Eric Lazzari thought he was doing everything right.

He needed to get across downtown Denver for a meeting, so he grabbed one of the electric scooters that have saturated the central city. He had closely followed the bureaucratic drama around the rollout of these dockless devices, so he knew all the rules.

“I was up on the sidewalk,” Lazzari said. “Even though I hate being there, I know that’s where I’m supposed to be.”

He was right — but this rule follower was about to feel the growing pains of this new mode of transportation. Literally. And he’s not the only one.

Talking smack

The 40-year-old nonprofit employee pulled the vehicle to a stop at an intersection. A large man with a big, fluffy white dog came striding up. “Those things are supposed to be on the street,” the man said.

Lazzari tried to explain the subtleties of the law. City staff’s interpretation of state and local law says that the scooters are “toy vehicles” that are restricted to sidewalks. The guy didn’t care. He declared that it was a “motorized vehicle” and announced that he was “going to teach me a lesson,” Lazzari recalled.

With that, the stranger delivered a swift smack to the back of Lazzari’s head, according to Lazzari.

“My guess was he’s a downtown resident either ignorant of the law or sick of encountering them on the sidewalk, and decided to deal with it in a very inappropriate way.”

Lazzari called police, he said, but a Denver Police Department official could not find an official report of the incident.

Making adjustments

City officials say they’re researching state and local laws, looking for a way to legalize the use of scooters in bike lanes. State law places toy vehicles alongside “skis, toboggans, coasting sleds (and) skates,” and bans them from the road.

“In the meantime, we’re asking riders to watch their speed on the sidewalk and yield to pedestrians at all times,” wrote Nancy Kuhn, a spokeswoman for Denver Public Works.

As of Sept. 24, the companies Lime, Bird and Lyft had deployed 750 scooters in Denver. By the end of October, that number could grow to 1,750 as Spin and Razor join the fray.

The city also is home to 250 dockless electric bikes from Jump; that number could grow to 1,000 in 2019.

As it grows, Denver is tinkering with the program — for example, riders will soon see painted parking zones near transit stops, and the city is trying to create a real-time data system to track all the vehicles.

But that won’t solve one emerging problem. “I think it has all the setup to be a high rate of injuries,” said Dr. Nick Rosen, medical director of the emergency department at Porter Adventist Hospital.

High impact

There is no official count of scooter injuries, but people have been trickling into Denver’s emergency rooms with injuries such as broken wrists, lacerated faces and at least one concussion.

“There’s been an uptick at Rose (Medical Center) in the injuries. I wouldn’t say it’s dramatic — probably one to three a week,” said Dr. Andrew Ziller, chair of emergency medicine at Rose.

One member of Rosen’s group treated a man who broke his wrist by trying to speed around a group of pedestrians and hitting a stair.

Rose and Porter are outside of downtown, so they likely see fewer injuries than downtown Denver Health. A Denver Health representative did not provide information about injuries. Nationwide, a Washington Post report described a “spike” in ER visits.

Deaths and injuries from vehicles are already common. But what concerns Ziller and Rosen, they said in separate interviews, is the fact that few scooter riders wear protective gear. They see a system that could create preventable injuries.

“I’ve never seen a person with a helmet riding it,” Rosen said. “They’re just out, they see them there, and that inspiration is in the moment.”

That’s a worrying trend, Ziller said. “We don’t often see bad head injuries from bicyclists,” he explained, “because so many are wearing helmets.”

Bird and Lime offer helmets to riders for free through their apps, and Lyft has free helmets at its “Lyft Hub” in Denver on Wednesdays and Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m. Colorado law does not require helmets for bicyclists, scooter riders or motorcyclists.

Lazzari said he later tried to order a helmet from Bird, but found the process too cumbersome. If he had been wearing one, it might have spared him a stinging slap to the head.