On a Sunday afternoon in early October, Greg Caicedo was out for a bike ride. He was riding a route he has taken dozens of times along the Cherry Creek Trail. But this time, as he rode down the trail toward Wewatta Street, a group of four people on electric scooters came down a ramp and entered the trail, moving fast without pausing to yield.
Caicedo remembers colliding with the scooters and hitting the ground hard. The scooter riders fled the scene while a passerby called for an ambulance. Caicedo ended up in the emergency room at Denver Health with a broken clavicle, five broken ribs, a collapsed lung, serious bruising down his leg and a concussion.
He spent three nights in the hospital and took a week off work. Even with insurance, Caicedo says he has spent thousands of dollars on doctors appointments and physical therapy.
The most dangerous vehicles on Denver’s roads are cars. In 2022, Colorado saw the greatest number of traffic fatalities since 1981, including a record number of pedestrians and motorcyclists, while traffic fatalities continue to rise nationwide. Like pedestrians and cyclists, scooter riders are often victims of car drivers.
But as electric scooter ridership grows in Denver, cyclists and pedestrians are exposed to another risk: reckless scooter riders moving fast on bike lanes and trails originally designed for biking and walking.
