A scooter rider was rushed to the hospital in unstable condition Thursday afternoon after being struck by a vehicle at the intersection of Neil and King avenues, just south of the Ohio State University campus. Columbus Division of Police officers were called to the scene around 1:50 p.m. on a report of a pedestrian struck, and the driver reportedly stayed at the location.
According to 10TV, the scooter rider was seriously injured and transported to a hospital in unstable condition, per a public safety dispatcher. The Columbus Police Accident Investigation Unit responded to the scene and is now investigating the crash, though authorities had not immediately released additional details about what led up to the collision.
A Pattern of Scooter Crashes Across Columbus
Thursday's crash is not an isolated case in the city. In a separate hit-and-run, a scooter rider was seriously injured at the intersection of North High Street and East Goodale Street in the Short North, where a maroon SUV turned left in front of the scooter before the rider swerved, lost control and collided with a parked car, the station notes. That driver did not stop, and the injured rider was taken to Grant Hospital with serious injuries but was expected to survive.
Closer to campus, a 20-year-old man riding a scooter in a crosswalk on East 8th Avenue near High Street was struck by a small dark sedan whose driver also fled, the same outlet reported separately. He suffered serious injuries and was taken to Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. In another case detailed by ABC6, a Columbus woman was hit by an unidentified driver who allegedly ran a red light while she crossed Mound Street at Whitethorne Avenue on her scooter, leaving her with a broken ankle and pelvic injuries that required surgery, rods and pins. A witness in that crash described the vehicle as a black Ford Explorer with tinted rear windows, likely a 2014-to-2016 model.
Columbus Pedestrian and Cyclist Deaths Keep Climbing
The repeated scooter crashes fit into a broader safety picture that has alarmed city officials and advocates. Columbus logged 115 crashes that killed or seriously injured pedestrians and bicyclists in 2024, according to NBC4, and city administrators have said half of all fatal crashes in Columbus involve a pedestrian, bicyclist or motorcyclist. Thirty percent of Franklin County fatal crashes since 2020 have involved a cyclist or pedestrian, the station reports, and most of those injuries and deaths tend to occur along wide, high-traffic roads such as High Street, Broad Street and East Livingston Avenue.
Vision Zero Columbus launched in 2021 with a goal of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2035, but the program's own data has increased every year since 2020, per the same report. Separately, Smart Growth America's Dangerous by Design report found that drivers killed 172 pedestrians in the Columbus area between 2020 and 2024, according to Axios. That gave Columbus a pedestrian fatality rate of 1.58 per 100,000 residents, ranking it 73rd out of 101 U.S. metro areas, while Ohio as a whole ranked 38th among states with 754 pedestrian deaths over the same five years. Among Ohio cities, Cleveland ranked lowest at No. 89, Cincinnati came in at No. 83, and Akron and Toledo tied at No. 85, Axios notes.
Vision Zero Columbus is now in the early stages of using a federal grant to develop a Vulnerable Road User Safety Plan, according to Axios. For now, the Columbus Police Accident Investigation Unit continues to investigate Thursday's crash near Neil and King avenues, and no further details on the cause had been released.
