Fatal e-scooter accident emerges just as California legalizes riding without a helmet
A 24-year-old Dallas man who died after falling off a Lime electric scooter was killed by blunt force injuries to his head, county officials said Thursday, likely making him the first person to die while riding the electric mobility devices that have swept across the nation this year.
The death of Jacoby Stoneking has been ruled an accident, the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office told The Washington Post before releasing the information publicly. Police said Stoneking was riding a Lime scooter home from a restaurant where he works when the accident occurred. He was found unconscious and badly injured in the early morning hours of Sept. 1, several hundred yards from a scooter that was broken in half. He was not wearing a helmet, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk freely about the investigation.
The determination by Dallas officials emerged just after California Gov. Jerry Brown, D, signed a bill Wednesday that makes it legal for adults to ride electric scooters without a helmet. The new law also grants cities in California the authority to let scooters operate on streets with speeds limits up to 35 mph, a 10-mph increase.
The three largest e-scooter companies, Lime, Bird, and Skip, said they were unaware of any other fatal accidents involving their devices. When asked for comment about the passage of the California bill in light of the e-scooter death in Dallas, Ali Bay, deputy press secretary for Gov. Brown, simply responded in an email: "The Governor's action speaks for itself."
Read more: https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Fatal-e-scooter-accident-emerges-just-as-13245700.php
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A young man riding a scooter was run over and killed in Washington DC this week, too. 
