Austin audit finds faults in city's e-scooter crash data

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The City of Austin doesn't know exactly how many crashes involve electric scooters, according to an audit from the Austin Auditor's Office released in August.

The audit found the city had "a lack of complete and reliable data" that negatively impacts the city's ability to make e-scooter safety changes and recommendations. The lack of reliable data has limited the city's ability to detect how many e-scooter crashes have happened, analyze possible trends and patterns behind crashes, provide educational outreach on e-scooter safety and properly informing and recommending rule changes.

E-scooters first arrived in Austin in April 2018. The audit found there had been nearly 18 million e-scooter trips in Austin over a five-year reporting period, from 2019 through 2023.

The analysis found faulty reporting from the city's e-scooter providers, with crash reports supposed to include the number, location, time and severity of the e-scooter-involved crashes. However, the audit noted discrepancies in data, including some e-scooter providers reporting zero crashes on their devices over a multi-year time period.

“Based on our review of e-scooter collision reports from calendar years 2022 and 2023, it appears unlikely that all collision data was reported to the City," the audit read in part. "For example, two of four providers reported zero collisions across the entire period. By contrast, one of the other providers reported 342 collisions and the other provider reported 21.”

The audit flagged issues contributing to incomplete data, including the city not having key terms for crashes that can impact data collection as well as multiple agencies collecting information on e-scooter crashes but not necessarily working in tandem. Alongside the Austin Transportation and Public Works Department, other agencies that could collect relevant information include the Austin Police Department, Austin-Travis County EMS, local hospitals, private doctors offices and urgent care sites.

One example mentioned in the audit is that scooter crashes aren't always coded consistently, with a scooter incident ranging anywhere from a crash involving an e-scooter, someone's personal scooter or a motorized, Vespa-style vehicle.

These issues aren't exclusive to Austin. A 2021 National Transportation Safety Board study stressed e-scooter data challenges across the country are impacting crash records due to:

• A Lack of complete, accurate or consistent data
• Data coding that doesn't specify if it was an e-scooter crash
• Bad quality trip data that can impact on e-scooter operations are assessed

That 2021 study recommended cities have specific police codes for e-scooter crashes and to collect e-scooter trip data to be able to more accurately compare any existing safety trends or injury and fatal crash totals.

The city's audit compared Austin's e-scooter operations to those in eight other cities: Dallas, San Antonio, Denver, Nashville, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Overall, it reported Austin and these peer cities had similar e-scooter frameworks overall.

However, it did note variations in fleet sizes, restricted hours of operations for e-scooters and added four cities had "measurable goals" in place for e-scooter equity work, including minimum percentage requirements for e-scooters to be dropped off in "underserved areas."

The audit recommended the Austin Transportation and Public Works Department work to define terms like e-scooter, collision and crash in its protocol and collaborate with APD and ATCEMS to "establish standardized coding for e-scooter crashes, with the goal to enhance safety related data."

It also suggested the city's transportation department continue to meet with e-scooter vendors on a monthly basis to discuss continuous or growing problems, outline possible solutions for minimizing those issues and communicating with them on any e-scooter operational changes at the city level. Those recommendations came with a suggested implementation deadline of March 2025.

The full audit is available online.