Electric vehicles — from cars to bikes to scooters — are more popular now than ever. Not only have they become more widely available in recent years, but more people seem to realize, “No, really, we only have this one planet and we need to start acting like it.” In the case of e-bikes and e-scooters, they’re also lots of fun… but they are not without their risks. A new report from ERideHero has found that injuries related to e-scooters among children under 15 more than doubled from 2023 to 2024.
ERideHero gathered data on e-scooter injuries from the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission’s NEISS Database, which collects data on consumer product-related injuries from a representative sample of over 100 American ER departments, which allowed them to extrapolate estimates. Global data on such injuries was gleaned via reputable news sources.
Injuries have trended upward overall, for all age groups, since 2020, but were far more gradual from 2020 to 2023. There was a precipitous jump from 2023 to 2024 — from 64,312 injuries to 115,713. For riders under 15, injuries more than doubled from 8,159 to 17,641. Most of these injuries were to the head (nearly 21,000) and face (more than 15,000) — highlighting the crucial importance of wearing a helmet whenever you ride.
Most e-scooters have a top speed of 15 to 25 miles per hour. While that may not sound fast, bear in mind that Space Mountain at Disney World only gets to about 27 miles per hour at its fastest. When you consider an e-scooter can go from zero to double digit speeds in seconds, that means kids can’t always adequately brace themselves and run the risk of injury. Moreover, even if they handle that transition well, one could do a lot of damage falling off, losing control, or hitting something at those speeds.
Across social media, doctors have warned about the dangers of e-scooters and e-bikes as emergency rooms have also noticed an uptick in injuries. Many have cited “riding an e-bike or e-scooter” as one of the things they would not let their own child do as a result of their experience in pediatric trauma wards or emergency rooms.
“It feels like every trauma is related [to e-bikes and e-scooters],” said TikTok’s favorite pediatric ER doctor, “Dr. Beachgem” in a video posted last month. “It’s basically a motorcycle that you’re putting a kid without a license on … it is so bad.”
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