By Murray Sherriffs
Doctors in Edmonton are slamming the system that allows young people to operate electric scooters or bikes two years younger than from obtaining a driving permit.
Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti says that people that young don’t have any concept of risk because their brains are not fully developed.
“That part of the brain, through no fault of their own, has not been developed yet.”
The University of Alberta public health professor and emergency physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital says that more and more injuries are occurring from riding electric scooters, bicycles and electric dirt bikes.
Francescutti says, “we thought e-scooters were bad but [electric dirt bikes] go even faster and when you crash, the stored kinetic energy is doubled.”
Francescutti says the human brain’s capacity for assessing risk does not finish developing until the age of 25, so young people who hop on these things don’t fully understand the danger.
The devices are getting cheaper and faster.
