On August 13, 2022, after a karaoke night at the Owl Saloon on East Colfax Avenue, Valdez rented a standing electric scooter from Lime to ride home at around 1 a.m. But 427 feet into his ride, he hit a small pothole on Elm Street, causing the scooter to oscillate out of control and crash into a parked car.
"I'm laying in the gutter and my first thought was, 'Well, that sucked,'" Valdez, 56, recalls. "I went to get up, and I could not move. I could not move my body. That was how quick the injury happened to me. I didn't feel a thing."
The collision injured Valdez's spinal cord, leaving him a quadriplegic. Two years later, after four surgeries and almost a year of hospitalizations, he remains confined to an electric wheelchair, with only limited mobility in his shoulders, right bicep and right wrist. He can no longer work and relies on home health care staff to do everything from eating to scratching his head.
"I can't do anything for myself," he says. "It changed about 99 percent of my life. I was a pretty active guy before; I'd ride my bike fifteen miles a day, three times a week. I'd go camping. I spent a lot of time up in the mountains. I had a career going, I was working, I enjoyed what I did. All of that is gone now. All of that is gone."
Valdez is suing Lime, its partner company Uber, and other companies that manufactured and designed the e-scooter. The lawsuit, filed in Denver District Court on August 8, alleges that the e-scooters are "inherently" and "unreasonably dangerous," claiming features such as the small wheels and minimal shock absorption cannot handle normal road conditions like potholes, even as the scooters are legally required to be ridden in the street.
The lawsuit also claims that Lime failed to properly maintain Valdez's e-scooter (which allegedly had under-inflated wheels) and encouraged improper scooter use by stationing the device outside of a bar and not adequately advertising its weight limit. Valdez well exceeded his scooter's 220-pound weight limit, though he says he was not aware when he rented the scooter, with the maximum weight only posted on the bottom of the device, according to the lawsuit.
Lime declined to respond to the specific allegations made in the lawsuit.
“While we cannot comment on active litigation, our heart goes out to Mr. Valdez, who sustained these unfortunate injuries," says Jacob Tugendrajch, Lime spokesperson. "Safety is our top priority at Lime and guides everything we do.”
Lime has defended the safety of its product by pointing out that 99.99 percent of its global rides occurred without incident from 2021 to 2024. However, with an average of 9,400 e-scooter rides taking place in Denver every day across all service providers and platforms, the injuries have stacked up.
Denver Health registered 1,449 patient encounters attributed to scooter injuries in 2023 — nearly four each day that year — including duplicates for patients who visited multiple care facilities for the same injury and mobility scooter injuries. Orthopedic injury admissions at Denver Health increased by 540 percent in the two years after e-scooters were introduced in the city, compared to the two years before, according to a 2022 study.
There have been over 18.3 million e-scooter trips in Denver since 2018.
Evan Semon Photography
New research led by Denver Health surgeon Dr. Alexander Lauder found that most injuries related to e-scooters occur late at night and on the weekends, with median hospital charges for riders injured while intoxicated costing more than double the charges of patients injured when not intoxicated. The 2022 orthopedic injury study also found that 73 percent of injured scooter riders who were tested were intoxicated.
Valdez admits to having "a couple of drinks" earlier in the night before his e-scooter ride, though he says he was not impaired.
"In fact, I thought I was doing the responsible thing," he adds. "Of course, I'd never get behind the wheel after having a couple of drinks. But these scooters feel like they're a safe alternative, as safe as walking."
Driving an e-scooter while impaired is against the law in Denver, but Dormer argues that an average sober person would not have seen the pothole that caused the scooter crash, blaming the weak headlights the scooters are equipped with. And even if they saw the pothole, he maintains, a rider would expect the scooter to go over the hole without incident, but the insufficient wheel size and shock absorption cannot handle it.
The pothole that caused Tim Valdez's e-scooter crash, on Elm Street near East Colfax Avenue.
Dormer Harpring, LLC
The lawsuit requests a trial to determine the amount of relief for Valdez, but Dormer says a case like this would typically seek upwards of $20 million for medical bills, loss of earning capacity, cost of future care, emotional damages and more.
Before the crash, Valdez worked as a city manager for the Greyhound transportation company. He says he started a new job with Denver Public Schools less than two weeks before his injury. The Pueblo native is the father to an adult daughter and has lived in Denver since 2014.
"My life is completely different, but my life is not over," he says. "That's the way I look at it. I'm going to be the best quadriplegic that I can be, because I'm still alive, thank goodness. My doctors have said that one inch up on my injury and I probably wouldn't be here. I lucked out in some regards."
Valdez says he partially blames himself for the e-scooter crash, but he thinks it's important for Lime to take some responsibility to warn future customers of the risk of riding scooters.
The Denver City Council is currently considering methods to address illegal e-scooter use in the city, such as intoxicated riding, riding on sidewalks and parking scooters to block vehicle or pedestrian traffic. Dormer says they plan to share Valdez's experience to contribute to the city's discussion.
"I have actively reached out and look forward to engaging with some of the conversation that the city is planning on having soon," Dormer says. "I really look forward to having that conversation and seeing how we can help."
Valdez says every person he tells about his crash is shocked that he was so severely injured from an e-scooter, inferring that they're unaware of the possible dangers. Dormer says Valdez sometimes jokes to scooter riders: "I used to ride one of those, and now I upgraded to one of these," referring to his electric wheelchair.
"I just want people to know they're not safe," Valdez says. "Please don't end up like me."
