported 37% over 2023. That's close to the national e-scooter-only rate. But it's not a perfect comparison, since the local number isn't split out by device type. The multi-year climb is even sharper. UW Medicine's data shows the local case count grew more than 30 times over from the 2018–2020 period to 2021–2023, for e-scooters specifically. Harborview's own combined e-scooter/e-bike count grew more than five times over since 2020.

The difference is important: the national figure is based on one year, while Seattle's 30-fold increase covers a longer period that began before shared scooters were widely available. Seattle's scooter program launched in November 2020, so the 2018–2020 period captured only the program's early launch — before ridership had ramped up — which makes the later percentage increase look much larger.

For comparison, UW Medicine recorded 2,487 bicycle-related medical visits from 2018 to 2023 — nearly nine times the e-scooter count over a similar span. UW Medicine reports the two figures separately, and both count medical visits, not rides or miles, so this shows relative visit volume, not which activity is riskier per use. Still, e-scooters are the newer, faster-growing risk; bicycles remain the bigger one overall.

What's Actually Causing E-Scooter Injuries

Key takeaway: 87.6% of documented e-scooter injuries are falls, not vehicle crashes. At least 41.1% of riders nationally had no helmet use recorded — and in Seattle's own crash records, 65.1% of 192 identified riders weren't wearing one.

The causes of these E-Scooter injuries are broken down in the chart above.

Falls, not traffic. 87.6% of e-scooter injuries documented in the WTSC report were falls. Only 5.7% involved a crash with a motor vehicle. That suggests non-collision factors, including rider control and road or surface conditions, may play an important role in injuries.

Low helmet use. Washington's helmet law for motor-driven cycles (RCW 46.37.530) is generally understood to cover e-scooters too. Seattle's shared-scooter permit also requires vendors to run helmet giveaway and awareness programs. In practice, though, few riders wear one: the WTSC report found that at least 41.1% of documented cases recorded no helmet use. Our own analysis of Seattle's police crash records tells a similar story from a different angle: of 192 riders identified in scooter-related crashes from 2020–2025, 125 (65.1%) were specifically recorded as not wearing a helmet.

Age is a smaller piece of the puzzle. It's part of Chart 7 above, but it's more a demographic pattern than a cause. Nationally, younger riders are somewhat over-represented, as covered in the Who's Getting Hurt section above. Seattle's own crash records skew adult instead — a median rider age of 32 among 173 riders with a recorded age (2020–2025).

Pedestrian Crashes in Seattle: The Bigger Picture

Key takeaway: Pedestrian crashes are 4.5% of all Seattle crashes but 50.9% of fatal ones — roughly 11 times more likely to be fatal. Of 1,928 pedestrian crashes citywide (2020–2025), only 103 — about 1 in 19 — involve an e-scooter.

Before focusing on e-scooters, Chart 8 shows the larger pedestrian-crash problem in Seattle. SPD/SDOT records show 1,928 pedestrian-involved crashes from 2020 to 2025. The records specifically identify pedestrian involvement rather than relying on keyword searches.

A separate check matched 9,520 of 9,531 cases across the full 22-year dataset — a 99.9% match. This provides strong support for the accuracy of the pedestrian-crash data.

Two things stand out. First, there's a clear before-and-after. Pedestrian crashes stayed fairly steady, roughly 390 to 550 a year, from 2004 through 2019. Then they dropped sharply in 2020 and have stayed lower ever since — 319 to 357 a year from 2021 through 2025, never climbing back to the pre-2020 range. This article doesn't try to explain that shift. Citywide traffic patterns changed in 2020 for reasons outside what this analysis covers, and the lower count has now held for five straight years.

Second, pedestrian crashes are unusually severe. They're just 4.5% of all Seattle crashes in this period, but account for 50.9% of all fatal ones. In other words, a pedestrian crash is roughly 11 times more likely to be fatal than the average Seattle crash. Among the 1,853 pedestrians with a recorded age, the median age is 38 (the average, or mean, is 41.5) — noticeably older than the median age of riders in scooter crashes (32).

Where do e-scooters fit into this bigger picture? 

Chart 9 visualizes this. Of the 1,928 pedestrian crashes counted here, 103 — about 1 in 19 — also match the scooter-related definition used throughout this article. Cars are by far the more common danger to pedestrians in Seattle, and even if E-scooters are a small slice of it, it is real. The next section looks at that slice specifically.

Pedestrian Impact: How Often Scooter Crashes Involve a Pedestrian

Key takeaway: Of 405 Seattle scooter crashes (2020–2025), 103 to 135 — 25% to 33%, depending on the measure — involve a pedestrian. 5 of those 405 crashes were fatal, one every year since 2021.

The last section looked at Seattle's pedestrian-crash problem overall. This one narrows in on e-scooters (Chart 10). It also flips the question around. Instead of asking "How many pedestrian crashes involve a scooter?" (about 1 in 19, above), we ask "How many scooter crashes involve a pedestrian?" 

This section is our own analysis of SDOT's raw crash records — SDOT publishes the underlying data, but not a scooter-specific breakdown. We pulled every crash in SDOT's citywide database whose crash-type code identifies a motorized scooter. 

That turns up 405 crashes between 2020 and 2025 — climbing from 2 in 2020 to 119 in 2025. That's the same growth story the rest of this article tells. Of those 405 crashes, 103 involved a pedestrian. That's 25%, or 31% if you only count the crashes where a type was recorded. Either way, it means a pedestrian, not a vehicle or another rider, was the other party. A second, separate field on the same records asks whether any pedestrian was listed as a party at all. That puts it even higher: 135 crashes (33%), 138 individual pedestrians in total.

In other words, somewhere between a quarter and a third of Seattle scooter crashes serious enough for a police report involve a pedestrian. That adds nuance to the "87.6% of injuries are falls" finding from the last section. That number describes what caused the rider's injury, not who else was involved. A fall can still be the recorded cause even when a pedestrian triggered it. These two findings don't conflict. But together, they show pedestrians aren't a footnote here.

This is not a complete count, and there's a reason. SDOT has a specific flag for shared-scooter crashes, but it appears in only 102 crashes from 2023 onward, so it misses many earlier cases.

Instead, the 405-crash figure uses SDOT's official "motorized scooter" crash category. This matches Washington's legal definition of a "motorized foot scooter" (RCW 46.04.336): a stand-up device with handlebars, powered by a motor, and limited to 20 mph. It is also the term Washington uses for "shared scooter" programs such as Lime and Bird (RCW 46.61.715). The definition excludes mopeds, motorcycles, seated scooters, mobility scooters, and power wheelchairs.

The data also cannot distinguish rental scooters from privately owned scooters and depends on how officers classified each crash. So these numbers should be treated as a minimum, not a complete count. Still, they provide a direct look at pedestrian involvement in scooter crashes rather than an estimate.

Chart 11 breaks down the fatal ones: of the 405 scooter-related crashes in SDOT's records, 5 were fatal. Broken out by year, at least one fatal crash happened every year from 2021 through 2025. 2020 had none, but it was also a partial year, since Seattle's shared-scooter program launched that November. 

E-Scooter Injury Severity: Common Injuries vs. the Most Serious Ones

Key takeaway: 71.4% of scooter-related Seattle crashes involved injuries, while 5 of 405 crashes were fatal. That fatal-crash rate is about 6 times higher than the citywide rate. In Washington's WTSC data, head and neck injuries accounted for 46.8% of reported scooter injuries.

Chart 12 shows the clearest breakdown we found, from the WTSC dataset: arm and leg injuries in 57.1% of documented cases, head and neck injuries in 46.8%, and broken bones in 34.8%. These categories overlap, since one patient can have more than one type of injury.

SDOT’s crash records showed scooter-related crashes are far more likely to cause an injury than the average Seattle crash. 71.4% of the 405 scooter-related crashes in SDOT's records were classified as an injury crash. Another 14.3% were classified as a serious-injury crash. 

Compare that to 17.0% for all Seattle crashes citywide — cars, bikes, everything else — that citywide number covers SDOT's full 2004–2025 crash history, a much bigger base than the 2020–2025 scooter window, not a matched time period. 

There's also a reporting-threshold gap worth naming: a car-vs-car fender-bender often gets a police report regardless of injury, for insurance purposes, while a minor, no-injury scooter fall with no other vehicle involved may never get reported at all. If that's happening here, it would inflate the scooter injury-crash share for reasons that have nothing to do with how dangerous scooters actually are — we can't test that with the data available, so we're naming it as an open question, not a solved one. 

Fatal crashes don't have that same reporting gap, since a death gets reported regardless of vehicle type. Of those 405 crashes, 5 were coded fatal — a rate roughly 6.0 times the citywide fatal-crash rate. This measures something different from the WTSC numbers above — crash severity, not the type of injury treated. But it points the same direction. When an e-scooter is involved, the outcome tends to be worse than a typical Seattle crash.

Head injuries come up again and again in Seattle news coverage, even though there's no single local dataset that measures severity precisely. KUOW's 2025 reporting was headlined around brain injuries that can be "profound". It quotes Harborview's own injury-prevention researchers describing how serious head injuries can be without a helmet. That matches the WTSC numbers above, and the low helmet-use rate from the last section. Still, no single dataset measures local severity as precisely as the national or state numbers do.

E-scooter & E-bike Battery Fire Risk: A Different Kind of Danger

Key takeaway: Fire causes 64.7% of hoverboard deaths, versus 7.3% for e-scooters and 6.1% for e-bikes. Seattle-based Rad Power Bikes is under a federal warning after 31 reported battery fires and about $734,500 in property damage.

Everything covered so far in this article is about crashes — a rider falling, a vehicle hitting a rider, a scooter hitting a pedestrian. Batteries create a different kind of danger. It has nothing to do with how, or whether, someone is riding the device. A battery can catch fire on its own, while charging, or just sitting in storage.

Nationally, it's a real but smaller cause of death — except for one device. Chart 13 breaks it down: CPSC's safety report counts 45 fire-related deaths across all micromobility devices from 2017 through 2024. That's out of 533 total deaths (8.4%). It's the same report behind the injury numbers used throughout this article. That share varies a lot by device. Fire caused 15 of 206 e-scooter deaths (7.3%). It also caused 19 of 310 e-bike deaths (6.1%). But it caused 11 of just 17 hoverboard deaths — 64.7%. For hoverboards, fire is the main cause of death, not a footnote. 

Separately, CPSC's proposed battery safety rule cites its own count: 227 fire incidents, 39 deaths, and 181 injuries from 2019 through 2023. That rule was published June 24, 2026. It comes from a different analysis, with a different date range, than the report above — it doesn't contradict it.

Seattle Fire responds to these regularly. KUOW reported that Seattle Fire responded to 22 e-bike and e-scooter fires in 2023. Nearly half happened at apartments and houses. Six more happened in the first months of 2024. That's against roughly 4.9 million e-bike and e-scooter rides Seattleites took on shared devices in 2023 — the same ridership number cited earlier in this article. 

Water alone often isn't enough to put these fires out. University of Washington chemical engineering professor Daniel Schwartz pointed to inconsistent battery quality as one cause. A battery in this state can burn above 18,000°F and release toxic gas. That's why Seattle Fire's own guidance tells residents who suspect a damaged battery to move it outside into a metal container. Then get away and call 911 if it catches fire, rather than try to put it out yourself.

One of the companies under a federal warning is based in Seattle. In November 2025, CPSC warned consumers to immediately stop using certain Rad Power Bikes battery packs. The affected models are RP-1304, RAD-S1304Y, and HL-RP-S1304. They're used across nine e-bike models, including the RadWagon 4, RadRunner 2, and RadCity HS 4. CPSC's warning followed 31 reported fires, including 12 with property damage totaling roughly $734,500. Some of those fires started while the battery was just sitting in storage, not charging or in use. This is a warning, not a recall. Rad Power Bikes, based in Seattle, disputes CPSC's findings. The company says its batteries passed independent retesting. It also says replacing every affected battery would put it out of business. CPSC's advice to owners still stands either way: remove the battery, dispose of it as hazardous waste, and don't sell or give it away.

Washington E-scooter Laws: What Changed in 2026, and What Didn't

Key takeaway: By June 1, 2026, half of every Seattle scooter fleet must carry sidewalk-detection tech, with $30–$50 fines for blocked-sidewalk parking. HB 2095 (presumed liability) passed the House 53–44 but died without a Senate vote, leaving Washington's comparative-fault rules (RCW 4.22.005) in place.

Three rule changes took shape in 2026. Together, they explain why liability is still unsettled on Seattle's sidewalks.

Seattle tightened its own rules first. Under SDOT's shared-scooter permit rules, scooter companies must keep devices off sidewalks, with narrow exceptions. They must enforce parking in marked zones that leave at least six feet of space for pedestrians. They must also give out at least 5,000 helmets. Companies face $30–$50 fines for each parking violation that blocks a sidewalk. By June 1, 2026, at least half of every standing-scooter fleet must have sidewalk-detection technology. It automatically slows or cuts power when a rider drifts onto a sidewalk.

The state clarified what counts as an e-bike — and created a new gray zone. SB 6110 says a two-wheeler is not a legal e-bike if it can go faster than 20 mph on electric power alone. It's also not a legal e-bike if it's built to be easily modified past its class's speed and power limits. The law also tells the Department of Licensing to set up a work group. That group will recommend rules for the faster "e-moto" devices that fall outside the e-bike definition.

But the bill that would have most directly protected pedestrians never got a Senate vote. House Bill 2095 would have put the burden of proof on the driver in a crash involving a pedestrian, cyclist, or other vulnerable road user. In legal terms, the "burden of proof" is the rule that decides which side must provide evidence to show who was at fault. It passed the House 53–44 on February 17, 2026. But it died without a Senate vote. A companion bill about street safety, SB 5581, had a similar fate. It passed the Senate in both 2025 and 2026. But it never got a House vote either time, and now sits in the Senate Rules Committee. According to Seattle Bike Blog's legislative recap, $150 million in yearly safe-streets funding was kept in place. Advocates expect both bills to come back in a future session.

In practical terms, this means Washington's existing fault rules still govern e-scooter and pedestrian crashes. Washington uses a "pure comparative fault" rule under RCW 4.22.005. That means an injured person can still recover money even if they were partly at fault for a crash. Their payout is just reduced by their own share of the blame, instead of being blocked completely. Claims generally must be filed within three years, under RCW 4.16.080. These rules apply no matter who's at fault — a driver, a scooter rider, a rental company, a device maker in a defective-battery case, or, in cases involving broken sidewalks, the city itself.

The Road Ahead: Closing Seattle's Liability Gap

Key takeaway: E-scooter/e-bike injuries are rising faster than almost any other CPSC-tracked category, and roughly a quarter to a third of Seattle's scooter crashes involve a pedestrian — a group most hospital-based injury data doesn't track at all.

E-scooter and e-bike injuries are rising faster than almost any other category CPSC tracks. Seattle's own numbers are climbing too. That's true even before you factor in the city's early, fast-growing scooter program. And the legal changes meant to protect pedestrians and riders didn't move forward in 2026.

None of this means shared scooters and e-bikes are going away. Seattle's new sidewalk-detection rule and parking fines target the right problem. Falls and sidewalk conditions cause most injuries — not traffic crashes. What's still missing is the legal side. House Bill 2095, which would have shifted that burden onto drivers in some cases, died without a Senate vote — so Washington still runs on its existing fault-based rules. Injured pedestrians and riders have to prove fault themselves.

If you or someone you love was hurt in a crash involving an e-scooter, e-bike, or a vehicle in the Seattle area — whether you were riding or walking — or hurt by a battery fire, Bernard Law Group's attorneys can help. They can explain what Washington's fault rules mean for your situation. A free consultation costs nothing. It also starts the clock on protecting your claim. Contact Bernard Law Group.

Our Methods

This guide combines national injury data (CPSC, WTSC), local hospital reporting (Harborview, via Axios Seattle and KUOW), our own original analysis of Seattle's raw SDOT/SPD crash records, and Washington's regulatory and legal record (SDOT permit rules, state bill tracker, and the relevant RCWs). Each is linked to its original source, above and throughout this guide.

A few limits on the sources:

• The hospital data here (CPSC, WTSC, Harborview) describes people treated after riding. It doesn't cover pedestrians hit by a device — none of these datasets track that as its own category.
• Seattle's police crash data helps fill that gap, from a different angle — police reports, not hospital visits. But it's built on SDOT's defined "motorized scooter" crash-type code (tied to Washington's legal definition of a motorized foot scooter, not free-text notes — see the Pedestrian Impact section), not the dataset's own dedicated shared-scooter tracking flag. Treat it as a conservative, lower-bound estimate, not a full count.
• By contrast, the citywide pedestrian-crash figures in the "Bigger Picture" section use SDOT's own dedicated crash-type category rather than that narrower code, cross-checked against a second, independent field at a 99.9% match rate across 22 years of data — the strongest backup any local figure in this guide has, though it's still limited to crashes serious enough to generate a police report, not every pedestrian incident that happens.
• We calculated CPSC's national percentage changes ourselves, from its published numbers. CPSC's report doesn't state one single headline year-over-year percentage on its own.
• The hospital figures (Harborview, UW Medicine) only cover patients treated at those specific hospitals. They likely undercount the true countywide total.
• The battery-fire figures come from two different CPSC analyses with different date ranges (2017–2024 and 2019–2023) — not one combined count.
• No Seattle-specific battery-fire death turned up in any source we reviewed for this guide. That reflects what these sources report, not a confirmed zero.
• Two figures in the national trends chart — the 2020 e-scooter estimate and the 2017–2021 e-bike average — aren't printed anywhere in CPSC's report text or its data tables. They're visual estimates we read off the report's own published chart (Figure 2.1), and the chart notes them as such.
• The death counts in the Who's Getting Hurt section (CPSC's Tables 1.1 and 1.2) are counted directly rather than sampled, so they carry no NEISS margin of error — but the yearly counts are small enough nationally, as low as 5 deaths in 2017, that year-to-year percentages should be read as directional, not precise. The 27-times-vs-4-times fatality-to-ER-visit growth comparison in that section combines a counted total with an estimated number and is presented as two separately published figures, not one derived rate.

Frequently Asked Questions

How common are e-scooter accidents in Seattle? 

Our own analysis of SDOT's crash records found 405 scooter-related crashes in Seattle between 2020 and 2025 — climbing from 2 in 2020 to 119 in 2025. Nationally, CPSC's newest report counted about 79,300 e-scooter ER visits in 2024, up 35.79% from 2023.

How often do e-scooter crashes involve a pedestrian? 

Between 25% and 33% of Seattle's scooter-related crashes involve a pedestrian, depending on which of SDOT's two crash-record fields you use — 103 to 135 crashes out of 405 recorded from 2020 through 2025. Citywide, pedestrian crashes of all kinds are just 4.5% of all Seattle crashes but 50.9% of fatal ones.

Who's at fault if a pedestrian is hit by an e-scooter or e-bike in Seattle? 

Washington uses a "pure comparative fault" rule (RCW 4.22.005), so an injured person can still recover money even if they were partly at fault — their payout is just reduced by their own share of the blame. Washington doesn't have a presumed-liability rule shifting the burden of proof onto drivers the way some European countries do; a bill that would have created one, House Bill 2095, passed the Washington House in 2026 but died without a Senate vote.

How long do I have to file a claim after an e-scooter or pedestrian accident in Washington? 

Generally three years from the date of the crash, under Washington's statute of limitations (RCW 4.16.080). Deadlines can be shorter in some situations — for example, claims involving a government agency, like the City of Seattle — so it's worth talking to an attorney as soon as possible after a crash rather than waiting.

Are e-bike battery fires a real risk in Seattle? 

Yes. Seattle Fire Department responded to 22 e-bike and e-scooter fires in 2023 alone. Nationally, battery fires caused 64.7% of hoverboard deaths, 7.3% of e-scooter deaths, and 6.1% of e-bike deaths between 2017 and 2024, according to CPSC. One Seattle-based e-bike maker, Rad Power Bikes, is currently under a federal warning over battery fire risk in some of its models.

What causes most e-scooter injuries — crashes with cars, or falls? 

Falls, not vehicle crashes. 87.6% of documented e-scooter injuries come from falls, versus just 5.7% from a crash with a motor vehicle, according to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

Do I need a helmet to ride an e-scooter in Seattle? 

Washington's helmet law for motor-driven cycles (RCW 46.37.530) is generally understood to cover e-scooters, and Seattle requires scooter-share vendors to run helmet giveaway programs. In practice, helmet use is low: at least 41.1% of riders in the state's data, and 65.1% of identified riders in Seattle's own crash records, weren't recorded wearing one.

What should I do if I'm injured in an e-scooter, e-bike, or pedestrian crash in Seattle? 

Get medical care first. Then, before accepting any settlement offer, consider talking to an attorney — Washington's comparative-fault rules mean how a crash gets documented can significantly affect what you're able to recover. Bernard Law Group offers a free consultation. Contact us for reliable legal help. 

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Legal Disclaimer

This content is for information only. It is not legal advice. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is different and must be judged on its own facts.

Author / Reviewer Attribution

Reviewed by the Bernard Law Group legal team, experienced Washington attorneys who represent injured pedestrians, cyclists, and crash victims throughout the Seattle area. The firm’s attorneys are licensed to practice law in Washington.