Shepherd Center Launches Scoot Safe Initiative

On May 17, Shepherd Center launched Scoot Safe, an initiative to develop a safety education program around electric scooters, which are now a ubiquitous part of city life. The project is led by Emma Harrington, Shepherd Center’s director of injury prevention and education, who received a grant from the Georgia Governor’s Office of Highway Safety to test this program in the Atlanta area.    

Scoot Safe’s two major goals are increasing awareness and protective factors for electronic scooter injury prevention and decreasing electric scooter-related deaths and injuries. The campaign targets the following key areas:

• Helmet use
• Drinking and riding
• Speeding
• First-time rider education

“Micromobility, which includes small, lightweight vehicles like e-scooters, has so much potential to create a more equitable and environmentally friendly commuting option,” Harrington says. “But, as we go forward, we have to ensure basic safety measures are in place like normalizing proper helmet use. That is what we hope to achieve with the Scoot Safe campaign – public awareness of the safety measures they can start implementing today.”

The campaign will include a series of engaging public service announcements with safety tips for scooters, targeted digital advertising and the ScootSafeGA.com website that houses more information about the project along with resources, graphics and content any person or organization can download and share.