Personal Injury Lawyer

If you sustain injuries while riding on a Bird electric scooter, you’re not alone. Since hitting the rental scooter markets of numerous major U.S. cities in 2017, hundreds of riders have been injured while riding them.

Common Injuries

Common injuries include the following:

• Broken fingers, wrists, arms, shoulders, legs or ankles
• Facial and other lacerations
• Broken noses
• Concussions
• Burns

Some victims have required multiple surgeries to repair the damage. Others have had to undergo extensive rehabilitation to restore their affected body part(s) to as close to full function as possible.

Class Action Lawsuits

Bird injuries have become so widespread that class action lawsuits have been filed in both California and Florida. Originally composed of 46 and eight plaintiffs respectively, the number of plaintiffs continues to grow as the lawsuits wend their way through the court system.

Both lawsuits allege that Bird is guilty of gross negligence in failing to maintain its scooters. Specific allegations include the following Bird scooter defects and problems:

• The brakes malfunction.
• The scooters suddenly accelerate on their own.
• The handlebars suddenly fall off.
• The wheels suddenly fall off.
• The throttles are faulty.
• The scooters can suddenly catch fire.
• The company provides no training for new users.
• The company’s literature fails to warn users of the inherent dangers of using the scooters for their intended purposes.
• The company has breached its vehicles’ warranties in that the scooters are unfit for repeated public use.

Similar class action lawsuits have been filed against Lime, Bird’s main competitor, and against Segway, Inc. and Xiaomi USA, Inc., the companies that manufacture the electric scooters.

Your Options if Injured

If you sustain injuries while riding a Bird electric scooter, you automatically become part of one of the class action lawsuits. You should check with a local class action attorney, however, to make sure you’re included in the suit. If not, he or she can register you in the appropriate one. Thereafter you will receive notices about what, if anything, you need to do in terms of providing evidence to the attorneys and claiming your portion of the suit’s ultimate settlement or jury award.

You can also choose to opt out of the class action suits and hire your own personal injury lawyer, like from Barry P. Goldberg, to file suit for you individually. You may wish to do this if the facts and circumstances surrounding your accident don’t match up with those alleged in any of the class action suits.