Experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are descending on Austin to study a new public health concern — dockless scooters.

Officials with Austin Public Health and Austin Transportation departments are working with three CDC epidemiologists, who will conduct the nation’s first-ever study of the patterns associated with dockless scooter crashes and how to prevent them.

"The scooters are new, so we don’t know all the things about factors related to injury and the severity of injuries," Dr. Philip Huang, health authority and medical director for Austin Public Health, told the American-Statesman. "It’s just a new problem to try to get a better understanding of what is going on, what are some of the dangers and what we might try to do to prevent injuries."

The epidemiologists will begin conducting interviews next week, focusing on 37 EMS calls and 68 scooter injuries reported over a 60-day period, from Sept. 5 to Nov. 4. Data collected will be used to educate city officials as they work to adopt new scooter rules. The epidemiologists will administer a questionnaire to the people who were injured, looking for patterns related to injury severity, frequency and any factors that might have played into scooter crashes, Huang said.

"Public health is in the arena of prevention, and information is what we need to be able to make educated decisions and understand what’s going on," he said.

It's not unusual for the CDC to study issues similar to dockless scooter crashes, Huang said.

"The epidemic intelligence service officers are like the detectives," Huang said. "We think of epidemiologists only dealing with outbreaks of disease, but they handle all sorts of public health issues, whether it’s hurricanes or anything else. …. It’s how we address public health problems in this field."

The electric scooters are available to rent using apps throughout the city's urban core, and they have appeared in recent weeks in more far-flung locales such as the Domain in North Austin and Barton Creek Square mall in Southwest Austin.

There are currently seven companies licensed to operate in the city that have deployed 11,851 rental scooters, according to an Austin City Council Mobility Committee report. During October, the most recent month with available data, 275,300 rides were taken on dockless scooters in Austin.

Scooters are generally allowed on sidewalks where bikes are allowed. Many downtown sidewalks are technically off-limits to bikes and scooters, but people commonly disregard that rule. Austin police have encouraged scooter users to ride in designated bike lanes or on streets if the speed limit is under 35 mph. Unlike cyclists, few scooter riders wear helmets.

The City Council is expected to vote on new rules for dockless scooters as soon as March of next year, after the completion of the safety study.