Consumer Reports has stopped recommending electric scooters altogether, warning that the devices can hit speeds its own engineers consider dangerous, and the decision lands just as Philadelphia posts a sharp rise in e-scooter and e-bike crashes. The testing organization tested 13 e-scooter models and pointed to climbing speeds and rising injury counts as the reasons it pulled its endorsement.
According to WHYY, most e-scooters topped out around 15.5 mph when Consumer Reports first tested them in 2022, but many models now reach up to 20 mph, and one tested unit hit 28 mph, a speed a Consumer Reports engineer called dangerous. Some hyperscooters on the market can reach speeds up to 75 mph, the outlet reported. Consumer Reports also noted that standing riders are more likely to suffer headfirst falls than people inside vehicles, and that the small wheels on e-scooters make them harder to control on wet or uneven pavement. Two Consumer Reports employees were reportedly involved in accidents while testing the devices themselves.
The organization's broader safety push, detailed in an August advocacy release, calls on manufacturers and federal regulators to adopt mandatory safety standards, since no such rules currently exist for adult consumer e-scooters in the United States. Consumer Reports safety advocacy director William Wallace has argued that consumers cannot trust the build quality of these devices without baseline design requirements.
National Injury Numbers Keep Climbing
The warning is backed by federal data. Per CPSC figures cited by WHYY, e-scooter injuries nationwide jumped from about 10,600 in 2017 to nearly 80,000 in 2024. A separate U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report released in April documented 533 total micromobility-related deaths nationwide between 2017 and 2024, with stand-up e-scooters accounting for 206 of them, and overall micromobility fatalities climbing steadily from five in 2017 to 135 in 2024, largely from motor vehicle collisions and loss of control.
Children are bearing an outsized share of the harm. Per the WHYY report, kids account for 45% of e-scooter-related injuries, a figure drawn from Johns Hopkins research. A Johns Hopkins Children's Center study published in March found that children made up over 45% of all e-scooter emergency department visits between 2020 and 2024, with boys representing 70.7% of pediatric cases and adolescents aged 11 to 14 forming the largest single age cohort at 38.3%. Separate research led by Mass General Brigham found that riders under 16 sustained major injuries in 65.6% of emergency department visits, compared with 53.7% for older pediatric riders, giving younger riders 58% lower odds of walking away with only minor trauma, according to a report from Claims Journal.
Philadelphia's Own Crash Numbers Are Rising Fast
Locally, the trend lines match the national warning signs. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation data shows combined e-bike and e-scooter crashes in Philadelphia rose 40% between 2024 and 2025, climbing from 140 to 197 incidents and resulting in four fatalities and 193 non-fatal injuries, Hoodline previously reported in its coverage of a fatal Stenton Avenue crash. PennDOT began tracking e-bike and e-scooter crashes separately from standard bicycle crashes in 2024.
Demand keeps growing even as the risks mount. Shared e-scooter ridership in major North American cities grew 29% in 2025 to reach 58 million trips, up from 45 million the year before, according to NACTO survey data cited by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Consumers purchased roughly 880,000 private e-scooters in 2025, adding to that shared-fleet volume.
Pennsylvania's Legal Gray Zone
Part of the problem, as WHYY detailed, is that Pennsylvania law simply does not define e-scooters. Operating one on public roads and highways is technically illegal statewide, even though buying an e-scooter in the state remains perfectly legal. E-bikes, by contrast, are legal to ride in Pennsylvania as long as they do not exceed 20 mph and carry motors smaller than 750 watts.
That legal gap leaves e-scooters without a specific state-law classification and makes public-road riding illegal. The same gray zone has real financial stakes: because e-scooters cannot meet state vehicle inspection standards, injured Philadelphia riders are generally barred from Personal Injury Protection insurance coverage, according to the Reiff Law Firm, leaving civil lawsuits — which can be further limited by the state's modified comparative fault rules — as riders' primary recourse after a crash.
State Representative Joe McAndrew has proposed legislation that would regulate e-scooter speed, driver age, and where the devices can be ridden, per WHYY's reporting. His co-sponsorship memo, circulated in August, calls for defining e-scooters under state law, barring operators under 16, and restricting e-scooters and e-bikes on high-speed state highways without designated lanes or permissive signage, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly memo.
Advocates Say Scooters Still Belong on Philly Streets
Not everyone wants scooters banned outright. Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia's John Boyle told WHYY that speed caps are hard to enforce because different e-scooter speed capacities are barely visible to the naked eye, yet he noted that Philadelphians already get around the city on e-scooters regardless of their legal status. Boyle said McAndrew's legislation would simply update the law to reflect how people are already using the devices, and argued that bike lanes need to be safer and better connected to prevent injuries in the first place.
Xiaoxia Summer Dong told WHYY that e-scooters can be a viable transportation option because they are affordable, portable and environmentally friendly, and said their growing popularity, alongside e-bikes, adds urgency to making roads safer for vulnerable users. Dong suggested that safety could improve by limiting speed and said everyone has a role in discouraging dangerous riding, even floating public shaming for riders who speed down sidewalks.
Until Pennsylvania lawmakers settle on rules of their own, Philadelphia riders are left navigating the same gap between fast-growing demand and a legal system that has yet to catch up.
