Letter: E-Scooters Injuries: A New Epidemic

Letter to the Editor07:10PM / Sunday, May 15, 2022Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

With the advent of the Bird e-scooters in Pittsfield, available to anyone with a license, a few cents, and a cell phone, I hope that Berkshire Medical Center's emergency room is ready for the traumatic brain injuries coming down the road.

The rentals don't include helmets and I've seen plenty of people having a blast — laughing and zipping along next to traffic — some riding double and no one wearing a helmet. They feel like a toy but they aren't toys: E-scooters are one of the most dangerous vehicles on the road with double the head injuries of cyclists — the injury rate is comparable to motorcycle riding. This includes the pedestrians who are struck by scooters.

The title of a 2021 medical article says it all: "Electric Scooter-Related Injuries: A New Epidemic in Orthopedics." Richmond, Va., has a longer history of Bird scooters, and thriving personal injury legal practices dedicated to defending scooter accident victims. How is this a good thing for Pittsfield?

Sarah Gardner
Williamstown, Mass.

Tags: scooter,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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