Brittany Hillhouse was riding a Lime scooter home from a concert with her husband when the scooter hit a pothole on Kane Avenue that neither of them saw coming in the dark. The 42-year-old Milwaukee woman was thrown from the scooter, hit her head, and was rushed to a trauma center with injuries that would require surgery and leave her with screws and plates in her shoulder.
“I might never be the same because of a pothole,” Hillhouse said, according to WISN. She sustained a broken shoulder, jaw and elbow, and doctors operated on her Friday, leaving her with an elbow replacement and a plate in her jaw. She also has a mild concussion from hitting her head when the scooter went out from under her.
Her husband, Brent Hillhouse, described watching the scooter go out from under his wife as she fell. He said the pothole was difficult to see in the dark, and that his wife may never be able to work again as the couple now faces a long recovery. “This should not happen to anybody,” Brittany Hillhouse said, per the same report, adding that she and her husband hope the pothole problem gets addressed before someone else gets hurt.
A Record-Breaking Pothole Backlog
The crash landed in the middle of what has become an unprecedented year for Milwaukee's roads. In the first eight months of 2026, the city received roughly 24,000 pothole service requests, already blowing past its previous full-year record of 16,804, according to CBS 58. Department of Public Works crews managed to resolve somewhere between 15,300 and 16,000 of those requests over the same stretch.
Milwaukee Alderman Peter Burgelis, who has been tracking the numbers, said the city received about 24,000 pothole reports and that crews fixed roughly 16,000 of them as of August 31, leaving about 8,000 potholes still on the list. “One resolution will not fix Milwaukee's roads,” Burgelis said, according to WISN, even as he pushed for outside help. The city is also in talks with Milwaukee County about having county road crews pitch in on overtime.
Proposed Outside Contractors for Road Repairs
Burgelis is leading legislation involving $300,000 in already-budgeted funds to hire private contractors to speed up repairs. Not every Common Council member is on board with outsourcing municipal road work, with some voicing concern over the plan.
The crash is a small example of the scale of the underlying problem. The city estimated it would take $752 million to bring all poor-condition local and collector streets up to standard, per the City of Milwaukee. Local roads have long been underfunded compared to major arterial routes, the report noted.
Why Scooter Riders Have Nowhere Else to Go
Under Milwaukee's municipal ordinances, e-scooters are barred from sidewalks, while street or bike-lane use is allowed, according to Murphy & Prachthauser. That leaves scooter riders with fewer options for avoiding road hazards after dark.
An April 2026 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report examined e-scooter injuries. Micromobility emergency room visits have climbed sharply since 2017.
In July 2026, Milwaukee city leaders debated tightening scooter rules further, including capping downtown Lime speeds at 5 mph and raising sidewalk-riding fines to a $100 minimum and $200 maximum, according to Urban Milwaukee. Public works officials at the time cautioned against penalizing scooter riders more harshly than drivers of motor vehicles, even as the city logged roughly 2.75 million e-scooter trips over a two-year span.
Pothole Injuries Can Be Costly
The financial stakes of unaddressed potholes beneath small-wheeled vehicles were on stark display last month, when the City of San Diego agreed to pay a $6.5 million settlement to the family of a scooter rider who suffered fatal facial fractures after striking a large pothole on a city street, as Hoodline reported. That case centered on allegations that deferred road maintenance had created a dangerous condition, a claim similar in spirit to the crater that Brittany Hillhouse never saw coming on Kane Avenue.
