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Rates of electric bike and electric scooter injuries are rising in children and teens across the country, a new Stanford Medicine–led study has found.

Young people are also more likely to be severely injured on e-bikes or e-scooters than on nonmotorized vehicles, the study showed.

The research, to be published Nov. 2 in JAMA, drew on medical records from more than 13,000 young people treated for bike, scooter and skateboard injuries at six large U.S. pediatric hospitals between Jan. 1, 2023, and March 31, 2026.

"Over that period, e-bike injuries increased by 33% per quarter, and e-scooter injuries increased by 15% per quarter," said lead author Alan Schroeder, a clinical professor of pediatrics. "Those increases were substantially higher than comparable increases in injuries from nonmotorized bikes and scooters." Schroeder treats children in the intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford.

"We've been seeing more and more kids on e-bikes, both on the street and in the hospital," said pediatric trauma surgeon Stephanie Chao, an associate professor of surgery and of pediatrics and a co-author of the study. "These kids are coming in with increasingly severe injuries," added Chao, who is also the trauma medical director at Packard Children's.

For example, she noted, brain injuries were about twice as common among kids injured on e-bikes and e-scooters as on nonmotorized vehicles, and the proportion of injured patients who needed hospitalization was higher among e-bike riders than in any other group studied.

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