The rapid adoption of e-bikes and e-scooters, often grouped under the term micromobility devices, has transformed personal transportation across the United States by offering convenient, affordable, and environmentally friendly mobility options.
At the same time, children’s hospitals are seeing a concerning rise in preventable injuries associated with these devices. Given their commitment to child health and injury prevention, children’s hospitals are uniquely positioned to address this emerging public health crisis.
Micromobility devices have become increasingly popular among adolescents and other young riders. Unlike traditional bicycles, e-bikes and many e-scooters can reach substantially higher speeds with minimal physical exertion, increasing both the likelihood and severity of crashes.
Yet these devices are often used in communities where infrastructure, regulations, and public awareness have not evolved to support their safe use. The resulting risks extend beyond riders to pedestrians and other road users.
The growing injury burden
Between 2017 and 2022, an estimated 45,586 e-bike injuries were treated in U.S. emergency departments. Over this time, e-bike injuries increased nearly 30-fold, while hospitalizations related to these injuries increased 43-fold. Hospitalizations rose from just 66 cases in 2017 to 2,897 in 2022. E-scooter injuries followed a similar trajectory, with an estimated 189,517 injuries occurring between 2017 and 2022. Annual e-scooter injuries increased from 8,566 cases in 2017 to 56,847 in 2022, representing more than a six-fold increase.
At Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, where I practice, micromobility injuries increased by 150% between 2024 and 2025, and half of the affected patients required a surgical procedure.
Even more concerning, 87% of patients admitted to our pediatric intensive care unit were not wearing helmets. Risk-taking is a normal part of child and adolescent development; but this combined with inconsistent use of protective equipment can contribute to more serious injuries.
As a neurosurgeon, I see the devastating consequences of these injuries. Higher speeds combined with low helmet use can result in neurological injuries ranging from concussions to severe traumatic brain injuries, intracranial hemorrhages, and cervical spine injuries. For children, these injuries can have significant long-term implications for cognitive, behavioral, and functional outcomes.
It starts with data
For children’s hospitals, promoting e-bike and e-scooter safety starts with understanding the burden of injury. Current surveillance on the federal level has not focused specifically on these injuries, limiting our ability to characterize patterns, identify risk factors, and assess long-term outcomes.
As injury prevention stakeholders increasingly recognize micromobility injuries as an emerging public health concern, we have an opportunity to strengthen data collection and develop evidence-based prevention strategies.
The CDC Injury Center should work with trauma centers, state health departments and other injury surveillance partners to develop reporting mechanisms for micromobility-related injuries. Improved CDC Injury Center data collection would help track trends in injury mechanisms, severity, helmet effectiveness, and neurological outcomes, information essential to both prevention education and advocacy.
Consistent national data collection would also enable researchers and policymakers to evaluate the effectiveness of safety interventions, and support evidence-based policies designed to reduce preventable injuries among children and adolescents.
It continues with education
Every injured patient we treat presents an opportunity for anticipatory guidance, but that guidance must begin before an injury occurs.
For children who use micromobility devices, counseling should reinforce helmet use, age-appropriate riding, careful supervision, awareness of surroundings, and adherence to local traffic laws. Consistent messaging across disciplines can normalize safe riding behaviors and make families more likely to follow prevention recommendations.
The most immediately actionable step is promoting helmet use. Although helmets cannot prevent every injury, decades of evidence from bicycle safety initiatives have demonstrated their effectiveness in reducing the risk of serious head trauma.
At my institution, unhelmeted riders have had higher rates of ICU admission, reinforcing the importance of increasing helmet use. Children’s hospitals can advance this effort through community outreach, educational campaigns, helmet distribution initiatives, and partnerships with schools and local organizations.
The time to act is now, before these injury trends become even more deeply entrenched in communities nationwide.
By strengthening injury surveillance, delivering consistent safety education, promoting helmet use, and developing community partnerships, children’s hospitals can lead a coordinated effort to prevent avoidable injuries and protect young riders.
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