Please, it is okay, you can calm down now: Rihanna is perfectly fine, nothing to worry about here. That’s according to her reps, who have now assured the masses that the bruises recently spotted on Rihanna’s face stem from an e-scooter accident, and nothing more nefarious than that.
“Rihanna is completely fine now but flipped over on an electric scooter last week and bruised her forehead and face,” a spokesperson told People. “Luckily there were no major injuries and she is healing quickly.”
On Friday, TMZ ran photos of the singer-slash-fashion-and-beauty-and-skin-care-mogul taken outside her favorite restaurant, Giorgio Baldi, in Santa Monica. Rihanna stayed inside her SUV while staff brought her order to the car — it is a well-established fact that Rihanna will take her wine to go, thanks — but paparazzi managed to get pictures of her face nonetheless. She had a black eye and some swelling, apparently the result of the scooter snafu.
In early August, America’s Got Talent host Simon Cowell broke his back while riding a dang e-bike, and had to take a weeklong hiatus to recover from emergency surgery. Recent ridership numbers on the shared e-bikes and e-scooters now found in many cities across the country suggest accidents like these are not at all uncommon, and indeed, have spiked in recent years. According to Forbes, U.S. hospitals admitted nearly 3,300 people suffering scooter-related injuries between 2014 and 2018, a 365 percent increase from the pre-scooter times. That same window reportedly saw more than 39,000 scooter injuries total, many of which did not require hospitalization. But if you’re going to scoot, be careful out there! Particularly if you are the pope, Rihanna.
