Are there age limits for e-scooters? Teen deaths raise concerns – NBC Chicago

Story Reported By DePaul University’s Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence

Rental e-scooters are growing in popularity across Chicago and the U.S., but after multiple fatal incidents involving children who never should have been able to rent one in the first place, some parents and doctors are sounding the alarm.

In a five-week span this spring, two Chicago teens lost their lives after renting e-scooters from the largest operator of rentable scooters in the city, Lime.

Lime’s user agreement and the city’s own guidelines for scooter rental companies state that their e-scooters are only for those 18 and over.

Yet, DePaul University’s Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence (CJIE) found kids and teens continue to rent these scooters without an age verification barrier — and this has come at a fatal cost.

Multiple doctors and nurses working in Chicago’s emergency rooms said minors stretchered in with severe injuries have now become a daily occurrence.

A spokesperson for Lime said “safety is foundational to [its] service,” but some cities across the country have responded to teen e-scooter deaths with stricter regulations, including banning the company from operating altogether.

City officials in Chicago have not taken any actions like that against the company.

CJIE tested the rental process for Lime scooters and found it is surprisingly easy to rent without proving one’s age. Despite the age restriction in the user agreement, there was no verification of the rider’s age to unlock.

Family members of underage teens killed after renting and riding the scooters say something has to change.

‘That cost our family everything’

It was an unseasonably warm night on March 21 when Violet Harris and her friend rented a Lime e-scooter through an adult’s account, according to Violet’s family. Both girls were riding on the same scooter in South Shore when at around 8:30 p.m. they were struck in a hit-and-run, killing Violet and injuring her friend, according to a copy of the traffic crash report from Chicago police.

Violet Harris was 15 years old.

Terri Dean, Violet’s aunt, shared that her niece was vibrant and full of life, the kind of girl who would use her allowance to buy food for the neighborhood cats. 

“She loved animals,” Dean said. “Cats were her thing. Before she passed, her cats had kittens. So she was, you know, happy about that, like, ‘I’m a grandma y’all!’”

Violet’s mother, Rachel Sturgis, started a petition in response to the loss of her daughter, calling for increasing parents’ awareness and for stricter age verification from Lime.

Sturgis said that Violet and her friend rented the Lime scooter that fateful night “through another child’s parent’s account,” the petition reads.

“Lime scooters, while convenient for many adults, pose significant dangers to our children,” Sturgis wrote. “They are not toys.” 

After Violet’s death, Dean said she believes Lime should do more to restrict minors from renting e-scooters.

“Because the simple fact that it’s just like ‘Oh yeah, scan your payment method and go along your way,’” Dean said. “And that cost our family everything.”

Sturgis and Dean said that Lime should require identity checks to verify age and have facial recognition technology to access the app.

“We can prevent other families from suffering the same devastating loss that ours has faced,” Sturgis wrote.

Five weeks after Violet’s death, it happened again.

On April 24, police say 17-year-old Astrid Carrillo Noguera was riding a Lime scooter on South King Drive when she was hit by a car at 4:15 p.m. She did not survive the crash.

Video footage of the scene of the accident shows a plastic water bottle, a shoe and a Lime scooter broken in half scattered across the road.

Angelica Carrillo, Astrid’s older sister, started a GoFundMe in honor of Astrid.

“Astrid was truly the light of our home. She was the happiest person you could meet—always finding a way to make others smile, even during the hardest times,” Angelica wrote in the GoFundMe. “She had such a beautiful, vibrant spirit.” 

She shared that Astrid was planning to attend Loyola University in the fall.

Lime did not directly answer CJIE’s questions regarding Violet and Astrid’s deaths, but in a statement, spokesperson LeAaron Foley said Lime is conducting its own internal investigations.

“We’re deeply saddened to hear about this incident involving an alleged hit-and-run driver, and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim’s family,” Foley said in a statement regarding Violet’s death. 

The company acknowledged that Astrid’s death appeared to have occurred during a “Lime trip,” and said they are still in an active investigation. 

Lime did not address how the minors were able to access the scooters in the first place.

Teen’s death in New Jersey led to canceled pilot program six years ago

CJIE found fatal accidents involving minors on Lime scooters are not unique to Chicago.

In 2019, Lime was in the midst of introducing e-scooter pilot programs across the country, including in Elizabeth, New Jersey. 

In October of that year, a six-month trial run with Lime began, according to NBC New York. But less than a month after the program’s launch, the trial period was cut short following the death of 16-year-old Nelson Miranda Gomez. 

Gomez was killed while riding a Lime scooter when he was hit by a tow truck, according to NBC New York. 

Reports at the time showed that while Lime had an 18 and up age requirement, nothing was done to verify whether the rider unlocking the scooter was of age.

A week after the accident, the city council voted to end Lime’s pilot program in Elizabeth. Lime has not returned to Elizabeth since.

An unfailable ‘safety quiz’

Riders can rent a Lime e-scooter through two different apps: Lime or its partner company, Uber. Our investigation found a lack of age verification for both the Lime and Uber apps while renting these micromobility devices.

CJIE tested the age verification of these rental devices on both the Lime and Uber apps by creating a new account on the Lime app using an email associated with a birthday under 15 years old; the Lime app itself did not ask for a birthday at any point.

CJIE successfully unlocked an e-scooter without providing any age verification on the Lime app, and repeated this process on the Uber app, successfully unlocking another Lime scooter.

Along with the absence of age verification, our investigation also found loopholes in the safety quiz riders must take before unlocking a Lime scooter for the first time. Even if a rider answers every question wrong during the safety quiz on the Uber app, they are met with a message congratulating them on completing the quiz and can still unlock the scooter.

Medical professionals sound the alarm

Dr. Megan Attridge believes minors getting hurt on e-scooters is a serious problem. Attridge, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital, said she has seen injuries related to e-scooter use increase in recent years.

“The popularity of e-scooters and rental services in the area have also made them more common,” Attridge said.

According to Attridge, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 16 should not ride e-scooters.

“That’s because when children are younger than that, they don’t have the coordination and the reaction time to safely ride these devices,” she added.

Due to minors’ ability to access these devices, whether through street rental or privately owned devices, medical professionals see a large number of severe injuries from riding them.

Attridge said she has seen everything from traumatic brain injuries and facial fractures to dental trauma and skin injuries, such as road rash and lacerations, at Lurie Children’s Hospital.

“Oftentimes during the summer, we’ll see at least one to two injuries per shift,” Attridge said.

Marie Heffernan, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, works as a researcher on Lurie’s Voices of Child Health in Communities team. Heffernan is a senior author of a safety report on these vehicles, and said she wishes parents knew just how fast they can go.

“It does make me worry because they don’t yet know all the rules of the road,” Heffernan said. “It can just create a really unsafe situation if you have people around on scooters who aren’t fully aware of the safety precautions they should be taking.”

Lime scooters can travel up to 15 miles per hour, or about 22 feet per second.

Chenedy Wiles is a nurse at the University of Chicago Medical Center who has worked in the intensive care unit. Her social media videos on the dangers of rental e-scooters have garnered nearly 16 million views.

In an interview, Wiles repeated her calls for change regarding the regulation of these rental devices. 

“Get them off the road,” Wiles said. “I really think that’s our best chance of preventing these injuries. They should just not be available, in my opinion.”

Wiles said she is frustrated that authorities allow these e-scooters to be so widely available to the public.

“There’s no amount of fun worth the cost of your life or your quality of life,” Wiles said.

One ‘severe incident’ in March

In Chicago, scooter rental companies must be approved by the city for a business license. Companies are responsible for maintaining devices and encouraging users to ride safely, according to city regulations.

The rules state that “Licensees shall not rent their scooters to any individual who is under the age of 18 years old.”

Lime is also required to report “crash incidents” on a quarterly basis under Chicago’s rules.

Through multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, CJIE learned that the rates of injuries seen by medical professionals are not reflected in Lime’s mandated quarterly reports to the city, nor is there any category to record fatalities or the ages of riders involved in crash incidents. Lime agreed to share that information with officials “to the degree the information is available” when it received its first permanent business license in 2022.

In Lime’s first quarterly report of 2026, there was no mention of Violet’s death. There was one “severe incident” recorded in March, when she died.

In May, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) launched an e-scooter safety campaign, accompanied by a video on social media encouraging riders to wear helmets (which are not currently required) and riding one at a time. The city’s campaign makes no mention of the recent deaths nor underage riding.

In a statement to CJIE, a CDOT representative said the city is “actively working with e-scooter operators to explore potential tools to better prevent underage riding,” but there are no immediate changes planned.

Lime did not directly respond to the CJIE’s specific questions regarding how they collect injury data and age verification measures in place.

But in a 17-point-long prepared statement from the company discussing a wide range of topics, Lime said, “Over 99.99% of global Lime trips ended without a reported incident in 2025.”

While micromobility companies like Lime only operate in the city, privately-owned e-scooters dominate the conversation in the suburbs. 

Forty minutes west of the city in Elmhurst, there have been two recorded incidents of children getting hurt while riding e-scooters. 

An ordinance passed in April requires low-speed electric scooters exceeding 10 miles per hour to follow traffic laws on streets and bike paths. No one under the age of 18 is allowed to ride. E-scooters continue to be banned on sidewalks and riders must “Walk Your Wheels” in the business districts.

Elmhurst Mayor Scott Levin said that even with “patchwork approach,” the lack of state regulations on this “whole new phenomenon” complicates regulations for individual municipalities.

“You can ride from one town into the other, and it was legal over here, and you cross the border, and all of a sudden you’re on your way to your friend’s house in the next town, now you’re not legal to ride in that town,” Levin said. 

The Elmhurst Police Department, along with Mayor Levin, urged families to educate their children on these dangers while awaiting further action from the state. 

Future of e-scooters in Chicago and beyond

This week, the Illinois General Assembly advanced a bill that would create statewide regulations on e-bike and e-scooter use, which includes setting the minimum riding age at 16 for electric micromobility devices. The bill passed the State House of Representatives Thursday and passed in the Senate Friday.

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said he initiated the campaign in hopes it will unify the “patchwork” of local laws surrounding e-scooters.

“Fundamentally, the way people get around has changed, especially in the last few years,” Giannoulias said. “And unfortunately, our laws have not kept up with the ever-changing technology.”

Giannoulias said Illinois lawmakers worked with doctors at Lurie Children’s Hospital to formulate the bill in response to accidents and deaths across the state and the country.

“We’ve heard a number of stories, whether you live in rural Illinois, whether you live in the suburbs, whether you live in downtown Chicago, it’s happening more and more,” he said. “There’s just a hodgepodge of regulation.”

The new age limit of 16 for electric micromobility devices is lower than the requirement to rent scooters in Chicago. Giannoulias said this change was made to match the age limits for drivers licenses in Illinois; however, under the bill, Illinois law does not and would not require a license to ride an electric scooter.

As it prepares for peak riding season in the summer months, the city has shown no signs of pulling back on its licensing agreement with Lime following Violet and Astrid’s deaths. 

Violet’s aunt said her family will continue to seek accountability with calls for stricter regulations and age verification measures.

“This is bigger than just our family now. We’re trying to prevent it from happening to other families,” Dean said.

This story was reported by Isabella Russomanno, Kathryn Byrnes, Lindsay Freiberger, Sarah Hendry, Peyton Hopp, Marie Kane, Annie Koziel, Riley Moulton, Khadija Mujahid and Diego Yepez.