Yes. If another person's carelessness or a defective product caused your electric scooter accident, you can usually file a personal injury claim to recover medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Depending on what happened, the responsible party might be a driver, a property owner, a city, a rental company, or a manufacturer. Your own conduct still matters. Most states reduce your compensation by your percentage of fault, and a few jurisdictions bar recovery if you were even slightly at fault. Timing matters as well. Lawsuit deadlines range from one to six years depending on the state, and a claim against a city or state agency can require formal written notice within a few months, sometimes sooner.

These cases are common. Federal micromobility injury data estimate that hospital emergency departments treated about 79,300 e-scooter injuries in 2024. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is also aware of at least 206 e-scooter deaths from 2017 through 2024, and 140 of them involved a motor vehicle.

Scooter crashes also tend to blend several areas of law. One collision can raise questions about traffic rules, property maintenance, product design, and the fine print in a rental app. Working with a personal injury lawyer early helps identify every party who may share responsibility and every deadline that applies.

Key Takeaways

• You can bring a claim when another party's negligence or a defective product caused your injuries.
• Possible defendants include drivers, property owners, government entities, rental operators, and manufacturers.
• Your own fault can reduce your recovery and, in a handful of jurisdictions, eliminate it.
• Rental apps often require arbitration and include liability releases, but whether those terms hold up depends on state law and the facts.
• Trip data, video, and the scooter itself can disappear quickly, so preserve evidence early.

Who May Be Liable for an Electric Scooter Accident?

Liability follows fault. Most scooter claims rest on negligence, which means someone failed to act with reasonable care and that failure caused your injuries. To recover, you generally need to show four things:

1. The other party owed you a duty of care.
2. They breached that duty.
3. The breach caused the accident.
4. You suffered actual harm, such as injuries, medical expenses, or lost income.

Defective products follow a different path. In a product liability claim, the focus is usually on whether the scooter was unreasonably dangerous when it left the manufacturer or seller, rather than on whether anyone acted carelessly.

Fault is often shared. A driver may turn without looking at the same moment a pedestrian steps into the rider's path. Distracted walking and distracted driving both appear in scooter cases, and the defense will look for every party it can assign a percentage of blame to.

Can a Driver, Property Owner, or Scooter Company Be Responsible?

Yes. Each can be responsible, and more than one can share the blame for a single crash.

Drivers

Drivers owe everyone on the road a duty of reasonable care, including scooter riders. Common driver errors include turning across a rider's path, opening a car door into traffic, following too closely, and changing lanes without checking blind spots. Collisions with motor vehicles were the leading cause of e-scooter deaths in the federal fatality review.

Property Owners and Government Entities

Potholes, broken pavement, uneven sidewalks, and poorly marked construction zones can throw a rider off a scooter in an instant. A private property owner may be liable for a hazard it knew or should have known about and failed to fix.

When a city, county, or state agency controls the road, the rules change. Many government claims require formal notice before you can sue. New York, for example, requires a notice of claim within 90 days before you can sue a city, county, town, or village for personal injury, and separate rules may require proof that the government already had written notice of the defect.

Rental Companies and Manufacturers

A rental operator may be responsible if it put a scooter with worn brakes, a loose stem, or a faulty throttle back into service. A manufacturer or seller may be responsible for design and manufacturing defects. In the CPSC's in-depth investigations of e-scooter incidents, fire hazards were the most frequently reported problem, and brake trouble was linked to 40 of the 189 incidents reviewed.

Rental claims come with a complication. App user agreements commonly include arbitration clauses and broad liability releases. Lime's current user agreement, for example, contains both. Whether those terms are enforceable depends on state law and the specific facts, so they deserve a close legal review rather than an assumption that the case is over.

How Do Rider Conduct and Local Rules Affect Fault?

Your own choices on the scooter will come up in any claim. States handle shared fault in three main ways:

• Pure comparative negligence: your award shrinks by your percentage of fault, even if you were mostly to blame.
• Modified comparative negligence: you recover a reduced amount unless your share of fault reaches the state's cutoff, usually 50 or 51 percent.
• Contributory negligence: Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia can bar recovery if you were even slightly at fault. The District of Columbia follows the same rule generally, but a separate law protects scooter riders in many collisions unless they were more at fault than all defendants combined.

Local rules feed directly into that analysis. States and cities regulate where scooters may ride, how fast they may go, minimum rider ages, and helmet use. Riding on a sidewalk where it is banned, running a red light, or carrying a passenger can all be used as evidence of fault. Riders also owe care to people on foot, and pedestrians do not always have the right of way, so a crash between the two raises fault questions on both sides.

The defense will look closely at distraction, too. In CPSC follow-up interviews with riders injured in 2024, 11 percent reported a distraction such as a phone or loud music, and 32 percent were carrying something while riding.

What Insurance Coverage May Apply?

Scooter claims sit in an insurance gray area, and the answer depends on who was involved and where the crash happened. Possible sources of payment include:

• The at-fault driver's auto liability policy, when a car caused the crash.
• Your own auto policy, which may provide uninsured motorist, underinsured motorist, or no-fault benefits depending on your state and the policy language.
• Health insurance, which generally covers treatment regardless of fault, though the insurer may seek reimbursement from a later settlement.
• Coverage offered by the rental operator. Lime says it may provide personal accident or rider liability coverage in certain locations, but only if the rider complied with its terms.
• Homeowners or renters insurance, although these policies often limit coverage for motorized vehicles.

Rental apps can also set short reporting windows. Lime's agreement asks riders to report an accident through the app within two hours, or as soon as reasonably practicable if injured, and to file a police report when an incident involves injury.

App Data, Photos, Video, Scooter Condition, and Witness Evidence

Evidence in scooter cases disappears fast. Rental companies collect scooters for charging and repair, surveillance video gets recorded over, and road hazards get patched. Focus on preserving:

• App and trip data: ride start and end times and location history held by the rental operator, ride footage from camera-equipped rental scooters, and anything stored on your phone.
• Photos: the scene, the road surface, your injuries, the scooter, and any vehicle involved, taken from several angles.
• Video: traffic cameras, dashcams, doorbell cameras, and nearby businesses. Ask quickly, since many systems overwrite old footage.
• The scooter itself: keep a personally owned scooter exactly as it was after the crash. For a rental, a written preservation request can ask the operator to hold the device and its maintenance records.
• Witnesses: names and phone numbers of anyone who saw the crash, plus the police report number.

Medical records round out the file. See a doctor promptly, follow the treatment plan, and keep every bill and receipt. Gaps in care give insurers room to argue that your injuries were minor.

Frequently Asked Questions About Electric Scooter Injury Claims

Can a defective scooter support a product liability claim?

Yes. If a design flaw, manufacturing defect, or missing warning caused the crash, you may have a product liability claim against the manufacturer, distributor, or seller. Brake failures, stuck throttles, collapsing stems, and battery fires are common examples. Keep the scooter and any parts exactly as they were, along with the receipt, packaging, and manual. Check for recalls, since a recall can point to a known defect. Product liability deadlines and fault rules sometimes differ from ordinary negligence rules in the same state.

What if the rider was not wearing a helmet?

Skipping a helmet usually does not bar a claim, but the effect on compensation depends on the state. Some states limit how a defendant can use helmet evidence. New York's e-scooter helmet law, for example, requires helmets for 16- and 17-year-old riders and says a violation cannot reduce the damages recoverable in an injury lawsuit. In other states, a defendant may argue that the lack of a helmet made a head injury worse. The answer often turns on state law and the injury involved.

How long do I have to file an electric scooter injury claim?

Personal injury deadlines range from one to six years depending on the state. Tennessee, for example, allows one year for most personal injury actions. Claims against a city or other public entity often require a formal notice of claim much sooner, sometimes within a few months. Product liability claims can carry their own deadlines, including statutes of repose. Because several deadlines may apply to one crash, it is safest to speak with a lawyer well before any of them approaches.

Can a pedestrian hit by an e-scooter rider file a claim?

Yes. Scooter riders must use reasonable care around people on foot, and a rider who speeds on a sidewalk, ignores signals, or rides while distracted may be liable for a pedestrian's injuries. The CPSC has documented pedestrian deaths caused by e-scooter riders. Collecting payment can be harder than proving fault, because the rider may not carry insurance that clearly covers the crash. A lawyer can look at the rider's own policies, the rental operator's coverage, and any other party that contributed to the crash.

Call Brandon J. Broderick For Legal Help

Electric scooter crashes can involve drivers, property owners, government entities, rental companies, and manufacturers all at once, each with its own insurer and its own deadlines. If you were hurt on a scooter or struck by one, our team can review what happened, identify who may share responsibility, and move to preserve evidence before it is lost. Reach out today to talk through your options.