Scooter Mishaps

* In its most solemn and horrific tones, the Associated Press reported, “Scooter-Related Injuries Nearing 9,500” (Sept. 6). Not until the reader is a third of the way through the story about the report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission is it admitted that “a majority” of these injuries were “cut, bruises and sprains.” Good grief, are we to believe that children are to be smothered in bureaucratic regalia and that childhood is to be scratch-free?

What is worse is that The Times and the media have meekly accepted the Chicken Little hysteria without seriously questioning how the CPSC supposedly came up with these figures without resorting to guesses and thin air. Any first-semester researcher will tell you that there has not been sufficient time to reliably quantify such data.

ROBERT B. EVANS

Anaheim