A Christchurch woman who suffered horrendous injuries after the wheel came flying off her Lime scooter is calling for the electric scooter industry to be better regulated.
She was a regular user of the scooters before she broke her back while scootering home from work. Now she's one of the thousands of Kiwis each year recovering from an e-scooter accident.
Karen Dennison is doing really well now after her horrific ordeal.
"This was awful, absolutely the most pain I've ever felt. It was just excruciating," Dennison said.
What had started as a regular trip home from work through Hagley Park on a Lime scooter, took a terrifying turn.
"It started making a noise and before I worked out what was going on, I was down... the wheel had come off," she said.
The accident left her with excruciating pain and weeks of recovery in hospital.
"I fractured two parts of my pelvis and two parts of my back," Dennison said.
The Christchurch lawyer regularly used Lime scooters before this.
"Since I had the accident, I've heard about so many accidents that other people have had," Dennison said.
In fact, Newshub has obtained e-scooter-related injury figures showing in the past five years e-scooter injuries lodged with ACC have jumped from 674 to over 2500 per year.
The total cost of payouts for last year alone was over $8 million and that's $8 million more than the payouts five years earlier.
Paris has recently overwhelmingly voted to ban shared e-scooters.
"I don't think they should be banned, I think they're a good alternative means of transport but I do think they should be regulated," Dennison said.
By this she means compulsory helmets, speed restrictions and laws around drinking before scootering.
"When I was in hospital one of the nurses said to me they would never use a Lime scooter because of the injuries they've seen," Dennison said.
She contacted Lime about her accident and eventually received one brief phone call.
"About two weeks later from someone in Australia and he said he'd call me back in 40 minutes and that was about five weeks ago," Dennison said.
Newshub also contacted Lime about this incident and with questions around the maintenance and safety of their scooters in New Zealand. Their Australian-based public relations employee said they can't comment on individual cases but that they have rigorous safety processes and ensure all their scooters are safe for use.
Dennison said she can only laugh about her latest email from Lime.
"Noticing that I haven't been using them for a while and offering me a discount to get back on them," she said.
But her taste for these Limes has soured, and she won't get back on one again.
