“You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid”

by Jeffrey J. Kroll

With the Christmas season quickly approaching, I keep thinking about the movie “A Christmas Story.” The memorable phrase “you’ll shoot your eye out,” is one that resonated and withstood the test of time with everyone who has ever seen the film. It demonstrated how parents were concerned about their children’s safety. While the famous Christmas movie was filmed forty years ago, a similar concern is taking place today. Parents in Ireland are urged not to buy e-scooters as Christmas gifts for children. Is a scooter fun? Absolutely! Is it potentially a gift which can cause a lifetime of misery for a family? Sadly, yes. Transport Commentator, Conor Faughnan, told a popular Irish show, the line between toys and vehicles has been blurred – “these things are potentially very dangerous… they are not toys.”

The Law Office of Kaveny + Kroll has discussed electric scooters quite often. For more information, see our recent blog “Electric Scooters are Rolling Out in Chicago.” The attorneys at Kaveny + Kroll have concerns about scooters and the motoring public peacefully and safely coexisting in city neighborhoods. Unfortunately, when you combine cars, trucks, bicycles, potholes, and a scarcity of scooter-designated lanes, this amounts to a recipe for disaster.

Like the families and legislators in Ireland, the attorneys at Kaveny + Kroll are very concerned about scooter trips in our own backyard, the Chicagoland area. Recently, in a single calendar year, there were over 135 million trips taken on shared bicycles and/or scooters in the United States. That number is only going to grow, and with that increase, there will be an influx of scooter injuries and deaths.

While scooters can be handy and a friendly way to traverse the city, the personal injury and wrongful death attorneys at Kaveny + Kroll have seen firsthand some of the deadly results of Divvy bicycle collisions and scooter accidents. If you or a loved one have been injured in a ride-share bike or electric scooter incident, contact the ride-share injury attorneys at Kaveny + Kroll, (312) 761-5585, for a free consultation.