Disabled woman nearly lost an eye when she crashed £180 e-scooter

Disabled woman nearly lost an eye when she crashed £180 e-scooter she’d bought to help her get to the shops

• Limara Greenwood, 39, from Bridgwater, Somerset, lives with a spinal condition
• From her crash, she fractured her eye socket, lost teeth and broke her jaw

A disabled woman nearly lost an eye when she crashed her £180 e-scooter – which she had only bought to get to the shops.

Limara Greenwood, 39, from Bridgwater, Somerset, is living with a spinal condition and as a result struggles to get around.

She feared judgemental looks if she used a mobility scooter so decided to buy a secondhand e-scooter.

But after her traumatic fall at the end of last year, where the mum-of-two fractured her eye socket, lost teeth and broke her jaw, Limara wants to warn others.

She said: ‘[The crash] really changed my life. The way that I talk is different too – even the shape of my mouth feels different.

Limara Greenwood, 39, from Bridgwater, Somerset, who lives with a disability fractured her eye socket, lost teeth and broke her jaw after an e-scooter accident

The e-scooter also snapped clean in half following her fall only 100 yards from her front door

‘Now even if I see someone hit their face on the TV, it really triggers anxiety for me.

‘I still suffer with memory problems, headaches and tiredness. E-scooters can be so dangerous.’

Limara was diagnosed with a degenerative spinal disc disease aged 15.

She decided to buy the e-scooter after a failed spinal surgery in her 20s left her worse off. She said: ‘It was just a regular electric scooter you see everyone flying around on.

‘It was not something I was going out on every day. It was just to help me get around given my disability.

‘To be honest I never really went very far – only to the supermarket across from my house.

‘I suffer from a degenerative disc disease and one disc has been fused with titanium.

‘But unfortunately the consultant says it actually left me worse off.

‘They also can’t do anything about the second disc that is going, and there are a couple fusing together in my upper back too.’

Limara said: ‘I could have suffered brain damage, or lost my eye – or even died. It was quite shocking’

Photos taken after the crash show how Limara’s face started to slowly become worse and worse as the hours went by

 Because of her condition, it was important for her to find a mode of mobility, so initially looked into a sit-down mobility scooter.

However, the 39-year-old explained that she was ‘I worried people would stare while (she) was out and about.’ 

Limara now regrets her decision – after crashing on November 7 last year.

She was crossing a zebra crossing only 100 yards from her front door when the wheels on her scooter buckled on the pavement and sent her flying.  

Limara added:  ‘Because my hands were on the handlebars, those were the only things I didn’t use to stop my fall.

‘The impact fractured my eye socket twice. I was quite frightened to be honest, because they said that I had got off lightly.

‘I could have suffered brain damage, or lost my eye – or even died. It was quite shocking.’

As a result of her accident, she displaced her cheekbone, which would not be put back from surgery as the bone had already began to fuse, and also broke her jaw, and broke three teeth.

The 39-year-old explained that she was ‘I worried people would stare while (she) was out and about’ on a sit-down scooter

Utterly taken aback by the incident, she said: ‘I’m really surprised that I didn’t knock myself out.

‘I just got up after the crash and managed to get myself to the front door – no cars stopped to help me.’

Photos taken after the crash show how Limara’s face started to slowly become worse and worse as the hours went by.

The e-scooter also snapped clean in half.

Limara was then in and out of hospital – visits have also left her financially vulnerable as they cost her £300 in taxi fares alone to attend her appointments.

The mother-of-two is now looking at getting a mobility scooter.

‘Now I’ve got no choice though, so I’m looking into getting a proper sit down scooter,’ she said.

‘I just want to warn people to be careful on the e-scooters.’

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