65-year-old severely injured in Ola electric scooter accident. Son flags software bug

Pallav Maheshwari said his father was severely injured in an Ola electric scooter accident. (Image credit: Ola-Electric/Facebook, pallav-maheshwari/LinkedIn)

A Jodhpur man has flagged a software bug in Ola electric scooters after his father suffered a severe head injury in an accident.

Pallav Maheshwari wrote that a software bug in Ola electric is causing its scooters to go in reverse mode at full speed. This is a known issue in Ola scooters and has been flagged multiple times in the past – just last month, a Twitter user wrote of how his scooter switched to reverse mode and ended up crashing.

Something similar happened to Maheshwari’s 65-year-old father, who bringing the scooter inside his house to park. “The software bug in the #olaelectric scooter of going in the reverse mode at full speed has severely injured my father,” Maheshwari wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Describing the extent of his father’s injuries, who needed 10 stitches on his head, Maheshwari continued: “He was only taking the scooter from outside the house to park inside. He has banged his head on a wall with almost the skull open (with 10 stiches now) and broken his left arm which would have to be operated with 2 plates inserted.”

Maheshwari urged Ola to recall scooters or fix the glitch as he criticised the company for putting the safety of its customers at risk with “poorly tested” products.

“I didn’t think that health and safety norms would be compromised to this level at your #futurefactory,” he wrote. “Even after multiple reports of the reverse mode triggering in full throttle have been made by multiple Ola customers, no recall or fixes have been declared.

“I urge you to make sure no one else gets be harmed because of your fault.”

Several Ola customers have complained about the reverse mode accelerator glitch, along with other issues like the scooters stopping abruptly and EV fires.

@bhash @OlaElectric You claim that #OlaS1Pro reverse mode goes 4kmph? This video claims to show 90kmph. Even if it is not verified, I can say for sure that it’s faster than 60kmph with the wheel spin.

Just imagine your #Ola doing this in traffic #Unsafe pic.twitter.com/pS10I8L1Cc

— Abhay Thekkany (@AbhayThekkany) March 23, 2022